The Hog Blog

I’ve been involved with debates regarding the pros and cons of hunting for almost as long as I’ve been on the Internet.  I believe I got my first AOL account in 1988 or ‘89, and was embroiled in the conversation almost immediately after.  I was also involved in those conversations on campus, and, in fact, wrote my senior thesis on the defensibility of hunting. 

The point is, there really doesn’t seem to be any new direction to take the conversation.  It’s all been said, so to speak. 

But I apparently can’t stop myself from saying it again… and again… and such has been the case in the discussion over at the KQED blogs site, in response to the Quest hog hunting episode.  If you’re at all interested in seeing how such a discussion can go, you ought to check it out.  Chip in if you feel the need, but please read what’s been said already, and consider what you’re about to say in light of the current conversation.  There’s a lot to learn from M. Figgis’s comments, and her(?) attitude toward hunters.  This is not unusual. 

When an anti is confronted with hunters who challenge the stereotype, they still tend to lump all OTHER hunters into the previous category.  It’s an uphill battle for those of us who want to show that WE are the norm, and the slobs, jerks, and poachers are the exceptions. 

Or are they? 

Seriously, I think M. Figgis makes some interesting points.  I’ve said before that non-hunters and antis will eventually see through the fascade of uber-ethics.  When we make ourselves out to be paragons of “ethics”, someone is bound to challenge the rhetoric with reality.  Honesty goes a lot further than window-dressing.

Thanks a lot, Holly!  It was all because of your post, and the trouble you had getting your comments approved on Michael Markarian’s Huffington Post blog. 

I had to go over there and try to get my own two cents published.  Of course, mine went right on up there, and I got challenged (politely and respectfully), and now here I am embroiled in the same old debate I’ve been having for a couple of decades now… just on a whole new podium. 

It’s a real challenge making a reasonable reply in 250 words or less, and I hope I don’t end up looking like a fool.  If I do though, I’m still blaming Holly.  If she hadn’t posted about Markarian’s blog, I’d never have even gone over there in the first place!

That was a tough title to write.  I wanted to make it snappy, but it also had to tell you what this bit was about, right?  Maybe I failed on both counts, but who cares?  Onward and upward.

A week or two ago I posted my response to an article that appeared in Newsweek.  If you don’t feel like clicking that link to go back and see what it was all about, here it is in a nutshell:

The Newsweek article made a strong implication that hunting, and specifically trophy hunting, was causing a decline in the average size of the hunted species.  The article proceeded to offer several examples which, on the surface, appeared to support the thesis.  In my response, I deconstructed the argument, pointing out that the data is skewed and based on totally unconnected situations.  The populations in question were largely isolated, and the “hunting” in question was generally uncontrolled poaching.

Anyway, my argument stated that the article was misleading and erroneous, and that it appeared that it was pushing an anti-hunting agenda.  I added the caveat that this is mostly my own, educated opinion. 

So imagine my joy when I saw that none other than Dr Valerius Geist responded in kind to the article (actually a couple of articles in different publications, including this one).  While he made a few more erudite points, he validated my own opinion that it appears that there is an agenda at work here.  Tom Remington, at the Black Bear Blog was able to get permission to reprint the total of  Dr. Geist’s rejoinder.  It’s definitely worth a read.

See the things that happen while I’m on the road?  I was so busy with the SHOT Show that this one almost slipped right by!

I’ve always kind of enjoyed the articles in Newsweek magazine.  While there’s a detectable tilt to the left, the publication always seems to manage some semblance of balance on most issues.  I’ve got to say, though, that I can’t remember ever seeing an issue with a positive word on guns or hunting.  And this latest issue is no exception.

“Gracing” the pages of this week’s issue is an article titled, It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny: How Hunting is Driving Evolution in Reverse.  The author, Lily Huang, goes to some lengths to argue that hunters, through our pursuit of the biggest and best specimens are causing species to evolve less “desirable” animals. 

