Learn the Facts about Hunting

Fall is the time when forest greens begin to blaze orange, as hunting seasons open around the country. Each year, hunters kill more than 100 million animals, and while individual reasons for hunting vary, the industry that promotes and sustains hunting has just one motive: profit. According to the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, America's 14 million hunters spend $22.1 billion each year for guns, ammunition, clothing, travel, and other related expenses.

To justify hunting to a society ever more concerned about wildlife—including its conservation and humane treatment—the industry intensively promotes a set of tired myths. Learn the facts behind these myths.

There are many ways to learn about nature and the "great outdoors." At its best, hunting teaches people that it is acceptable to kill wildlife while learning about some aspects of nature. However, the very essence of sport hunting is the implicit message that it's acceptable recreation to kill and to tolerate the maiming of wildlife. Even those who claim that wounding and maiming is not the intent of hunting cannot deny that it happens.

It is folly to suggest that we can teach love, respect, and appreciation for nature and the environment through such needless destruction of wildlife. One can learn about nature by venturing into the woods with binoculars, a camera, a walking stick, or simply with our eyes and ears open to the world around us.

Does hunting help create a bond between father and son? We do not know, but there are countless recreational and other activities that can strengthen the parent/child bond. Generally speaking, bonding has less to do with the activity and more to do with whether the parent and child spend significant, concentrated, and loving time together. Yet the particular recreational activity is also important, because it can send a moral message to the child about what constitutes acceptable recreation.

Hunting as a form of family entertainment is destructive not only to the animals involved, but also to the morals and ethics of children who are shown or taught that needless killing is acceptable recreation. The HSUS rejects the notion that a relationship of love and companionship should be based on the needless killing of innocent creatures. Killing for fun teaches callousness, disrespect for life, and the notion that "might makes right."

No. The number of hunters has been steadily declining for decades. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there were 15 million licensed hunters in the U.S. in 2000, compared with 15.6 million in 1993, 15.8 million in 1990, and 16.3 million in 1980. This drop has occurred even while the general population has been growing. Currently only 5.4% of Americans hold hunting licenses. Hunters claim their numbers are growing to give the impression that recreational killing is acceptable. The facts are that more and more hunters are giving up hunting because it is no longer a socially acceptable activity.

Isn't it more humane to kill wildlife by hunting than to allow animals to starve?

This question is based on a false premise. Hunters kill opossums, squirrels, ravens, and numerous other plentiful species without any notion of shooting them so that they do not starve or freeze to death. Many species are killed year round in unlimited numbers. In addition, many animals that are not hunted die of natural starvation, but hunters do not suggest killing them. While it is true that any animal killed by a hunter cannot die of starvation, hunters do not kill animals based on which ones are weak and likely to succumb to starvation. Hunters who claim they prevent animals from suffering starvation are simply trying to divert attention from an analysis of the propriety of killing wildlife for fun.

No. Most hunted species are not considered to be overpopulated even by the wildlife agencies that set seasons and bag limits. Black ducks, for instance, face continued legal hunting—even on National Wildlife Refuges—despite the fact that their populations are at or near all-time lows. If hunters claim that they hunt to prevent overpopulation, then they should be prepared to forgo hunting except when it really is necessary to manage overpopulated species. This would mean no hunting of doves, ducks, geese, raccoons, bears, cougars, turkeys, quail, chuckar, pheasants, rabbits, squirrels, and many other species.

What's more, hunters are usually the first to protest when wolves, coyotes, and other predators move into an area and begin to take over the job of controlling game populations. The State of Alaska, for example, has instituted wolf-control (trapping and shooting) on the grounds that wolf predation may bring caribou populations down to a level that would limit the sport-hunting of caribou. Finally, hunters kill opossums, foxes, ravens, and numerous other plentiful species without the pretension of shooting them so that they do not starve or freeze to death.

No. Wildlife, to a large degree, will naturally regulate its own populations if permitted, eliminating any need for hunting as a means of population control. Discussions about supposed wildlife overpopulation problems apply primarily to deer. Hunters often claim that hunting is necessary to control deer populations. As practiced, however, hunting often contributes to the growth of deer herds. Heavily hunted states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, for instance, are among those experiencing higher deer densities than perhaps ever before. When an area's deer population is reduced by hunting, the remaining animals respond by having more young, which survive because the competition for food and habitat is reduced. Since one buck can impregnate many does, policies which permit the killing of bucks contribute to high deer populations. If population control were the primary purpose for conducting deer hunts, hunters would only be permitted to kill does. This is not the case, however, because hunters demand that they be allowed to kill bucks for their antlers.

