New Hampshire’s Spring turkey hunting season begins soon and Bill and I plan to participate for the first time. Periodically, The Ten Ring has featured pro-hunting screeds. Here’s another one for to read or click away from. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’m from a hunting family and I have hunted ever since I was old enough to hold a gun by myself. I’m also a recovering liberal. When I moved to an East Coast state to attend graduate school, I heard anti-hunters whine about poor Bambi and about how savage hunters were. Because I had very few hunting opportunities while in school, I didn’t hunt. After graduation, I began a career and became distracted by too many liberal lies and began wondering if hunting was really as savage as they claimed. I hung up my hunting rifle and shotgun.
I returned home for a family visit one year and Dad took me to see a “die off,” a place where dozens if not hundreds of mule deer had congregated over a terribly harsh winter and died of starvation. A few misguided souls had thrown hay out for them, but mule deer (I don’t know about white tails) naturally lack a digestive enzyme for hay and starve with full bellies. Soon after that, hunting again became a part of my life again. I wonder if Dad planned that?
There are savage elements about hunting; there I’ve admitted it. You have to kill a beautiful creature, stick a knife into it, and remove its still warm guts. It’s bloody, but all of us carnivores are part of the life cycle rather we wield a knife ourselves or pay meat packers to do it for us. It’s part of life and vegetarians, who refuse to eat meat because an animal had to die, aren’t in touch with their humanity. Humans are predatory omnivores and need meat. I don’t care what vegetarians argue, because I tried a vegetarian diet while in my deluded phase and I know that craving for animal protein.
Good lean meat is truly the stuff of life. But, hunting has another purpose other than providing us protein—keeping animal populations in check. We humans clawed our way up the food chain and decided we didn’t want predators trying to knock us off that pedestal to make our children or us their food. We almost killed off wolves, banished mountain lions, and we tamed dogs so they could help us hunt predators and game.
Predators are still with us and their populations are increasing. I think it’s a good thing, but I wouldn’t want a coyote to get my cat or a neighbor’s child. Predators have a place, but not living among us. Because we don’t want a bunch of carnivores living near us, herbivore populations have exploded. Hunting is the only way we can control these populations. Anti-hunters though have scared people out of hunting and parents have not always passed hunting skills to the next generation. So now we don’t have enough hunters.
Anti-hunters hope to find a way to control burgeoning deer populations, but are not succeeding. In Millstone, New Jersey deer are taking over and one moonbat thinks they need to freeze development to control deer. She says, “We have too many houses.” I don’t follow her logic here, but then again it’s moonbat logic and let’s not think on it too long because it’ll make our heads hurt. Another Millstone resident and head of the Democratic County Committee supports hunting since he hit a deer while driving his wife’s Lexus and was almost killed—according to him. He takes a collectivist approach and wants to process hunted deer into meat for food banks and charities. I don’t know if their specially licensed hunters would get to keep any meat. Of course, Millstone plans on allowing only bow hunting—can’t have those horrid guns in town not even shotguns or muzzleloaders.
Texas is taking a different approach to wild animal control. They have problems with feral hogs. These porkers are dangerous, omnivorous, reproduce quickly, and destroy crops. Texas has a year round hunting season and guns are not an issue. In fact, one rancher said you need an AK-47.
Other areas are having problems with Canadian and Snow Geese. Hunting is a way to control populations, but there are still those who want non-lethal means. As part of constituent services, Senator Charles Schumer helped bring Geesepeace to Long Island as a means to scare geese to other areas and destroy their eggs (hmmm…abortion for geese). One problem with scaring birds, you have to keep it up year after year at public cost. Why not let hunters do it, pay their own way, and eat the healthy meat?
Still, anti-hunters won’t stop their screaming. Groups like In Defense of Animals would have us change our lives to accommodate animal populations. PETA criticizes hunting as well. Here, among many nuggets of asshattery, they make a few good points about canned hunting. I have nothing against hunting ranches with guides so long as prey has a chance to escape. I don’t like trophy hunts where an old circus animal is drugged and set out for a “mighty” hunter to kill.
Beyond that I have little agreement with anti-hunters. Their propaganda has reduced the numbers of those of us who trek outdoors. Now though, they and their urban sympathizers are reaping the whirlwind. Many people who once though Bambi was simply too cute to kill now want these "antlered rats" dead, especially after they eat their expensive plants. The need to control animal overpopulation may help hunters regain lost ground and increased seasons, bag limits, and open more ground to hunting. Such steps will lead to better success rates, which may attract more people to hunting.
Wish us luck when we go hunting turkeys; one of the cagiest and hardest animals to bag. It is also a dangerous forms of hunting since you’re sitting in the woods dressed in full camouflage making turkey noises while fellow hunters are trying to shoot turkeys. Hmmm….
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