Researchers describe what’s happening as none other than the selection process that Darwin made famous: the fittest of a species survive to reproduce and pass along their traits to succeeding generations, while the traits of the unfit gradually disappear. Selective hunting—picking out individuals with the best horns or antlers, or the largest piece of hide—works in reverse: the evolutionary loser is not the small and defenseless, but the biggest and best-equipped to win mates or fend off attackers.

Now those of us who’ve been in the anti vs. pro hunting debates for a while have heard all of this before.  It’s been pretty well discredited, so I was actually surprised to see it reappear… especially in a magazine like Newsweek.  We were told, over and over again that, “hunters only kill the best animals and that weakens the herd.” 

This flies in the face of the fact that most hunters, while they’d gladly take a real “trophy” animal, usually take whatever legal specimen they can kill.  The percentage of “trophy” animals taken in any given season is pretty low… although it appears to be increasing of late… in contrast to the argument.  Hunters seem to be entering more and bigger animals into the record books every season.  It’s also a fact that by the time most big game species have reached trophy status, they’ve spread their genetics across the herd for at least a few generations, and their offspring have begun to do the same.  It’s pretty hard logic to argue with, even for those of us like myself who are not wildlife biologists or geneticists. 

So anyway, when I was told about the article, I started to blow it off… but then decided to give it a read to see if it shed new light on an old subject.  I’m always ready to be enlightened, and maybe this would be the article that would do it.

It didn’t.

First of all, the “evidence” in the article was pretty scattered and largely based on species that are heavily poached and in other countries, as opposed to species that are hunted under wildlife management principles such as those in place in the US.  This includes the Australian red kanagaroo, killed by poachers for leather, and the elephants killed for ivory, as well as an isolated population of bighorn sheep in Quebec.  The author mentions other game animals, such as elk, but offers no research or statistics to support the argument that “trophy” animals are diminishing. 

So let’s start with the premise.  If a particular trait causes unusually high rates of death in a species, then that trait will eventually disappear as animals without the trait are more successful at breeding.  That sort of makes sense, if you buy into the idea of evolution and natural selection (which I do, generally).  The case of the tuskless elephants seems to make a compelling argument that there is something, at least, to this. 

Tusks used to make elephants fitter, as a weapon or a tool in foraging—until ivory became a precious commodity and having tusks got you killed. Then tuskless elephants, products of a genetic fluke, became the more consistent breeders and grew from around 2 percent among African elephants to more than 38 percent in one Zambian population, and 98 percent in a South African one. In Asia, where female elephants don’t have tusks to begin with, the proportion of tuskless elephants has more than doubled, to more than 90 percent in Sri Lanka.

So something is going on there, but is the change the result of hunting (poaching), or are there other causes.  The big problem is that nobody knows, for sure.  The kind of research to support this kind of theory simply doesn’t yet exist because it’s impossible to create control groups or measure any kind of relative data.  The information is largely circumstantial, and Huang does go so far as to admit that later in the article.  The jury is out.  The evidence is not anywhere near conclusive or widespread.  But even if it is proven that the change is caused by the excessive harvest of animals with large tusks, it’s critical to note that this is illegal and unmanaged hunting. 

So why then, did Newsweek and the author decide to publish this article as a damning assault on hunting?  If this were a court of law, they’d be bounced out on their ears.  In a debate class, they’d get heckled off-stage and get a big, fat “F” for their efforts.  But a national news magazine sees fit to publish it? 

There is not any evidence supporting an argument that trophy hunting practices are having any kind of negative effect on big game populations.  In fact, as most wildlife biologists have learned, the biggest problems are occurring for the opposite reason… too many hunters are shooting young, under-developed males from the breeding pool.  While I don’t completely agree with QDMA programs on public land, it is clear that encouraging hunters to take only mature males and more females is allowing more young males to grow to “trophy” status. 

