Hunting/No Hunting

Great Debates
1

Let’s say for the sake of this thread that anti-hunters got their way and all hunting was outlawed.

Most anti-hunters would make the claim that they are environmentally friendly, but if you remove a predator (all be it a highly evolved predator) from the ecosystem are you not harming the Cycle of Life?

Yes, I know we have done it with wolves and coyotes, but humans have an impact on a greater scale. In Wisconsin last year the Whitetail Deer harvest by means of legal hunting activities (discounting poaching and car/deer collisions) was 494,382.

How do you balance this if hunting is banned? Seriously how would you? I always saw this as the end of the discussion because I don’t think you can replace humans as a predator in the natural world.

2

The question is: Given this fact, how powerful is the movement to outlaw hunting in places like Wisconsin in the first place?

3

Nope, that wasn’t the question.

But in answer the strength of the movement is based on the section of the state you are in.

4

Who says you have to? Nature is perfectly good at self-regulating animal populations. In the short-term, the deer population might increase by half a million animals. But those extra half-million deer are going to be competing for finite food supplies and territory. In the first few years after hunting is banned, many more deer will starve or will reproduce at lower than normal levels than normal. Within a fairly short period of time, the deer population will be naturally reduced to exactly the level that the enviornment can support.

Yes, in the short-term, an increased deer population will have recognizable effects: people will experience more deer-auto collisions, more deer wandering into people’s backyards looking for food, other species that occupy the same ecological niches as deer will encounter additional competition, and so on. But unless you’re prepared to argue that the deer will successfully crowd out some other competing species, nature will take care of the surplus deer without any long-term disruption.

5

First, my bad on the double post. Impatience has that effect.

I agree that nature tends to be self regulating but I would argue in favor of a possible crowding out of another species and severe damage to crops and forest growth by the overpopulation. I think the increase by 1/2 million animals would take place in Wisconsin alone. Currently we are well over population goals and taking 1/2 million animals out of the herd during the deer hunting season is not making progress down to established goals. A series of mild winters has created a population boom in our deer herd. Right now, even with hunting, a hard(typical) Wisconsin winter would result in a massive die off.

And if we decide it is ok to remove humans as a predator what would be wrong with eliminating wolves, coyotes, bears, or hawks. Any of these would alter the food chain.

6

In other words, if humans dropped off the face of the earth altogether, the earth would get along just fine. A thousand years from now we might never have existed. No harm, no foul. And not many more fowl, either, as nurlman pointed out.

Yes, for a while it would be annoying as hell in some parts of the country if hunting were completely outlawed. But to say that humans cannot be replaced as predators is silly. If we drop out of that niche, some other predator will fill it.

-andros-

7

Semi-Simulpost.

So are you arguing that humans have a moral obligation to hunt? A responsibility to the environment?

8

I am goint to try and rephrase the arguement a little, accepting the figures given.

  1. Half a million deer are culled in Wisconsin every year.

  2. There are not enoough resources to support those half-million deer through the winter.

  3. Deer populations will not lower their rate of reprodution in response to the mortality rate. (If anyone can present a cite refuting this, please do. I am extrapolating it from the fact that most mammals do not respond this way to over-population pressure).

  4. No “new predator” is likely to arise in any time scale that is meaningful to human civilization.

  5. If those half-million deer are not culled or killed by a predetor, they will starve due to lack of resources.

  6. So why not shoot them and get some use out of the meat? One could even go on to say that:

  7. Being shot is more pleasant than slowly starving.

  8. So it is morally positive to hunt, especially since when overpopulation leads to mass famine all the deer are suffering the pangs of starvation–the ones that starve nearly-to-death are only slightly better off than the ones that starve to death.

9

Andros wrote:

So are you arguing that humans have a moral obligation to hunt? A responsibility to the environment?

A moral obligation? No, because I will not force someone who chooses to not be a hunter to go hunting. Just as I would not force a smoker to quit now that I have quit(check back regularly on my progress).

What I am saying is that humans are naturally a predator and to ban hunting by humans would alter the food chain which would cause a disruption of the natural balance. That is wrong.

