States allow hunting because people want to do it, but they regulate length of season and number of kills for population control.
Yosemitebabe
I’ll double that answer.
You’re right.
The guy on the killing floor at IBP does the killing.
The animal is still shot.Bet most don’t know that.
As far as conditions go at factory farms ,most are humane.
The animals are comfortable.
It does more harm than good for the conditions not to be comfortable
.
The problem shows up when the farmer cannot pay his bills. The bank is after him by freezing his assets.
He cannot pay for feed and he cannot sell the animals.The proverbial rock and a hard place.
So maybe KFC’s “non-chicken” is the right idea after all. 
Peace,
mangeorge
BTW; I know it’s an urban legend. If you don’t, go to snopes and type in KFC.
This sounds like a great idea.
This, from britannica.com, is population control;
[QUOTE]
“Wolves move and hunt mostly at night. A wolf pack feeds primarily on large herbivores such as deer, moose, and caribou, which it catches by a stalk and a chase. The pack gorges when food is available, usually reducing the carcass to hair and a few bones. In its hunting the gray wolf performs an important natural function in controlling the numbers of large herbivores and in weeding out those less fit for survival.”[/QUOTE
So can we please quit with all the grandiose claims?
And maybe re-introduce wolves (and other predators) where they have been removed?
Peace,
mangeorge
Here, I’ll fix it. " ] "
There ya go. 
Peace,
mangeorge
This is not necessarily a viable option. In many areas with a large deer populations, we also have relatively large human populations. Predators will not necessarily stay in areas where they ‘should’ be. Tell most people in my neck of Wisconsin ‘we’re ending hunting, but releasing a pack of wolves 15 miles from your house’.
I wouldn’t mind it (I would be elated). Most people I know wouldn’t think it a wise idea- especially if they have children or pets. I live within an hour or Milwaukee, and people in outlying suburbs very rarely lose a pet to a coyote, but it happens. There are then bigass news stories and the inevitable point comes up: ‘Oh, it could have been a child’. These are coyotes.
There are large deer populations in the semi-rural area I live, and large human populations too. People generally don’t worry about deer attacks, but they would definitely worry about wolf attacks. (Especially when these are people who lived in the suburbs all their life, then move 15 mile further from the city to ‘get away from the people’- and bitch when deer eat their expensive ornamental plants… )
Personally, I am aware that wolves are generally harmless, and I would love to see them reintroduced throughought the state. Just try selling that idea to the public.
I don’t think most hunters are hunting primarily because of altruistic feelings toward the herd; they want to go out and blow away an animal. But I think we should be aware that at the same time, they are performing a necessary service to the ecosystem and human population around them.
DrMatrix and mangeorge, I think your arguments that population control is not a valid reason to hunt, because hunters worsen the gene pool by killing the strongest animals whereas “natural” predators kill the weak and diseased animals, are flawed. A buck’s genes are not kept out of the gene pool unless he’s killed before reaching sexual maturity and reproducing (and I believe there are laws against killing bucks before maturity, as there are against killing does at practically any time, I think). Yes, a big prize trophy male would have more offspring over his life if he weren’t offed by a hunter, but he will not necessarily end up having fewer offspring than weak and diseased males (who tend not to be selected for mates as much, yes?).
Also, don’t sport hunters most dearly prize a really big rack of antlers, which a buck only develops over the course of quite a few years? So the really big trophies are the older bucks who presumably have already had plenty of opportunities to reproduce. Unless I’ve got my facts seriously wrong, I think that kind of knocks out the “bad eugenics” objection to hunting for population control.
The thing I can’t figure out is - what does it matter what the “excuse” or “reasons” are for hunters wanting to participate in this activity? If it is to thin out the herd, to help the environment, to feed their starving family - or if they just like to “blow things away”? If you want to eat meat, you must realize that someone had to “blow it away”. If you don’t approve of the activity, you shouldn’t be eating the meat.
Why do I detect this element of superiority (or condemnation) amongst some of you because you don’t want to hunt? And you attach motives to hunters (they like to “blow it away”) as if that makes them creeps, or something. If someone didn’t kill animals, you wouldn’t be able to eat their meat. I think it is a little more than hypocrisy to feel superior to people who (for lack of a better phrase) “kill their own food”, when all you do is pay someone to kill your food for you.
I don’t believe that all of you think this way, and I certainly don’t blame someone for not wanting or liking to hunt. But feeling superiority (or irritation) at hunting as a whole makes no sense, if you eat meat. (And for the record, as a vegetarian, I don’t feel “superior” to hunters, or meat eaters. Just leave me to my nuts and seeds, thankyouverymuch.)