Likewise with elk, it’s a pretty easy argument to make that any perceived dearth of trophy bulls on public land is the result of un-selective harvest of younger bulls.  The youngsters, four and five-point animals, tend to bear the brunt of the slaughter during the season.  The ones that escape, or those that live in the back of beyond where the average hunter never treads are doing just fine.  You’ll see them every year on the feedlots after the hunting season is over.  Trophy animals are also alive and well on private and limited entry areas, or at least as well as they can be due to various environmental factors (drought, severe winters, etc.). 

You can pretty much run the same argument across the gamut of North American big game.  Trophy hunting, for all the hype, isn’t having much of an effect on the species.  Most hunters are not trophy hunters, and most hunters don’t harvest the best specimens from their areas.  The most widely pursued game species are doing fine, in some cases too well, despite the hunting pressure.  I can’t speak so much for other countries like Africa, where unmanaged areas are being decimated by poaching, not only of trophy animals but of all animals.  The managed areas are a whole different picture, and incomparable to anything we have in the States (with the possible exception of Texas). 

To wrap this up, I think my biggest problem is in the way the article is focused on “hunting”, as opposed to poaching and/or poor game management.  It’s also an issue to me that the whole piece is based on shaky theory derived from isolated populations of animals and unrelated data points… and it simply doesn’t hold up on a large scale.   Maybe the majority of what I “know” about the issue is anecdotal and I have stated before that I’m not an expert.  But when even the real experts in the article state, clearly, that the whole thing is really just a rough theory…  it smacks of agenda pushing on the part of the magazine and the author. 

It is piss-poor journalism at best, and a poorly disguised anti-hunting propaganda piece at worst.  You choose for yourselves.

Wow. 

I just spent the last half-hour listening to KQED Forum, an hour-long NPR program here locally in which the host, Michael Krasny interviews a handful of “experts” and invites listeners to call or email their comments.  I wasn’t able to tune in for the first half of the show, but I heard enough in 30 minutes to get a pretty good feel for what I missed. 

The topic today was, “The Future of Hunting.”  On the panel were Doug Updike, a senior biologist from CA DFG, Jim Posowitz, Executive Director at Orion, The Hunters’ Institute, and Nicole Paquette, senior vice president and general counsel for Born Free USA (an animal rights/welfare organization).

In a nutshell, there wasn’t a lot of new stuff here.  Updike and Posowitz kept coming back to the conservation ethic and the fact that there’s more to hunting than wholesale slaughter of wildlife.  They addressed the facts that hunters are a necessary part of the ecological whole.   While most of the pro-hunting callers offered little earthshattering insight, there were several self-identified “liberals” who called in to announce that they, too, are hunters.  I suppose that’s a challenge to some stereotypes, and for that I’m grateful.  I was also grateful that while some pro-hunting callers fell back on standard rhetoric, all of them came across as even and logical.  Unless I missed something in the early part of the program, there was no mudslinging or name-calling. 

Meanwhile Paquette was somewhere off in a Utopian vision in which humans are somehow supposed to be spectators to nature, but not direct participants.  Her ideal is that wildlife should live in its “natural setting”, and hunters shouldn’t intrude on that.  Of course, it’s OK for predators to kill animals, or for them to die of old age and disease, but apparently in her world view, hunters are not predators… or even part of “nature”.  She even thinks it fine, or even preferable, that humans get our meat from supermarkets rather than going into the wild to kill our own. 

I mean, really, I wanted to keep an open mind and hear the arguments out, but she spoke from so far outside of reality that I simply couldn’t take anything she said seriously.  I mean, if this is what she truly believes, then her entire position totally ignores every other impact of human existance… not only hunting, but our very status as cohabitants in the ecosystem. 

Most of the anti-hunting callers were, like the pro-hunters, quite respectful on a personal level, but awfully reliant on generalizations and over-used rhetorical themes such as,  “Why can’t hunters enjoy nature without ‘assassinating it?”  or, “How can you call hunting a ’sport’?  It’s totally unfair!”

