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Open Thread - Bambi, Thumper........

by rcs1

I continue to be amazed at the policies coming out of this administration.  Legacy...we don't need this stinking legacy!! Dick must be so pleased!
August 17, 2007
Bush Seeks to Expand Hunt Opportunities

President Bush wants the government to look for more room for hunters to hunt and to step up efforts to conserve places where wildlife roam.

Bush on Friday ordered any federal agencies that manage public lands, outdoor recreation or wildlife to "facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat."

- snip -

"Clearly, he's catering to a constituency, because there's no biological or ecological justification," said Jamie Rappaport Clarke, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, who directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Clinton administration.

"It's selecting a group of species, only those that are hunted and fished, to give White House attention to," she said. "I would have expected some executive leadership on things like global warming and conservation of all biological diversity."

- snip -

Bush's order mostly affects the Interior and Agriculture departments, which manage 700 million acres of land - an area slightly more than double the size of Alaska. They have now been put on notice to seek any chances for more hunting of wildlife, waterfowl, big game and upland game birds when considering state and federal land management plans.

BTW, I am not against hunting. Whenever my husband had gone out to hunt in Missouri, I was on my knees praying like mad...we canceled each other out!


commentary :: :: :: buzz-it!

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Whenever my husband had gone out to hunt in Missouri, I was on my knees praying like mad...we canceled each other out!

The right question is probably, "what were you praying for?"  

LOL, I first took it to mean you prayed for his bad aim which semi-obviously contradicts sentiments you may have felt about hunting.  Maybe you simply hoped that his bad aim wasn't self-destructive?

To other folks, FWIW, avahome's hubby may be a sharpshooting marksman, I don't know.  I'm just trying to puzzle through the motivations for avahome's bouts of acute piety ;-)


by luaptifer on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 10:04:21 AM EST

so I figured I needed to ask the go to guy to give them a shout out!!! It works!!!

by avahome on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 10:30:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It's not hunting, per se, that you're against.  The successful hunt is what you don't like!

I wonder if Dubya is also promoting the opening of Texan law offices to greater hunter-access for when Cneney retires?


by luaptifer on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 11:00:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

personal conflict ...

I grew up in an area where hunting was almost a necessity for some families to survive -- including my own.  While I don't like it, this is a way that many rural families "keep the wolf from the door".

What I despise are the folks that hunt for the pure pleasure of the kill.  I have seen entire deer left in a gully with only the "rack" taken -- or just the "backstrap" -- those juicy tenderloins that run along the back.  This makes me physically ill.

I just don't understand how human beings -- who are supposed to be so evolved -- can enjoy killing something just for the "sport" of it.


by roxy317 on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 12:45:05 PM EST

But I may diverge in some ways from some sentiment on the left.  

It's not a difference of opinion on the matter of hunting solely for trophies which is something I really don't like.  (I probably need to moderate even that distaste, see below.)

But it's also not solely depending on the support that some people in need can at least sustain themselves through hunting, either.  Though that is a valid reason and one that tempers my thinking.

Another important reason that at least some amount of hunting should be allowed is that natural ecosystems have evolved to design and sustain themselves through the interdependent predator and prey populations.  

I just ripped into the idiocy of animal-rightists who mindlessly released captive domestic mink en masse to the wilds bordering NY and MA (@Two Legs Good, Four Legs Equal) because it probably perpetrated a temporary massive localized slaughter of small creatures around the farm that was raising those minks for profit.

The complementary idea is important to think about where in this world we've largely devoided of predators, such things as the spread of lyme disease probably has quite alot to do with insufficient predation of the deer populations beyond those taken by hunters, cars, and the now booming coyote population.  

Or, really, how realistic is it to not thin the cougar population around Los Angeles?  I'm pretty sympathetic to the anti-trophy idea but I'm not sure how many hunters would actually eat a cougar.  

Maybe they would, I don't know.  

I return to what I suspect is not popular here, belief in a realistic need for some hunting as the only way to control populations that are not held in check by the design Nature intended in this Real World we've made.


by luaptifer on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 02:50:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

that man has systematically destroyed -- and the reality is that only man preys on man.  I don't want to sound cold hearted here, but ... man has encroached on the habitat of our wild kindred.  We are too many, our population is out of control.  We have no respect for the "land" and the cycles that control our earth. That is part of our destructive nature.

