LETTER: Man urges end to hunting

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November 13, 2009

Anonymous The News and Tribune Fri Nov 13, 2009, 12:20 AM EST

Hunting is an American tradition whose time has come to pass. About 13 million people hunt, and of those, only about 2 percent do it because they need the food. The rest hunt simply because they like to kill something.

Of course, you won’t find many who will confess to this, so they feel obligated to provide some sort of reason, which is usually, in the case of deer, to cull the herd to prevent starvation because of overpopulation, even though no data exists to show how many deer can be sustained in a human, suburban environment.

Yet, hunting fails to reduce the deer population because trophy hunters target the antlered bucks so that they can mount their heads, which means that the surviving bucks mate with the surviving does and the result is usually twins.

However, if a perceived overpopulation of deer were to cause a problem, the wildlife contraceptive PZP — Porcine Zona Pellucida — has proven effective in preventing pregnancy in does. And it is worth mentioning that hunters also target the deers predators for the sole purpose of taxidermy.

Another “reason” for hunting is to “feed the hungry,” even though there are plenty of food banks to which people donate canned foods.

Hunters kill more than 200 million wildlife of all kinds plus farm and domestic animals every year, all in the name of recreation. They defend this action by saying that the fees they pay go toward conservation and wildlife habitat programs, however the actions of wildlife agencies is not to protect the animals but to propagate species for hunters to shoot. They are out to conserve hunting, not wildlife.

We must oppose this outdated tradition, no matter how deeply rooted in the notion of manhood and surrounded by a halo. And hopefully, one day, we will reach a point when hunting, the pleasure of killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration.

— James Wilson, Speed

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