No. The hunting community's idea of a "healthy" wildlife population is a population managed like domestic livestock, for maximum productivity. In heavily hunted and "managed" populations, young animals feed on artificially enhanced food sources, grow and reproduce rapidly, then fall quickly to the guns and arrows of hunters. Few animals achieve full adulthood. After 20 years of heavy deer hunting at the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, for example, only one percent of the deer population lived longer than four years, and fewer than ten percent lived longer than three years. In a naturally regulated population, deer often live twelve years or longer.

Most states actively recruit children into hunting, through special youth hunts. Sometimes these youth hunts are held on National Wildlife Refuges. Some states have carried this concept even further, and hold special hunter education classes to recruit parents and their children. In addition to encouraging children to buy licenses and kill animals, the states are reaching out to women as well. If enough women and children can be converted into hunters, the state agencies can continue business as usual.

No. While there are many rules which regulate hunting activities, enforcing the regulations is difficult, and many hunters do not abide by the rules. It has been estimated that twice as many deer are killed illegally as are killed legally. Hunters will sometimes kill a second deer because it has bigger antlers or "rack" than the first. In addition, duck hunters often exceed their bag limits or kill protected species because most hunters cannot identify the species of ducks that they shoot—especially not at a half hour before sunrise, when shooting begins. Secret observations revealed by ex-duck hunters demonstrate that illegal practices and killing permeate this activity at all levels.

Those species favored by hunters are given certain protection from over-killing—killing so many as to severely limit the population—through what are known as "bag limits." However, hunting of some species is completely unregulated, and in fact, wanton killing is encouraged. Animals such as skunks, coyotes, porcupines, crows and prairie dogs are considered "varmints," and unlimited hunting of these species is permitted year-round in many states. At the base of this is the notion that these animals are simply "vermin" and do not deserve to live. Hunters frequently write and speak of the pleasure in "misting" prairie dogs—by which they mean shooting the animals with hollow-point bullets that cause them to literally explode in a mist of blood.

Moreover, hunters' influence on state and federal wildlife agencies is so strong that even bag limits on "game" species are influenced as much by politics as by biology. Many states, with the sanction of the federal government, allow hunters to kill large numbers (20–40 per day) of coots and waterfowl such as sea ducks and mergansers, for example, despite the fact that little is known about their populations and their ability to withstand hunting pressure, and the fact that these ducks are certainly not killed for food. This killing is encouraged to maintain hunter interest, thereby sustaining license sales, because the decline in other duck species has resulted in some limitations on numbers that can be killed.

Though hunting clearly kills individual animals, can hunting actually hurt wildlife populations?

Yes. Hunters continue to kill many species of birds and mammals (e.g., cougars, wolves, black ducks, swans) that are at dangerously low population levels. While hunting may not be the prime cause of the decline of these species, it must contribute to their decline and, at a minimum, frustrate efforts to restore them.

Even deer populations may be damaged by hunting pressure. Unlike natural predators and the forces of natural selection, hunters do not target the weaker individuals in populations of deer or other animals.

Rather, deer hunters seek out the bucks that have the largest rack. This desire for "trophy sized" bucks can and has had detrimental effects on the health of deer herds. First, hunting can impact the social structure of a herd because hunters kill the mature males of a herd and create a disproportionate ratio of females to males. It is not uncommon to find a herd that has no bucks over the age of three. Second, genetically inferior bucks may be left to propagate the species, thereby weakening the overall health of the herd.

Because hunters largely want to shoot only bucks, hunting may cause artificial inflation of deer populations. When these populations reach levels that available habitat cannot support, increased disease and starvation may be the result.

We don't understand the full effect of hunting on wildlife behavior or health because wildlife agencies will not conduct the studies necessary to find the answers (e.g., "spy-blind" observations of duck hunting, in which undercover authorities secretly observe hunters).