I read your post about the minks that were returned to the wild.  It is sad, and yes they are predatory. Being part of the weasel family they can wreak havoc on other species ... but in nature they also have a predator.  The Blackfooted Ferret was thought extinct until a few years ago.  They have since been protected and then rejected, as their natural predators -- coyote, fox, etc. -- are being hunted to extinction.

I love the coyotes and fox ... seeing them running wild across the plains is a truly beautiful sight.  Yes, they kill sheep and have been known to take down a beef, but they too are here for a reason, and it is our "GodLike" attitude that has created an imbalance.

I guess we just kill whatever is in our way ... much the way we decimated the native population in our westward expansion.  My thinking is, if we didn't build McMansions so close to the "wild", then perhaps we wouldn't have cougars attacking kids.

This is just another symptom of our species inherent greed.

by roxy317 on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 03:36:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Some folks think mice are quite cute. They are associated with St Gertrude and some think they can be helpful to the dead. Others feel they are just disgusting. Eek! Jump on a chair.

How does catching mice compare to hunting? You can do it with traps and technology, like the sticky stuff they step on and that's it, but they're still alive. You can hire a feline assistant to police the inner recesses of your property and keep an eye and ear on places you can't get to easily. What cats do to mice is also really disgusting. I preferred that symbol of the wisdom of the ages, the black snake. They'll take care of mice. You don't even know, they don't need light, they just go to work. And then you'll see them out in the sun snoozing happily, looking like they swallowed a foot ball. Some people think that's disgusting too. Mice breed faster than black snakes eat them though, so that's a problem.

Its the same with Bambino and Bambina. They were cute chasing around the apple tree in the back of the yard. When hunting season comes along in November the first casualty is always human, shot by mistake, by another human. The first deer with so many points doesn't make the front page. Hunting season is breeding season. The amount of damage they all do to the cars on the over-crowded local highways as they move around trying to do what they need to do is probably some off-set to the body count. But that seems like such a real wierd way to look at it too.

There are health issues, like the mouse hunt. There are public safety issues, like traffic pile-ups. There are aesthetic issues like working with black snakes to deal with rodents isn't for everyone. Nor is picking live mice off sticky paper.

I still don't understand where man got the idea that he's the one who decides who lives and who dies, and how. I don't think God, just to use that name, did put everything here especially for us and our use. Better to respect what we discover here and learn to live with it because we can't be sure what any of us are doing here or why.

So I don't think we should hunt. You do need to take care of the mice, squirrels, raccoons, possums and other creatures which treat our garbage in exactly the same way we seem to be treating the rest of creation. "Don't know who put it here, but it must be just for us otherwise they wouldn't have left it so handy would they?" Whatever it is for, the one thing we do all know about it is that whoever, or whatever made it, no one and nothing gets a second chance. So why fool with that?

by Chris White on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 04:26:07 PM EST

and so I imagine you'll measure my own statements with some tolerance for what I've not  been able to express in our discussion.  

I'm not an advocate of wanton killing by believing that some hunting is necessary in the environment we've created and in which we all live day to day.  

In fact, I am pacific, if not able to call myself a pacifist any longer  but I  am lodged into the grey space of both spectra by similar reasoning.  

I find myself expressing the problem I run into as what an idealist must do to live in the real world.

  Though I wish and still ideally hope that human nature would deliver us into the Utopian dream of tomorrow, I've come to accept that, by the sunset of this day, we ain't gonna be there yet.  

Our world can support some godly Gandhis but it's been my observation that Mahatma's way outnumbered by Pol Pots and Idi Amins.  

It really sucked when I was forced to that conclusion but trained as a scientist I've gotta go with the evidence and not the faith.  We've just not evolved the selfish gene out of human kind yet.

I am a sympathizer and supporter of many objectives of animal rights groups.  Heck, I'm a biologist by training and one who opted for the study of microbes and plants because I am an animal-lover who was not realy happy with  some of the  in vivo work I had to do.  

I own a firearm.  The path which led me to make that purchase wended its way through hundreds of miles of hiking in woods where I saw 30 bears in the space of three years after decades of only seeing them in zoos.  It was clear, however, that the twenty-pound walking stick I hiked with probably wouldn't have fended off mama bear the day she packed her cubs up a tree and then disappeared to I didn't know where.  Had she come back for me, I imagined what that stick might do but bears are damn fast in real life.

I loved that encounter but I knew that if forced to make the choice, I was not gonna be a pacifist.  The day I bought that weapon was a day my hair stood on end.