Only one caller, a hunter named, “Josh”, was willing to get down to the true sticking point that gives anti-hunters so much grief, and trips up the hunters as well… the fact of death.  Death is a part of hunting, but it is a part of life.  As he explained, the hunter does not generally enjoy causing death, but understands very clearly that it’s required… just as the hunter will be required to die at some point as well. 

Everyone else, particulary Posowitz, avoided the question that entangles hunters every time… “How can you enjoy killing things?” 

Posowitz glossed it over by rote, noting that “hunting isn’t just about killing…etc.,” and then quickly going back to the conservation ethic. 

Of course Paquette immediately pounced on the opening, saying something along the lines of, “you see how uncomfortable he is about it?  He changed the subject!”

I’ve mentioned this before, but why avoid answering that question?  Is it just too hard to put into words that enjoying hunting isn’t quite the same as enjoying killing, even though killing is a necessary part of hunting?  Is it a subconscious anthropomorphosis that we can’t get past equating killing an animal with killing a person?  Or is it the fear of our own deaths that makes it so difficult to explain giving death to something else? 

First of all, of course hunters are uncomfortable with the idea of killing.  It’s a complex mixture of emotions, and anyone who feels only  joy, or worse, who feels nothing when he kills is certainly an anomaly.  But there’s nothing wrong with expressing the conflicting feelings of the kill.. the joy, the excitement, the dread and the sorrow.

Do I enjoy killing things?  Yes, when I am hunting and I am successful, I enjoy it a great deal.  Do I enjoy it because I’ve caused death to a living thing?  No.  Of course not.  I enjoy it because, as a predator, this time I have prevailed.  I will eat fresh, healthy meat.  I enjoy it not because I don’t respect the sanctity of life, but because the life I have taken will now give me life.  Symbolically, I have ensured my own survival, and that of my family… and the fact that I could go to the store and buy meat that someone else has raised and killed for me is irrelevant.   

Anyway, I may have digressed a little… back to the show.  

I tried calling in once, but after a busy-signal, I realized that I have never been very good at that kind of extemporaneous speaking, and usually end up sounding quite foolish.  I decided instead to send an email to the program, expressing some of my thoughts.  Unfortunately, it probably arrived too late to be read on the air. 

At the end of the show, while I wasn’t especially impressed by the quality of the discussion (nothing particularly enlightening or opinion altering on either side), I was impressed that Krasny appeared actually benign… or even positive… toward the pro-hunting side of the discussion.  Of course, that couldn’t have been hard faced with Paquette’s fantasy-land vision of the human-nature relationship. 

As always, the show ended without anyone challenging the anti-hunters on what I think is the key question.  How is legal, sport-hunting harmful to the resource, the environment, or the participants?   Quantify your answer.

You can download an MP3 of the show now, at the KQED website.  It’s worth a listen, if you’ve got an hour to kill.

 

Due to the extent of this response, I felt it better to include as a new post rather than an extended comment.  Note the original post for reference.

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Why the resistance to calling a spade a spade, and facing up to the fact that what we do is sport hunting… hunting for sport?  To borrow from Arthur’s original “Why I Hunt” challenge post (which is where this is all started, of course), he quoted a really eloquent statement from a Mr. Shane Mahoney.

“The task at hand is to articulate the relevance of hunting; not its correctness, nor its practical service to human kind. Rationalizing the mythology is both a tactical error and a diminishment of pride. Lies and excuses usually are.”

Why the squeamishness with being honest about what we’re doing out there? 

Read the rest of this entry »

I received another comment from an anti-hunter yesterday.  It was loaded with filthy language and curses, so I deleted it as I will do with any such comment to this blog.  And all would have been well, and maybe should have been, but it just caught a nerve somewhere and I couldn’t let it go.

In short, amidst the pre-teen cursewords, the writer took me and all hunters to task with the same old cliches… heartless, blood-thirsty, and cruel.  The comment closed with another cliche, the wish that “someone” would hunt, kill, and skin us like we do the poor animals we terrorize.  It was really sort of cartoonish, and at first all I could do was shake my head.

