Quote:
Originally Posted by oldE
When most folks talk about a 'disaster' in the deer or elk population, they really mean "not enough for me to hunt with a reasonable chance to get mine".
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Very well put, Les. The only issue on which we apparently disagree is this one. Our (the United States') largest ongoing "disaster" on this front is occuring within the Yellowstone herds - where hunting is illegal.
Nature lovers love to view animals. Hunters love to hunt those same animals. Here in the U.S., neither group could enjoy these persuits without the hunters' efforts and dollars. As I stated before, we owe our currently healthy game populations (and non-game populations as well) to the conservation efforts of
hunters. It's a very simple axiom that hunters need prey. Realizing this, hunters have organized, game departments have been created, and modern management practices have been developed and employed. All with hunters' dollars collected through license and tag fees, and taxes on their equipment levied through our Pitman-Robertson act.
Other nature lovers have no such infrastructure through which to funnel their money. Oh, they have various charitable foundations and organizations to whom they donate, but so do hunters. And hunters are far more generous in their donations, which come in on top of those legally required fees that others do not pay. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasant Forever, Safari Club International, and many, many more collect donations that run exponentially higher than any non-hunting nature group could ever imagine in their wildest dreams. Hunters are more than willing to "pay to play", where others don't seem to be nearly as willing to "pay to watch".
So, where am I going with this? Essentially, everyone who enjoys the outdoors does so on hunters' backs, on hunters' dollars. We have far more "skin in the game" than anyone else. Not just in funding game management, but in funding
wilderness management. So, when the herds we enjoy hunting - that only exist today through our hard work and dollars - become threatened by groups pushing an emotionally driven agenda, based on nothing but emotion, put forth in the absolute ignorance of sound management policy - why, we have a problem with that. We have collectively spent better than a century - since the dark days of unregulated market hunting, poaching, bounty hunting, poisoning, and all of those practices that wiped out the herds in the 19th century - working and spending to restore those herds. To have groups who have not pitched in to shoulder this load suddenly throw a "hands-off" wildcard into the mix at this eleventh hour is simply unacceptable. It threatens to un-do a century of effort to bring the herds back to where they are today. Not just so we can hunt them, but so others can enjoy them. In places like Yellowstone.