If we were to die out as a species is a different argument altogether.

We currently make every effort to protect animals from extinction and discuss what needs to be done to preserve the environment. Most of the answers seem to be to not tamper with the natural order of things. And based on that we spend millions of dollars to preserve or restore wilderness and wetland areas. Which, by the way, costs a lot of money that I don’t see the anti-hunting groups stepping up to the plate to replace.

10

Wrong?

Humans are part of nature. You point that out, but I don’t think you take it far enough. Whatever we do affects the so-called “natural balance.” We are part of nature regardless of our actions. If we choose as a species (or subset) to abstain from hunting in favor of farming, ranching, etc., that’s part of the natural balance. Just because we reason doesn’t mean our actions are unnatural.

If we overhunt (killing more healthy adults than arise naturally), there will be fewer of whatever we’re hunting. If we continue overhunting, there will eventually be too few members of that population to sustain it, and an extinction occurs (the Passenger Pigeon being the most commonly-used example), and its environmental/ecological niches will be filled by other species.

If we halt our overhunting, the population hunted will either return to it’s prior state or its niches will have been partially supplanted by other species, and the new stable population will be less than before.

If, OTOH, we underhunt, the species will spread until it reaches a new equilibrium. This may be attained through geographical (Komodo dragons) or climatological (Polar bears) means, or by predation (or myriad other means, of course, nothing in nature happens in a vaccuum). In other words, if a predator species disappears, either the prey will expand its territory until it can’t go any further, or another predator species will take advantage.

The “natural balance” is not static. It is constantly in flux. Predation by humans is a part of the whole, and its degree merely affects the flux. Nothing we can do, short of reducing the planet to cinders, will end the “balance of nature.”

That’s not to say I don’t like the current crop of critters, of course. I oppose the extinction of any species, mostly out of my quixotic opposition to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

But while I find hunting a species into extinction to be morally repugnant, it ain’t the end of the world.

And neither is letting hunted species go unhunted.

11

However, the folks most likely to be hunting aren’t going to be hunting the weak, frail members of the deer population. They’re going to hunt big, meaty does and big, strapping bucks. The net result could be a weakening of the overall robustness of the deer population. That’s something that probably needs to be taken into account–what does hunting the most visibly healthy members of the deer population do to their gene pool?

12

It makes frail, smarter deer survive more often to pass on their genes, thus creating a race of “nerdy” deers.

PeeQueue

13

Well, yeah, they try to hunt the big meaty does (if they have a doe permit - less common than a buck permit) and big strapping bucks. But just because that may be want a hunter wants, that doesn’t mean it’s what he gets. Most hunters I know will settle for just about any legal deer. Not everyone come back with a ten pointer. In fact, most don’t.

14

In this specific area of Texas (the Hill Country), whitetail deer cause more wrecks than drunk driving. And that’s with a very active hunting population. If hunting here were outlawed, driving around here could be downright deadly.

15

1.) Of course I realize the effect we as humans have on the environment. That is why I support organizations with realistic and truly helpful habitat goals.

2.) If anti-hunters claim to be pro-environment, how is banning hunting going to benefit the environment? I have heard no benefit put forth.

3.) Who will pay for the wildlife refuges and the conservation programs? Will they just disappear along with our wilderness?

4.) Screw the Passenger Pigeon argument. Did it happen? Yes. Was it a horrible transgression by humans against nature? Yes. Did we learn from it? YES! Deer, arguably the most hunted animal in North America are at all time population highs even with the heavy hunting pressure. We are experiencing a resurgence of wildlife in this country that is a direct result of our current wildlife management techniques.

5.) Hunter success rates are not that high that we pose a particular danger to the genetic well being of the herd/flock.

6.) Deer killed by cars (and reported) for Fiscal Year 1999 (July 1, 1998-June 30, 1999) in Wisconsin. 44,897 …I’m not making this up!

7.) Based on the above statistic and the predictable rise in accidents that would follow if hunting were banned, is it acceptable that you, your wife, daughter, son, mother, or father would die in a car/deer collision? Or is there a benefit from a ban on hunting that would offset the death of a loved one that was a direct result of the ban??