But I sat around thinking today, and with nothing better to do, scribbled down this rejoinder.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been remiss in keeping up with all this stuff that has been going on in Pennsylvania, so if you haven’t already seen this elsewhere, here’s the story in brief.

Johnna Seeton of the Pennsylvania Legislative Animal Network (and an officer of the Humane Society “police”) brought a suit against the State of Pennsylvania in 2004, alleging that the PA Game Commission failed to enforce game code violations at Tioga Boar Hunting Preserve (a high-fence operation).  The State responded that the animals in game preserves are not “game animals” under state law, and as such, the Commission had no authority to regulate the hunting practices or enforce game codes there. 

Well, it looks like the PA Supreme Court has now designated the wild boar as game animals, and placed responsibility for their regulation and management on the PA Game Commission.  You can read more detail about this in the PA Morning Call.

This opens a whole can of worms for the state and hunters.  Previously, since the boar was not considered a game animal, hunters were permitted (and encouraged) to kill them in the wild any time they were encountered.  Under the new designation, the boar will have “Protected” status, since no hunting season or regulations address them.  While escapes are fairly limited, wild boar reproduce rapidly in the wild, and a significant population can grow up in a relatively short time.  They are destructive to habitat, farm crops, and potentially a health threat to domesticated hogs.  With the new designation and no regulations in place to manage them, this is a potentially huge problem for Pennsylvania. 

There’s no secret that Seeton’s intent is to undermine and shut down high fence hunting in Pennsylvania.  She’s said so herself.  But like so many other misguided animal rights battles, the downrange results of her actions pose a big threat to the environment and native species she claims to protect.  Fortunately, the Game Commission is moving quickly to close the gaps and allow hunters to continue to shoot the invasive animals.  The longer term impacts on hunting preserves in PA remains to be seen. 

Now, for my opinion… this whole fiasco need not turn out to be bad thing.  From what I’ve read, the high fence ranches basically operated in a legal black hole… since there didn’t appear to be any real regulation on the practices inside their fences (someone correct me if I’m wrong).   No one seems to know what law enforcement authority has jurisdiction inside their walls.  I don’t know anything about any of the businesses there, and for all I know they were all operating above board and with good ethics.  But I have to agree with the idea that someone needs to have authority and regulatory control in order to avoid the kinds of abuses that foul the nest for high fence operations around the country… whether it’s the Game Commission, State Animal Control, or some other office specially created for the purpose.  High Fence ranches are not for everybody, but they are a legitimate business and should be permitted to operate just like any other legitimate business.  Ms. Seeton’s aims to shut them down should be thwarted, but perhaps she has exposed a problem that does need to be addressed. 

You can read more and comment about this issue at Dave Hurteau’s Field and Stream Field Notes blog. 

In my Internet rambles the other day, I came across this blog site and a post condemning “canned hunting“.  (Edited to add:  I think I actually stumbled onto this from a link on the Hunting Pressure blog, one of the newer additions to my blog roll.)  After adding a couple of my own responses to the comments (I used my own name), I thought that maybe some of you might like to go take a look, and add your own two cents’ worth… pro or con.

Now, if you haven’t jumped out already, I’m only gonna offer a little bit of my own perspective here.  My response in the other blog’s comments repeats much of it. 

Canned hunts as they are so often portrayed in the media and by anti-hunters are a blight on the sport of hunting.  This includes the example described in the aforementioned blog, where a leopard is drugged, then released from a cage for the “hunter” to shoot.  Most states have outlawed this kind of behavior, and rightly so.  Drugging the animal, or shooting it in an enclosure with no chance of escape is pretty ugly stuff… although I must say that it’s no uglier than the commercial slaughterhouse. 

What is unfortunate is the way the term “canned hunt” is so loosely and inaccurately applied to so many hunting practices, from game ranch operations to shoot-em-in-the-cage parties.  

