Reply To: Public Land hunting ethics

[Etter1]

#7926

Dave, I agree with you entirely on most of your points. I’m digusted to read the average hunting forum. Most people know absolutely nothing about ecology. Most don’t know plants, trees, birds, etc, etc. I took up traditional archery and recently, flintlock muzzleloading to add challenge and make hunting more intimate. To most hunters, that idea seems silly. Why hunt a bedding area with a stickbow when you can climb into a tower over your food plot and kill deer at 400 yards with a 7mm mag?

What I don’t understand is when you knock hunters who use legal tactics to kill animals in a way that is entirely necessary for the management of the species. Bear hunting over bait in a lot of areas, or hounding for lions is the only way to keep population numbers in check. I understand that you don’t want to hunt that way, but why criticize a form of hunting when it is necessary for the management of the species? Lion hunting was outlawed in california. Now, there are more “problem lions” killed than when they allowed hounding. That doesn’t make sense. The closing of Ontario’s spring bear hunt is another example of feeble-minded politicians making decisions about hunting ethics and hurting the very creatures they claim to protect.

I’m an avid reader of your writing and appreciate your posts on here, but I just can’t understand it. It seems to me that sitting over a waterhole in an arid landscape would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I’ve never done it and I’m sure it’s not, but neither is hounding for lions or baiting for bears.

I can understand how you could have an ethical dilemma but as a person with a background in wildlife biology, I can’t understand why you would want these things ended when they are, in a lot of cases, the only way to manage (and I hate that word when referring to critters but it’s a necessity these days) wildlife populations.

-ps, I have hunted bears over bait many many times. More often than not I’ve been unsuccesful. I am going on a guided lion hunt this february over hounds. I have no qualms with either of these tactics. I do, however, live in a state that allows baiting for deer and I’ve never done that and never will. I also would never hunt turkeys or ducks over bait. I can’t explain the difference, as I don’t know what it is myself, but that’s how I feel