16

Of course, in Wisconsin the DNR also makes sure that we feed enough deer to have a “surplus” so that we “have” to hunt them.

If overpopulation were the real argument, then we would hire professional hunters and we would do whole-sale shooting of does. Everything else in this thread supporting hunting strikes me as a smoke-screen.

A good argument for hunting is that people like to do it and that we have little moral duty to deer (especially if we feed them). Another good argument could be that one finds the kill to be a spiritual act or an outlet of otherwise destructive emotions.

But letting my dad’s pal Herb hunt is not really a means of effective popluation control.

Bucky

17

To address the OP:

I am not a wildlife biologist, nor do I portray one on TV. But my WAG is that if you banned all hunting, within about 5 or 10 years you would have starving, diseased deer staggering into backyards from Massachusetts to Oregon. Do you think this would go over well on TV? Heck, no. Long before that happened, you’d have furious animal rights activists camping out on the front lawns of the legislators responsible for the hunting ban.

You also know how well Bucky’s “wholesale shooting” would go over. “They’re killing Bambi!” A number of years ago, they had a serious suburban deer problem in New Jersey, I think it was, and the DNR or FWS called in professional hunters to thin the ranks. The animal rights people heard about it and staged a number of protests, with the unsurprising result that the surplus deer were merely tranquilized and moved to Pennsylvania, costing the taxpayers I don’t know how many thousands of dollars.

In simple ecological terms, if you removed the media and PETA from the equation (now THERE’S a thought :smiley: ), since deer no longer have any predators to speak of, and the OP didn’t mention anything about reintroducing wolves, of course the deer would simply become overpopulated and begin to starve, until their numbers once again matched their food supply. I suppose they would continue to go through boom-and-bust starvation cycles, unless some kind of predator appeared to thin them out.

Lacking wolves, Mother Nature makes do with Bucky Sr.'s pal Herb.

18

No, my dad isn’t “Bucky Sr.” (although his friends call him “Muck” which would make me “Muck’s Buck”).

I agree that professional hunters wouldn’t go over well. It does seem like a more logical solution (and one we would use if we were suddenly over-run with killer elephants or sharks with legs or the dogs with bees that come out of their mouths). We won’t, because a lot of people enjoy hunting. I just think that the “control the population” argument is disingenuous.

Bucky (not the Junior)

19

Bwah, hah, hah, hah… Man, that was a coffee-through-the-nose moment.

:::Picturing scawny Far-Side-esque deer with (pun alert) buck teeth and tape on their antlers:::

20

So, when you want to have sex, it’s Muck’s Buck Fucks? :smiley:

Sorry. ::: clears throat noisily :::

Well, yes, I suppose it is a teensy bit disingenuous. It’s a combination of things: the deer need predators to keep their numbers down so they don’t collapse and die on the patio, people like shooting things, people like eating venison, people (some people) think it “proves something” for them to go chase deer around the woods, and last but not least, the State can make money off of all this. IMO that’s the most important thing. I lived in Michigan for a while, and that was the big thing, the big tourist draw, “deer season”. Everything in certain less-urban parts of the state was geared almost exclusively to the out-of-state sportsman, whether hunting or fishing.

I don’t have any problem with the people who go out into the woods to put meat in the freezer; it’s the low-self-esteem idiots who think that killing a deer proves they’re “real men”. “Big rack–little dick”, you know?

And yeah, if it was any animal less cute and Disney-fied than deer, I doubt if PETA would care. The environmentalists and animal-rights people call these kinds of animals the “charismatic mega-fauna”, the ones like deer, elk, moose, bears (grizzly and black and polar), mountain lions, African lions, tigers, elephants, cheetahs, pandas, seals and sea lions, and wolves of course. Lately the African Cape hunting dog and hyenas seem to have been promoted to the pantheon. These are the figurehead animals, the ones that get the juicy sound bite, because people just naturally love them. People don’t get quite so worked up about salamanders or coyotes or butterflies.