Hunting

[FredC]

Keeping a fear of humans in predators is not necessarily a bad thing.

Let us not forget keeping a fear of humans in prey........I have worked at a few places where deer are so plentiful and have no fear.......I can remember one place I worked that while walking in from the parking lot I walked right up on a doe. She was right across the path, she just stood there looking at me, I could have punched her in the nose if I wanted to.

[Nat]

Keeping a fear of humans in predators is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's take the case of the woman who was killed by coyotes earlier this year: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto-singer-killed-by-coyotes/article1341376/.

Well, there must be other ways to control them. It seems to me if people didn't shoot deer, coyotes would have their natural prey. Of course there are some cases when it's the only way, but we're talking about hunting as about a way of entertainment.

Also, deer and pretty much all other ungulates will have more offspring that can survive in the long run. Eventually, there will be too many and they will either starve or dies of epidemics  

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm even afraid to think of what we should do with African children according to you.

You know, we should let nature regulate population of its animals itself and take action only when no other ways work and when it really endangers life of PEOPLE directly and nothing else except hunting can help. If we want to be civilized - we should be civilized in everything, not only in putting on clothes and buying ready-made houses.

[Ade]

Well, there must be other ways to control them. It seems to me if people didn't shoot deer, coyotes would have their natural prey. Of course there are some cases when it's the only way, but we're talking about hunting as about a way of entertainment.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm even afraid to think of what we should do with African children according to you.

You know, we should let nature regulate population of its animals itself and take action only when no other ways work and when it really endangers life of PEOPLE directly and nothing else except hunting can help. If we want to be civilized - we should be civilized in everything, not only in putting on clothes and buying ready-made houses.

Nice ideals in theory unfortunately idealists tend not to be very pragmatic in the face of modern world realities. Yes, it's distasteful to think of human beings going out and killing for entertainment and it's something I couldn't do myself but the fact of the matter is that if there weren't culls during hunting season the animals would over populate and eventually suffer from starvation and disease; that's far worse than a quick bullet in some animals. And yes, predators could keep them in check too but what cost to human life? The way I see it, it's the least worse choice and that's the best and most practical we can hope for in our imperfect world.

The hunting I really detest is the meaningless, pointless, greed driven hunting of rhinos, elephants, whales and the like which really benefits no one and nothing except for a greedy few.

[Jooky]

we should let nature regulate population of its animals itself

We do. Humans are a part of 'nature' too. We're a top level predator. Humans killing and eating animals is about as 'natural' as it gets.

[Misha]

Well, there must be other ways to control them. It seems to me if people didn't shoot deer, coyotes would have their natural prey.

Coyotes thrive because humans have driven out wolves and other large predators and because they can live very close to humans. I have had large coyotes walking within twenty feet of me in Canadian cities and they were not at all afraid, just a bit cautious. When you have a growing coyote population, the only way to control it are to shoot or trap coyotes. The other option is to get rid of all the humans and let the wolves reclaim all of their territory, but I would not see that as a good option.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm even afraid to think of what we should do with African children according to you.

That is faulty logic, trying to turn it into a racist thing  I believe that Africans families, as all other families, control the number of children they have. They are fully capable of regulating how many children they have and they will have fewer children if having fewer children is in the best interests of their families. Deer don't make choices when it comes to reproduction. Bucks don't wear condoms and does don't decide to take years off in their reproductive cycle. Nature does not work that way.

I take it Nat that you have never actually seen real wild animals in real life. 

You know, we should let nature regulate population of its animals itself and take action only when no other ways work and when it really endangers life of PEOPLE directly and nothing else except hunting can help.

Yes, starvation for the animals is so much better 

[Nat]

That is faulty logic, trying to turn it into a racist thing  

Where do you see racism here? Oh, I forgot that even mentioning Africans is racism in the USA (and Canada, apparently). Let them be Chinese, at least this nation won't distract you form seeing my point:
you don't kill people who produce more children they can feed (in any country) - you care for their children. That's what civilized people do. But you justify hunting animals, who actually have natural selection for that. How did they live without "care" of people before, I wonder?

As for protecting yourself - as I told already, yes, unfortunately sometimes you have to kill an animal to protect yourself. But it's not what hunting is about, is it? You don't go on safari to Africa to kill tiger to protect yourself. You don't shoot squirrels to protect yourself. You don't shoot foxes to protect yourself.