Wait a minute Yoseminitebabe.
You eat nuts and seeds???
Can’t have that.
The deer and mooses need that.
yosemitebabe
yosemitebabe
yosemitebabe
Spelling practice
OK got it.
Yosemitebabe
Since I believe it is I who attached this motive “blow it away” to the many hunters I know, am related to, and am the progeny of, I feel I have to defend the comment.
The phraseology was an attempt to make light of the argument over motives. Most of my friends who like to hunt enjoy the act of finding their prey and taking it out. Most hyper-environmentalists (of which I am one) I know do less proactive things to make real changes in the environment than your average hunter and/or hunter groups (check out Ducks Unlimited) do. I do not feel that, taken in context of the entire post, I was trying to say hunting gives me the creeps, and I sure as hell don’t feel superior to those who hunt: I would just rather be doing other things.
The thrust of my argument was that we NEED hunters, especially in areas where wilderness and human settlement overlap (BTW, I agree completely with the kill your own vs. pay someone else to kill it comment).
God, this is the first thread I’ve posted to more than once and it’s about hunting…
Disagree. Although there is still opportunity for the healthy bucks to reproduce, the overall number of their (potential) offspring is reduced. In the long run, these small losses can add up.
Snickers I don’t agree with trophy hunting for the most part, but don’t worry. Most, if not all, trophy hunters either take the meat home and eat it themselves or donate it to someone who will eat it. I know this because I helped outfit an elk hunt where the guy who was after only a trophy donated the meat to a local rancher I knew.
As for the people who don’t buy the population control and thrill of the chase argument, maybe this is what you want to hear. I am an avid hunter and I LOVE to kill! I love seeing animals suffer and bleed to death! I love to brag about my superiority over animals because I have an opposable thumb and can fire a rifle!!! I wish I could be killing an animal right now!!!
Seriously though…the challenge of hunting is most of the lure for me. If you don’t think hunting is challenging, then you’ve never been hunting with someone like me. Like I said in another post, I must be a mediocre big game hunter as I have never personally killed a big game animal.
I don’t consider duck hunting or other types of bird hunting to be any more cruel than killing a chicken raised on a farm. At least the ducks, pheasants, doves, etc. have a chance to get away.
In Africa and parts of Asia, tigers can eat the children of rural residents. Elephants can trample crops and people.
In Europe and the US, wolves posed similar problems to humans and livestock. The response, alas, was to wipe them out. (My understanding is that the wolves that remain are rather wary of humans and tend to avoid them.)
Again, if we wish the residents of third world countries to co-exist with endangered species, we have to give them an incentive to do so. Issuing limited numbers of hunting permits for, say, leopards, (as they do in Zimbabwe) helps assure the long-term survival of these magnificent creatures.
An example of this approach is outlined here:
Lets talk about antlers for a minute.
If I am a trophy hunter and I get lucky and shoot a thirty point buck (HEY the humor is free folks) that buck had been fathering his kind for a long time.The biggest rack means he is probably the meanest sob in the valley. He has bred every doe that he can gather into his harem for a long time.
Sooner or later he is going to run out of unrelated females. Do I have to explain further?
So trophy hunting is not such a bad idea after all.
Really? I find that very difficult to believe. How many deer have been killed this way versus humans?
Well, when it comes to actual fatalities, the deer certainly appear to have the worst of it: this source says that over 600 deer per year have been killed of recent years on highways in Michigan’s Macomb County, while in 1996 only 6 people died as a result of car/deer collisions in all of Michigan. The number of human injuries resulting from those collisions, though, was 2,221, and the total number of 1996 collisions was 68,000! The deer walks away from the majority of those accidents; and I have known people (in southern New Jersey) who totaled their cars in deer collisions after which the deer (not necessarily unscathed, of course) went leaping off into the woods. Wild deer are pretty tough hombres and they are big. We are not talking running over a possum or squirrel here. Deer on roads do indeed constitute a serious threat to the safety of drivers and their cars.
Ohio hunter here. If you want some facts about hunting check out the website of your state department of natural resouces.
ODNR Notes on White-tailed Deer
Antlers (on White-tailed Deer) are not necessarily an indication of a deer’s age. When a deer is taken during huting season it is required to be taken to a checking station where the deer’s age is determined from it’s teeth among other things.
As for population control:
Hunters are one of the tools of the ODNR’s management policy. Population control may not be the main reason that I hunt but that doesn’t mean that I am not achieving that end.
I don’t see why you would release wolves for population control when you have humans already there.
Also you can not mess up evolution, its just not possible. If the biggest and the best deers all die then guess what? Those deer werent the best at surviving. The best at surviving live. Hence natural selection.