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David Petersen wrote: Etter — All good questions and fair, and politely put as appropriate to this forum, thank you. All I can say is that I’ve written and spoken tens of thousands of words attempting to explain my “biases,” and just can’t reduce such complex and personal topics to a website post. While I totally understand your position and thus, you confusion with my stance, I must disagree that baiting bears, and shooting treed lions, is necessary for management, that is, predator population control. Necessary to what, to whom? I try hard to see the big picture and the long run, even when the “answers” don’t sit well with what I would prefer. I have always, most always, viewed the intelligent, educated, interested, open-minded nonhunter as my primary reader or audience, convinced that’s the best way to force myself to fight free of my personal biases and address hunting issues as the majority of people do (those at least who give a damn, which most of course do not). This isn’t a dodge, but simply the best I can do here, after doing my best to be as fair-minded and unbiased as possible through a lifetime of dealing with these hard questions. Thanks again for your good questions and lack of emotion, and I apologize if I’ve failed to supply a satisfactory answer, either here or in a career of doing my best to do so. I can say that I rank “hunters” who take long crazy low-odds shots with impotent arrows, then boast in public about their “stuck ’em” woundings and lack of efforts to recover, and speak of the animals we hunt as if they are enemies is some stupid oil war, or of no more value than cockroaches … compared to these scum among our ranks, our differences on your issues of concern are insignificant. Dave
Dave, I totally agree with you, but as someone who has hunted extensively in the boreal forest of canada, I can say without a doubt that baiting or hounding bears in that area is the only way to get any kind of “harvest”. I’m sure you know, in areas of high bear populations, bears can and do decimate populations of deer and elk, as well as kill their own young in order to promote future sow breeding.
The same is said of lions. When lion hunting is outlawed, lions are only killed by farmers shooting them with spotlights over their goat herds. This just can’t sit with me.
In either case, there are millions of, I think, ethical hunters who would gladly take on the challenge of doing either.
I respect your opinions and have always wondered about how your ethics can align with biology.
Nice talking with another hunter with very strong opinions. Drinking a beer now, and so…cheers!