[Nat]

We do. Humans are a part of 'nature' too. We're a top level predator. Humans killing and eating animals is about as 'natural' as it gets.

Sorry, honey, but people aren't a part of wilderness any more. Some people still are - in some parts of Africa and Southern America, on different islands in the Ocean - they wear furs as clothes and they hunt for food and clothes. Americans stopped being a part of wilderness after they adopted constitution, began using plastic bags and provided copyright laws  

Well, this argument won't get us anywhere - everybody explained their point of view, and let's just leave it there, ok?

[ECOCKS]

Keeping a fear of humans in predators is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's take the case of the woman who was killed by coyotes earlier this year: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto-singer-killed-by-coyotes/article1341376/.

Also, deer and pretty much all other ungulates will have more offspring that can survive in the long run. Eventually, there will be too many and they will either starve or dies of epidemics 

Careful Misha - Facts and reality are too troublesome for theorists to deal with. It's a lot more fun and enjoyable to pretend you are on some sort of moral high ground.

Careful

[facetrock]

  Nat your veiws on hunting is very common for people  that grew up in bigger cities. You live in a very structured world. Nature is not so structured. When a species has the oppurtunity to overpopulate it will. Its happened in the USA with deer. In Africa with elephants. They still cull them in places but not as much as they used too for one reason. They let hunters do it for them and charge them about 25k per animal for the privledge. The governments get the money, the locals get the meat and the forest doesnt get destroyed. Works for everyone.
   As far as whales. Native Americans in Alaska are still allowed to hunt whales. They dont hunt them in seal skin kayaks anymore either. Its aluminum boats and outboard motors and high powered rifles instead of spears. They can survive without the whale meat but its part of their culture and they enjoy it.

 Nat you have to remember humans have been hunting since we have been humans. To try and take away that instinct is impossible. If we kill we kill and once that deer is dead does it really matter to the deer if we eat him or not? 

There has been way way way more species driven to extintion because of farming rather than hunting but thats usually not talked about.

[Misha]

you don't kill people who produce more children they can feed (in any country) - you care for their children. That's what civilized people do.

Actually, I would say that the goal is to work with them to develop their economies to ensure that their children will have better lives and that this will lead to people making choices to have fewer children. Again, people can make choices, including the choice to have fewer children. Deer don't.

You logic is extremely flawed in that you don't acknowledge that deer will never be able to make such choices. If you take care of the deer, don't hunt them or don't find a way of introducing a lot of animals that will hunt them for you, you will eventually get deer everywhere, and deer that will eventually starve en masse.

As for protecting yourself - as I told already, yes, unfortunately sometimes you have to kill an animal to protect yourself. But it's not what hunting is about, is it? You don't go on safari to Africa to kill tiger to protect yourself. You don't shoot squirrels to protect yourself. You don't shoot foxes to protect yourself.

As others have noted, many people hunt for many reasons. Some do hunt for food, and I confess that I love deer steak though I have never had the chance to hunt. Some trapped to sell the furs to make money for their families. Some hunt for cultural reasons. ... And, yes, some hunt for the thrill of the hunt. Hunting if well managed is not the problem, it is the destruction of habitat that usually risks endangering species.

[Misha]

Sorry, honey, but people aren't a part of wilderness any more.

To use follow your logic, it could be argued that the many of the animals being hunted are not in wilderness either. Deer will eat in the farmer's fields or of you go to many Canadian towns and suburbs the flowers and gardens that people plant  Others, such as coyotes, thrive because of the new niches that humans created, niches that are not truly wilderness.

[ECOCKS]

The introduction of "ownership" of the elephants in Africa has resulted in the reversal of the over-hunting trend throughout the 1900's. Most of that was from poaching and the natives who regarded the elephants as a nuisance to their crops and a danger to their children and property. As you mention, the selling of permits by villages implemented a valuation of elephants which previously was lacking. Now the natives cotrol permit issuance and are concious as to breeding, the guide business and importance of building up the elephants as a crop. Truly a success story for hunters and cpnservationists. 

  Nat your veiws on hunting is very common for people  that grew up in bigger cities. You live in a very structured world. Nature is not so structured. When a species has the oppurtunity to overpopulate it will. Its happened in the USA with deer. In Africa with elephants. They still cull them in places but not as much as they used too for one reason. They let hunters do it for them and charge them about 25k per animal for the privledge. The governments get the money, the locals get the meat and the forest doesnt get destroyed. Works for everyone.
   As far as whales. Native Americans in Alaska are still allowed to hunt whales. They dont hunt them in seal skin kayaks anymore either. Its aluminum boats and outboard motors and high powered rifles instead of spears. They can survive without the whale meat but its part of their culture and they enjoy it.