And it was a year later that the house shook when a five or six hundred pounder jumped onto my back porch.  I thought a tree had fallen on the roof.  It was that night an extremely hungry 7-foot tall bear returned to my porch four different times and I was able to execute the plan I'd formulated before buying the gun.  

I fired four rounds that night and though within two to ten feet of him, each shot was well over the head of a ravenous furry someone just looking for the first meal after five months of hibernation.  Heck, the first trip onto my porch, he dragged a plastic flowerpot into the woods to eat (I never found it at least).  The shot from two feet away was the one that finally left me looking at evidence of the sprint whose trailing imprints were separated by ten foot bounds as he headed for a different neck of the woods.

Had I wanted to, I could've stocked a couple freezers with bear meat that night, he was a biggie.  I'm not a hunter and though I was close enough to watch his eyes adjust to the light when he looked up at me, I didn't put a bullet into either one of them.  

Weirdly, I did get a sense of the hunter's primal urge as his breath fogged my door but I don't like killing if it is avoidable and I avoided it that night.

I just got back from a couple hours of trying to protect some apple trees from a stupid porcupine that's sheared maybe 15% of its canopy off this season.  If we don't have to shoot him to make him stop, I'm all for the several weeks of trying that we've invested trying.  

But this problem continually recurs because there are not enough of the only predators, fishers and mountain lions, to control the porcupines.   How does an idealist approach that sort of thing?


by luaptifer on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 09:25:28 PM EST

I thought rabid racoons were a big deal!

There's baby bears out here sometime in the fall when mom kicks 'em out and says you're on your own, and they come wandering off the Blue Ridge.

I think most of them get doped with peanut butter and end up in Chinese medicine cabinets.

But you are giving a whole new meaning to the right to bear arms! I thought it was about short sleeved shirts!

by Chris White on Sat Aug 18, 2007 at 10:21:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

and I fed them to keep them out of my duck pen.  They eventually became almost tame... and would come right into the house if I forgot to feed them.  Mama raised her brood under my shed every year, and with each passing year they became more friendly.

Fed the possums too. And when we lived in Montana I put out food for the foxes and coyotes so they would stay away from my chicken coop.  The only critter I could not make friends with was a badger ... he liked to eat my barn cats ... so I moved away from barn cats and let them move into the house.

I have been within touching distance of bears while camping ... had a big black bear lumber through camp right in front of the tent.  Always told my kids, just don't get between a mama bear and her cubs. Bears like other wild animals don't usually eat us humans, cuz we just don't taste very good.

Another good trick to keep the critters at bay (if you don't want to feed them) is to go to the hair salon and ask for clippings.  Scatter the hair around your garden or any other area where you want to keep them out of.  Works pretty darn good.

by roxy317 on Sun Aug 19, 2007 at 12:08:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Love it! You just know that winning someone over to see you as friend and source of help is much more effective than unloading buck-shot at their rear end!

Horse whispering works with other 4-legged critters too, that's great. You've got such a list it would be hoarse whispering!

So Aristotle or whoever isn't really right about why horses dogs and (perhaps) cats are different than other mammals because they can learn and therefore have memory of a kind. Even possums!

by Chris White on Sun Aug 19, 2007 at 08:27:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

or more likely African hedgehogs, did they?  

Wondering, I've spent many hours watching porcupines when I encounter them in the field.  They're really kind of innocent with evolution appearing to have foregone developing their 'smart' side by substituting a suit of quills instead.

Of course, humans often revise millions of years of Nature's work in a couple generations.  Breeding pitbulls for mindless agression is not something I consider a high-point in human achievement.  

"Dumber" (clickable thumbnail) Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

It seems pretty clear that in encounters between pitbulls and porcupines, it's definitely a trait that's selectively disadvantageous.

(I don't know where that image originates, sent by a friend in email).


by luaptifer on Sun Aug 19, 2007 at 12:07:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

You've gotta feel sorry for that!

I thought curiosity killed the cat!

by Chris White on Sun Aug 19, 2007 at 12:11:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Factory farms OR hunting but not both.  Any critter that can survive an urban environment is a Rocky Balboa and gets a victory dinner from me.  I feed all the critters great and small but I sympathize with Luapt and the Great Bear.  If any critter gets rude they get the heave ho!  But I gotta say that Luapt gets the HavAHeart award for his control of his territorial fear and aggression in the face of Yogi. Big ol' Southern smootch from me for that one,Luapt!  

by DEFuning on Sun Aug 19, 2007 at 01:01:02 PM EST

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