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From: inc@fluke.UUCP (Gary Benson)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Hunting is *NOT* Slaughter
Message-ID: <327@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Jul-84 12:26:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: tpvax.327
Posted: Wed Jul 25 12:26:27 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 06:48:23 EDT
References: <859@pucc-h.UUCP> <34900023@convex.UUCP> <869@pucc-h>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Everett, WA
Lines: 57

Catch a deer on it's own term's? Bare-handed hunting to even the odds?
Slaughter? Boy are *you* off base.

Hunting is part of the game management system in this country. To
characterise the humane killing of animals that would starve otherwise as
slaughter is the most inane opinion I have ever heard on this network, and
it seems I hear it over and over again. 

I don't hunt, but I listen to my friends who do, and apparently the real
situation is something like this:

Deer (and other hunted animals) breed too rapidly for natural predation to
limit their numbers. Without the forces of nature controlling their
population, there is more competition for resources: food and space. Such
competition weakens the entire herd, and many of the weaker animals starve
to death. There are two choices for game managers: they can either feed the
animals using air drops and such like, or they can permit hunters to kill
off the excess numbers. Both of these approaches have drawbacks.

When you feed a wild animal population, the result is that all survive, and
there are even greater numbers of them in subsequent years. When you do
this, you insure that they will always have to be fed, and in greater and
greater numbers as the herd size increases. In addition, the animals come to
rely on the feeding, and rather than grazing over large areas, they
concentrate around the feeding sites. The result is a less and less wild
animal, one who is continually less able to deal with his environment.

Hunting, while it may seem to be a cruel alternative for limiting game
populations, is for the most part conducted humanely, and is only permitted
during explicit seasons. By limiting the numbers of licenses sold, and by
limiting the numbers of animals that each licensee can take, the department
of natural resources (or what ever they may be called in your state) can
pretty accurately keep the population to the numbers that are optimum in
each hunted area. The drawbacks to hunting, of course, are that many people
see it as a "sport", which it definitely isn't, at least according to the
people who I know who hunt. Those who hunt for "sport" are likely to be
those who do it drunk, and frequently leave the game they kill. I would
agree that such hunters are properly characterised as participating in a
slaughter. They are the minority, however.

The concientous hunter eats what he kills, and views what he does not as a
"slaughter" or "blood sport", but as a way to insure a healthy game
population, despite man's encroachments on the environment which have caused
the whole plight anyway. In this light, the hunter is making a contribution
that those who go around ill-informed, yelling "slaughter" just seem to
refuse to understand.

I suggest that if you feel *you* may be uninformed about the realities of
hunting, that you get some information from your state's department of game
management, before you go off half-cocked, spewing venomous words on a topic
you apparently have failed to investigate, much less tried to understand.


-- 
Gary Benson		{ihnp4!uw-beaver}{sb1!allegra}{ssc-vax} 
John Fluke Mfg. Co.	{decvax!microsoft}{ucbvax!lbl-csam}{sun}  !fluke!inc
Everett, WA, 98206 USA     *- ALL INPUTS GLADLY MULTIPLEXED -*