 Nat you have to remember humans have been hunting since we have been humans. To try and take away that instinct is impossible. If we kill we kill and once that deer is dead does it really matter to the deer if we eat him or not? 

There has been way way way more species driven to extintion because of farming rather than hunting but thats usually not talked about.

[Boethius]

To use follow your logic, it could be argued that the many of the animals being hunted are not in wilderness either. Deer will eat in the farmer's fields or of you go to many Canadian towns and suburbs the flowers and gardens that people plant   Others, such as coyotes, thrive because of the new niches that humans created, niches that are not truly wilderness.

Very true.  My parents live next to a fenced ravine.  Despite the fence, it is not unusual for 5 or 6 deer to be in their backyard, eating apples from their tree.  Coyotes also walk around the area, prancing like they own the block, and actually, they probably do.  My father usually throws rocks at them, because he said it is important they maintain a fear of humans.  They have eaten 2 small dogs on the block.  Of course, because this is in a city, no one can hunt either the deer or the coyotes.

ETA - Canadian suburban dwellers often have Nat's attitude.  A friend told me about a first nations friend of his, who moved into a suburban cul de sac.  A moose used to visit the cul de sac, eating from the trees and gardens of the homes there.  The cul de sac neighbourhood had named him Albert.  The friend who moved into the cul de sac saw Albert one morning, and, as she had recently moved from the reserve, didn't realize Albert was a neighbourhood "wild pet".  As a first nations, she has the right to hunt anywhere, without a license.  She took out her rifle, ran out, and shot Albert.  He was enough meat for her extended family for the winter.  The neighbours were horrified.  But for her, Albert was nothing more than meat.

[Nat]

Careful Misha - Facts and reality are too troublesome for theorists to deal with. It's a lot more fun and enjoyable to pretend you are on some sort of moral high ground.

Careful

Oh, that's nice   Misha doesn't have to be careful with me. I deeply respect him as a person, even if sometimes we have different points of view. One of the reasons for that - he always says to me what he thinks - he doesn't play wise commentator.

Everybody choose their moral values. My moral values are that killing of an animal without any important reason (it's our culture, this is fun, I like its fur better than the fur of edible animals, what if particularly this animal will produce offspring which it can't care about) - it's first of all killing. Full stop. As for farmers - let them use ultrasound to scary most of animals away or use electrical fences as they do to stop their cows from going away from the field. It's not 10th century. Well, I don't see what I can add here.

[Boethius]

It is not the 10th century, but ultrasound doesn't only have an effect predators.  It would also have an effect on the cows, and on the hundreds of non predatory animals - birds, groundhogs, fox, weasels, muskrat, beavers,  etc. that are on those lands.  Electric fences over a 3200 or 6400 hectare farm, and 4 feet of snow 5 months of the year isn't a great mix either.

[facetrock]

  The latest greatest theory of humans hunting animals to extinction is the North American megafauna after the last ice age. Has to be the most whacked out guilt trip people have ever come up with. To think that spear chucking arrow tossing five foot eight inch natives hunted mammoths to extinction borders on the bizzare. I'm sure they bagged a few but the risks would have been enormous. The death of a few of the best hunters in a group of thirty natives would be a disaster. Way to risky for them to take on a mammoth when there was all kinds of smaller less dangerous game to hunt.
  But the purists believe it with a passion and not just with mammoths. Wooly rhino, ground sloth, camels, horses, antelope, and basically everything else that went extinct according to them was caused by humans. Then after the prey was gone the big cats died off too. Cheetah, lion and saber toothed tiger, pluse the dire wolf and short faced bear.
  
  Something happened back then, most likely climate change but no where on earth before man figured out how to use iron and copper did they ever put a dent in any megafuana anywhere on the planet. Maybe a few birds got knocked off on a few remote islands such in the South Pacific or New Zealand.

 The extinction in North America had some strange results. The Bison population exploded and became possibly the most abundant large game animal the world has ever known. Estimates are around 60 million. Pronghorn antelope are the second fastest land animal on earth but their main predator is gone, they still think they are running away from cheetahs.  
  

