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I hunt. It's an
awesome way to get in touch with nature and re-enter, in a personal way, the food-chain and "circle of life". (cue the
music) Granted, being at the top of the food chain, it's much more convenient for me to join the alimentary conga-line than
for, say, the rabbit shown below. Most times I eat what I kill. Sometimes I don't, because sometime what I hunt
needs to be killed in order to maintain balance in the circle of life.
| This I eat. Tastes like chicken. |
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| This I don't eat. BTW, no shadow for you! |
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Hunting feeds my family. I butcher the deer myself and feel I get much better results that way - tighter quality
control and sanitation of processing. Deer meat is naturally very low in fat content. We don't grill venison much,
but we do make "burger" meat. It's always so lean that we have to mix it with beef hamburger to get it to fry for burgers.
Wild game bag and possession limits are set by the department of natural resources in most states. DNR researchers
and scientists gather information and provide input into setting these limits. This is done to insure the survival and
overall health of each species. Sometimes due to natural and man-made conditions "the circle" gets out of round and
becomes an oval or pear-shape. Hunting is used to solve this. When DNR's are not allowed to do this, such as in
National Parks, the ballance of nature is upset and starvation and disease become big problems.
This is
usually most easily seen in city parks and suburbs that have a deer population and where hunting and natural predation do
not occur. A "browse line" will develop. That is to say, the lower leaves of bushes and trees will be eaten off
as high as the typical deer can reach. This gives the opposite impression from mowing your lawn. A freshly mown
lawn will have a smooth and even top level that follows the contour of the ground. This is obviously not natural.
A browse line is the same thing upside down. All the bushes and trees have a lower level that follows the contour of
the ground. And it's NOT that those bushes and trees are the preferred deer food. It's that their natural forage
is exhausted by their artificially dense overpopulation and they are STARVING! And that effect will only get worse as
winter progresses. It is much better and more humane to allow hunters to thin the herd so that the remaining deer winter
healthily.
Here's an example of this problem: It's an article by LeAnn Spencer titled "Deer Dilema" that I found in the Chicageo
Wilderness Magazine online.
http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/fall2003/deerdilemma.html
"White-tailed deer, their populations out of control, continue to gently, beautifully destory
our forests. To save them — the forests and the deer — there has to be a predator."
My personal yet reasoned opinion is that the best predator
to address this problem is the properly trained and licensed hunter. No other predator can be released that would not
result in "collateral damage" to pets, children and livestock. No other predator can provide feedback to authorities
about the existence of illness or disease of the game. And no other predator will properly dispose of the remains of
the game.
A hunting program can be designed to cull from the
herd just the certain types that would optimize the herd to best survive the coming winter - both overall numbers
and "deer demographics".
Not only that, but hunting can ADD FUNDS to state and municipal
coffers VS the EXPENSE of ANY OTHER type of management program be it the release of coyotes and wolves to special forces operatives
using suppressed weapons and night vision optics.
BTW, deer "roadkill" (and by that I mean dead deer, not dead passengers)
does not count as "natural predation". Natural predation takes out the old, the infirm or the extrememly young - those
who would probably NOT survive the coming winter.
Preservation VS Conservation:
The conservation movement is not new, in fact it was the first job given to man by God. More recently, Theodore
Roosevelt is considered the father of the modern conservation movement. Conservation believes in resource management.
Preservation on the other hand, comes from the viewpoint that what is wrong with the planet is the presence of mankind.
Preservationists would bottle humans up in cites and not let them out - except maybe a National Geographic video crew.
October 2007, According to officials from numerous states, due to the drought, deer are concentrated around water
sources. High concentrations of deer are always a bad thing. Keeping those numbers down is critical to overall
deer population health and is the purpose of having a deer hunting season. In this case, the danger is due to the spread
of disease and the contamination of the water sources they all share.
EHD disease information - Ohio DNR
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