The stereotype is perpetuated by the anti-hunters, because they recognize what a divisive issue it is, even in the hunting community.  Unfortunately, the biggest reason for this division is a lack of knowledge about what game ranches really are, versus what a true “canned hunt” is.  Most hunters, when asked, respond with disdain that they’d never hunt a game ranch, even though they’ve never even seen one… much less tried hunting on one.  The problem is further complicated by this “my ethics are better than your ethics” attitude that seems so rife in our community (crossbow vs vertical bow, inline vs. exposed hammer muzzleloaders, etc.).

Hunters may not all find game ranch hunting to be their cup of tea, but let’s think about this for a moment.  Many of the same folks who decry high fence hunts are still perfectly happy to sit in a tree stand over a food plot or bait pile.  Others will hunt their animals driven by hounds (human or canine) from their beds and hiding places.  Yet others think nothing of sniping from hundreds of yards away as the animal wanders oblivious to their presence. 

So come on, where DO you draw the line? 

Personally, I’ll go on the record that I have no problem with someone who chooses to hunt and kill inside a high-fence operation or game ranch, as long as the animals on the place are treated humanely (not drugged, caged, or artificially stimulated “dangerous game”).  I see ranched game animals as just another form of livestock, and as long as they are humanely despatched, then I don’t see any issue with it. 

At the same time, I don’t put much stock in “trophy” animals taken from enclosures.    Sure, they can be great specimens and worth admiring for that.  I really enjoy the skins and horns from my Texas exotics.  They look cool, and the skins are wonderful coverings on my office chair.  The horns from my blackbuck are a great conversation piece, but I don’t try to fool anyone that taking them was any great feat.

I do take issue with the individuals who artificially inflate their own egos with tales of prowess inside a high fence… well, to me they’re buffoons.  But then, the world is full of buffoons in all fields of endeavour.  What’s one more?

OK, so despite my oft-repeated support for getting lead ammo out of the condor range (and out of the environment altogether), the State Fish and Game Commission has gone over the top by adding rimfire ammunition to the list of banned ammo in the Condor range. 

This article in the Sacramento Bee, written by a reporter who obviously has no clue about hunting or the condor issue, describes the most recent action by the commission.  Unfortunately, the article contains several innacuracies, including the following totally false and misleading comment:

The endangered condor was nearly driven to extinction by hunting and the effects of another man-made toxin, the pesticide DDT. With those risks diminished, a leading threat to its survival today is lead ammunition.

First of all, while a lot of folks did shoot condors out of ignorance, it wasn’t hunting.  Secondly, a big reason for the decline of the condor is that its ecological niche, cleaning up the carcasses of large mammals disappeared with the near extinction of tule elk, and the extirpation of the grizzly in CA.  The demise of the whale population, followed by the death of the whaling industry also removed another critical food source. 

The fact is that only a very few condor deaths are possibly attributable to the ingestion of lead, and there is, as yet, NO proof that the lead that killed them came from hunters’ bullets.  The very research used by the lead-ban advocates admits that there’s no verifiable correlation… although there is, certainly, a reasonable possibility that some of the lead did come from ammunition, it’s hardly a “major cause” of condor mortality. 

The condor researchers have also shown that condors aren’t eating small game or upland bird carcasses.  Lead from rimfires and shotgun shells does not pose a threat to condors. 

Secondly, another reason that the initial plan excepted rimfires from the ban is that there is no non-toxic alternative for rimfire ammunition… so including this ammunition in the ban is essentially a ban on an entire class of firearms in this zone. 

In the long run, I definitely agree that lead needs to phase out of our ammo boxes, but banning it all at once under the false pretense of “saving the condor” is a slap in the face to all hunters.  This is wrong, and stinks of an anti-hunting agenda (despite my early resistance to conspiracy theory). 

It’s critical here for sportsmen to stand up and speak out.  Make our voices heard in Sacramento!  Get on the phone, write letters and emails, and don’t let up.   Outdoor bloggers need to get on this too, both in CA and outside of the state. 

THIS IS A CALL TO ACTION!