Just read an article touting the need for responsible hunting to help keep the now-booming wildlife population in check. The article focused mostly upon the allowance of bowhunting within urban areas. All in all, a decent read compared to the drivel usually featured in mainstream mags.

Very cool!

       

PS:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/magazine/hunting-your-own-dinner.html?_r=0

Amazing!

Who'd of thunk it? Pretty cool though.

That surprised me.. Glad you posted it here. thanks.

Yes this trend has been building steadily for around 20 years. We have a whole generation of young adults that grew up around abundant wildlife - clean water - clean air. Whitetails particularly the number that get run over by cars is the biggest boon for us. High ticket landscaping is next.

Beavers have put roads under water just enough to aggravate commuters. And our friend the coyote has made a splash big enough to include dining on pets and pet food.

We have more places to hunt than we could ever get to - each year we have to plan what NOT too hunt -   we have too many areas and not enough time to work them.

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QuoteOriginally posted by Muzzy 75:
That surprised me.. Glad you posted it here. thanks.

Surprised me too!

Great Read!    

I think we hunters ourselves have helped our image. Years back, there was the image of the rifle hunter who drank way too much the night before, trespassed and did anything to "get his buck", including road hunting, chasing with snowmobiles, jacklighting, anything.

Now, more and more hunters are seen as conservationists and stewards of the resource who give far more than they take vs being mere selfish consumers of the resource who don't give anything back other than their tag fee.

Years back, a deer hunter was often judged by his peers by how many deer he killed. Now, more deer hunters are being judged by the deer they could have killed, but didn't, for whatever reason. Big difference and I think that's seeping out into the general public.

People are fools.  They speak aloud about that which they have no knowledge and believe themselves to be true.  

The article is, in my thoughts well written and true.  Unfortunately, the follow up blogs reflect a lot of misinformation.

Yes, the times are changing.  Are we up to making them better, or staying the same ?

ChuckC

I'll be forwarding this one... for sure.

You are right Chuck,  It is disheartening to read all the misinformed people's comments who actually beleive the garbage they post.

Not to start a debate or take away here but it always amazes me the people who dont understand that death is a part of life.  weather you kill a vegetable or a deer, its the same in the end.  Often you do both inadvertantly at the same time.  

It is human's Unhealthy Obsession with living as long as possible transposed to the animal world that I dont understand. Its why Health Care is way out of whack. Its why people take 30 pills every day when the initially went in for a runny nose.  So they take one pill for the nose and 29 for side effects.

This is a  well written article.  It hits the nail on the head. The only people who cant understand where the writer is coming from have never hunted or provided in their life.  I only hope more of the same get published through these other venues. Maybe the next generation of non hunters will not be so off base.

A friend of mine, now deceased, was head of California Fish and Game 40 years ago.  He got a lot of complaints about deer foraging through people's shrubbery in Marin county.  For those of you not familiar with the particulars of California, Marin county is the bedroom community just to the north of San Francisco where everything you imagine about California is true.  So he proposed an archery deer season in Marin county to deal with the problem. Well, you would think he had proposed an open season on schoolchildren.  Condoms were proposed for the deer, and various other impractical solutions, as a result of which the deer continued to forage on shrubbery.

Years later, when I was visiting friends in Marin county, who knew I was a bowhunter, but knew nothing about hunting themselves, they asked me if I would like to shoot a few of the deer who were browsing on their shrubbery through their kitchen window.  I explained to them that deer that are shot with arrows don't usually drop dead on the spot, but have a tendency to run into neighbors' yards and drop dead there, which could prove embarrassing, so the deer continued to browse unabated.

I agree about the part of a deer running to a neighbors yard to drop dead.  Even here in Nevada with plenty of hunters around, the lefty crowd from California is numerous enough to prevent hunting in town. A couple of years back a bowhunter did put an arrow in a buck, which collapsed a little ways away in the front yard of an anti-hunter.  Caused a huge uproar in the local paper, mostly as the California crowd discovered that bow hunting in the city was actually legal.

So, hunting is seriously frowned on in town, and the local/ever exapanding deer herd, flocks of Canadas and Mallards go unmolested. At my wifes work there's a three point Mulie that's gotten tame enough to touch!

This brings to mind an earlier post about "not only Trad Gangers read our forums.

If we can control our impulses to lash out at the "idiots", or throw up from their "pure stupidity", we can, perhaps, educate those are just ignorant of our contribution to the health of our wild game population.

Nothing is going to change the minds of the die-hard HSUS members, but I think there are large numbers of neutral people who only hear convincing arguments from the organized anti-hunters. If we come across as intelligent human beings who simply have more direct exposure to nature and understand better the complex issues of herd management, it may help our cause far more than direct confrontation.

This article is very well balanced and generally casts hunters and especially bowhunters in a positive light and it will be widely read by more non hunters than hunters, is my guess. Great image creation from a non hunting magazine. Let's hope this trend continues.
I had a depredation permit for hogs in a populated area a few years ago but decided to quit using it simply because I did not want an animal dying in someone's backyard or driveway. I prefer to do my hunting as far away from people as possible and leave the urban removal of animals to others. By the time these animals become 'pests' they are too tame for my liking anyway.