[facetrock]

  Nat if you spent a summer with Ed out in Idaho and had the chance to see how nature really works your attitude would change. Maybe you could come to where I live. I would send you out bow hunting for deer with my daughter.
  Like I said before. You live in a city surrounded by concrete buildings and asphalt parking lots. Your perception of nature is actually normal for someone from your enviroment. Very common.

  One more thing Nat. Most people dont hunt in Ukraine. Millions of people hunt in America. We have far more wildlife than Ukraine. Not even close in my opinion. Why is that? Do you know the answer?

[Nat]

 One more thing Nat. Most people dont hunt in Ukraine. Millions of people hunt in America. We have far more wildlife than Ukraine. Not even close in my opinion. Why is that? Do you know the answer?

Who told you we don't hunt here? A lot of hunters, a lot of prey to hunt. Wolfs, foxes, deer, hares, boars, a lot of different birds. Of course we don't have as much wildlife as the USA have - because we don't have so many climate zones. But we have all the wild life we can have in our climate zone. And, btw, 2 years ago a group of hunters was called to the region where I have dacha - that was the case when there was danger to people, because wolfs had no hares to hunt (because of hunting) and tried to hunt people. So they shot down pretty much wolves and since then wolves haven't been howling at nights for 2 years already. So, no, dear, attempt failed - hunting doesn't benefit wildlife Well, of course it benefits somehow as natural selection, but it doesn't make wildlife various   And it definitely doesn't benefit personality qualities of a person hunting

[BC]

A hunter should eat what he/she has killed.  Only then should they be able to shoot again.

[Boethius]

Ukraine's example is not one to apply to North America, Nat.  For example, rabbits (small here - not as big as rabbits in Ukraine) have overrun our neighbourhoods.  We don't know what to do with the rabbits roaming all over the city.  My husband said "In Ukraine, there would be no rabbits.  They'd would have been killed and cooked already."  The notion of conservation, which facetrock discussed above, is foreign to most Ukrainians.  

[facetrock]

  Nat if there are no hares left because of hunting then the government has failed. Here we have limits on game animals. We cant go out and shoot all we want. So if Ukraine is the hare hunting capital of Eastern Europe maybe some better management is needed. That way you wont have to kill the wolves because of no hares.
  Heres another great idea. Have the people who hunt hares actually be made to buy a license and not bribe their way out of fines or shooting everything they see.
  Another problem is getting people to realize wildlife is not an unlimited resource. America had that problem about a century ago.  I suspect people in Ukraine take as much as they can get when they can get it, but thats a culture thing. Manage it properly and it will keep producing vitually forever.

[Turboguy]

 Manage it properly and it will keep producing vitually forever.

Good point.  I think we have learned a lot from the past days when the Buffalo were nearly hunted to extinction.  I am not a hunter but I am in a state where it is a big sport.  Schools and many businesses are closed on the first day of deer season and that is the most popular game.  It is however carefully managed so it does more good than harm.   In Pennsylvania our deer population is between 500,000 and 600,000.  Our annual deer kill during hunting season is 110,000.  Buck season is less limited than Doe season.  You don't need a lot of Buck to keep the population up.  Each hunter gets one tag good for one buck.  After that he is done.  If we had more deer they would starve.  If we get less, the tags are restricted or the season shortened.  The goal is to maintain the status quo, to keep the population at a level where they don't starve for lack of food and don't dwindle in population because of over hunting.  Done right it is a good thing.

[Misha]

Starving deer: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/03/nyregion/starving-deer-found-at-overpopulated-park.html

It is an easy principle: if deer populations are not kept in check somehow, you will eventually have too many deer.

[GQBlues]

Man is a predator. Look where our eyes are placed in our head. Right up front like all other meat eating predators. The preys eyes are placed more to the side for better all around vision.

Misnomer on two counts, facetrock.

The most successful predators have contralateral eyes. So successful in fact they evolved very little for millions of years. Try to name at least the top 3.

Man was never a predator as it was never equipped with predatory biological faculties. What separates it from other 'prey' animals is its natural pronation to rationalize, adapt, and innovate. It developed a much larger brain, which ironically as this thread displays, is not always evident on everyone.

[SANDRO43]

The most successful predators have contralateral eyes. So successful in fact they evolved very little for millions of years. Try to name at least the top 3.

Can't say I see many contralateral (opposite side) eyes among the above 9 . On the other hand, ipsilateral (same side) eyes have a much better perception of dephth (distance), rather important for a successful hunter I'd wager .