Almost never. When all costs are considered (i.e., license fees, equipment, food, lodging and transportation), hunting is not an economical way to provide food. Statistics gathered by the University of Maryland's Extension Service revealed that hunters spent more than $51 million to kill 46,317 deer in Maryland in 1990, approximately $1,100 for each deer killed. Assuming that the meat of each deer killed was preserved and eaten, and that each deer provided 45 lbs. of meat, the cost of venison in 1990 in Maryland was $24.44 per pound. For most hunted animals, such as ducks, doves, rabbits, squirrels, and crows, among others, use for food is now minimal, and the expense of equipment far outweighs the value of any food that is obtained. For the vast majority of hunters, hunting is recreation, not a means of gathering food.

Okay?

How many people do that? Not the majority of Hunters! You have a problem with a few Nut Jobs , not hunters in general!

I guess I can stand with you against the act of killing (but not eating) Squirrels. I won't be attending any rallies though.

Yup Scruples. It means standing up for your principles....

Do your scruples include taking any slightly debatable comment and using it to flog your opponent as evil? You're not interested in debate, you're on a witch hunt.

what does my private reply you posted prove otherwise? You're a bubblehead.

It proves so much that you don't see plainly in front of you.

YOU posted that text publicly; I simply quoted what you told the world. You never sent that text to me privately; I copied it from YOUR post #312.

That text nicely demonstrates your rabid mean-spirited rantings. It is efficiently full of insults, misrepresentations, accusations, misassociations, and demonizations - all in regards to an activity which is entirely acceptable in polite society. That you got so torqued off about the recipient (which was not me) posting it publicly shows that you are embarassed by your own behavior.

Ironically, your text - flung at another - describes you quite well. Over the years I've noticed a peculiar psychological phenomenon: some people loudly accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of. I believe the term is "projection". What puzzles me is how they (you included) are so unable to see what's happening...

Try a treestand, jump on the deer and beat them.

One friend did pretty much that. On a backpacking trip, he climbed a tree for amusement...when several deer came by and stopped right under him. With only a pocketknife, he dropped out of the tree onto one deer and killed it. Got stabbed in the foot with an antler in the process (not exactly a "helpless" critter). Lunch was very good for his group that day.

I just have the opinion that anyone who can kill a squirrel or raccoon for the hell of it has a problem.

Many here agree with you, many here disagree as well. Apparently reasonable people can disagree politely. What puzzles many of us is why you're so he11-bent on demonizing anyone who derives even the slightest bit of pleasure from hunting, especially as you indicate eating meat is ok.

OK, I know what that is, the electronic thing threw me. Not practical for me. I'll have to stick with fences and clanging pop and beer cans, and if the corn rats get in, well, I'm not really trying to condition them. I suppose I should thank the sunperson, I've learned stuff on this thread. Maybe we should start a permanent one, Critter Cuisine, Holistic (hunting is holistic) Harvesting, something like that.

I had dinner one night in Germany with an executive of the Siemens corporation. He was about to take his 12-year-old son on a two-week trip into the Black Forest to teach him how to survive in the event that Germany's economic and food-distribution system collapsed. This 'survival training' for their sons is apparently a standard thing that every father is expected to do in Germany.

Then he added, "This happened to us twice in this century. Many people did not know how to survive without civilization."

Most people won't survive without "civilization", carrying capacity and all, almost by definition.

Their cultural memory is so different than ours, I'd be interested to hear about what a German/European training experience like that encompassed, if you know.

Some might say Germans have always known how to get along without civilization, even in times of plenty.

Nasty. Civilization has overtaken them. Still, backcountry survival in central Europe. Amazingly difficult in America, with all this land that we grow animals on for nasty hunters, but Germany is so different. I'd love want they learn. I might learn something, even if it's only fried carp patties.

I'm not a young pup anymore and I learn a new trick or two nearly every day.

On several threads I've seen lately the same accusations have been repeated about hunters.The only comments I can remember by hunters that they killed squirrels and didn't use them or that they thrill?killed critters were made sarcasticly after being repeatedly accused of such foolishness.

Go squirrel hunting and not eat the squirrels?That just flat out don't make no dang sense at all does it?

We all know about urban legends,ghost stories and such.The outrageous accusations I've seen leveled at hunters in these threads could qualify as peta legends or alf stories.

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