Expert: Steven L. Ashe - 9/12/2006

Question
Why is it a good reason to support hunting besides it tastes good and it helps with population? Also why is it a good reason not to support hunting?

Answer
Hunting is one of the few modern wildlife population control methods that works. The vast majority of natural predators are gone. Man is the only predator who, in many parts of America, still takes wild game to eat. In harvesting wild game, the hunter contributes to the continuation of free wildlife in many ways. First, the hunter does a great service in holding down the numbers of wild game, which otherwise would explode in numbers and as we know from studying history, would experience a great, tragic die-off because of over population problems. The die-offs caused by over population create far more suffering in the animal world then does quick death resulting from fair chase hunting. Secondly, hunting promotes the continued existence of wildlife through taxes and stamps that must be purchased by the hunter, and through the sale of firearms, ammo and all accessories attached to hunting. The natural resouces taxes collected through all of these sales go toward maintaining habitat and other expenditures connected to wildlife management. Antihunters contribute little or nothing toward the continued existence of wild animals that they claim to love. When I hear antihunters say that they love to observe wild game animals, I want to tell them that they have hunters to thank for the privilege of being able to view wild game at all! Only through funding paid for by hunters and other outdoorsmen, has wildlife survived, especially in the lower forty eight states.
On many occasions, I have hunted off of a cattle ranch in Montana. I take one mule deer and one pronghorn antelope during this hunt. It is very important to me to make quick, clean kills, because I love all wildlife. While I am on this ranch, hunting, several thousand cows are brought in from the range, most having calves. The calves are separated and begin to cry for their mothers. The mother cows cry out for their babies. This goes on for a number of nights and days, until the huge dirty trucks arrive to take the calves to feed lots. The cows are examined and those found not be pregnant are also loaded for slaughter. The trucks go great distances, with no facilities to water or feed the calves and barren cows, while en route. After much suffering and hardship, the calves and cows are brutally butchered. Some are lifted by meat hooks and skinned while still alive. Finally the lovely red meat arrives in your super market, neatly packaged in white trays and covered by plastic sheeting. You cannot see the suffering that the animal went through in order to put steak on your table. My deer and my pronghorn also come to my table, but I pride myself in knowing that my animals felt little or nothing before going into deep shock and dying from my properly place bullet. I took my surgeon friend hunting deer. When he made a heart shot on a buck and the animal went down, I walked to the kill with him. We sat, saying nothing for a short period of time. We each marvelled at the fine condition of the buck and how even though we were the first humans to touch the animal, he appeared as if he had been groomed. I then asked my doctor friend what pain the buck may have suffered. Without hesitation he replied that such a shot to the heart and lung areas would bring on deep shock within fifteen seconds and that the animal felt only a minor sting, during those fifteen seconds. Then, he said, the animal's entire system would begin rapidly closing down and he would be dead within one minute. Little or no suffering! He and I had spent hours at the range before that hunt. We prepared to make a quick, killing shot. It was not by accident that his first bullet cleanly killed the buck. We work hard to achieve just those results.
Why not to support fair chase hunting? I can find no reason to do that. For me, hunting is a family tradition that goes back for centuries. My ancestors settled on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the early 1600s. They were all farmers, hunters and fishermen. They never questioned
whether they should use the bounty of the land and sea that was provided for them by our Maker. They simply learned to hunt and to bring home food for the table. I do not hunt to subsist. I hunt to restore my soul and to be one with nature. Hunting is not killing. Hunting is the one outlet that I still have available to get back to my roots. This year, I will shell out over $4000 for the privilege of five days of hunting in the great west. I will endeavor to kill one mature male deer and one mature male pronghorn. Should I not be successful, I will not count the hunt as failure. At the end of every hunt, I am filled with the joy of having experienced communion with nature. In this modern form of hunting, there is no chance that any specie of game will be made extinct due to hunting. In fact, the vast herds that are available for hunting are there because of the great work done by sportsmen who came before me. The large amount of money that I have paid to get my license is, for me, money well spent, because I know that the state plows much of that
license money into promoting the welfare of the animals that I love.
Too many people in this world spend too much time trying to cause other folks to stop doing what they have been doing for generations. I really do not care what those who's feet seldom leave concrete have to say about hunting. When I have had a chance to verbally cross swords with antihunters, I have learned that few, if any of them, have a clue what it is to commune with nature.