Thoughts on the anti-hunting movement

[RockinU]

Meh, I think it'll be zombies...

 

[Ben Lamb]

 

[BrentD]

The middle ground here is conserving wildlife habitat and increasing the productivity of marginal habitats on public and private lands. It's in adopting policies that don't further stress our ecological systems, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels & increase our ability to generate power without increasing land use to do so (looking at you, industrial scale solar & wind as well as O&G). Protecting what's left is vital to ensuring that there will be a starting point when we get through this extinction level event we're just getting started on.

Ben, I think this is, at best, a delaying game, albeit the other side of the coin, which is more of what we have done as species for centuries. But time is catching up to that game.

As for human population growth, you can mitigate and reduce that through education, increased income levels, free contraceptives & better sex ed programs worldwide.

Keeping in mind that such mitigation generally involves hugely increased consumption, among other things.

Or, we could go with the easy route & invoke Thanos' solution.

No clue what that is, but i don't see the list you provided as being very viable. The 1st world countries, for all their ed, income, safe sex, etc, are the big consumers of resources and everything else. The balance does not seem favorable.

In the past, we'd have the plague come in and help us out. Like any organism that reaches beyond carrying capacity, disease levels the playing field. So maybe I should thank the anti-vaccers & support the GOP's ice floe medical plan.

Ben, have you ever seen the blip that plague puts in human populations, graphically? I can provide that. Not much of anything has significantly slowed population growth of Homo sapiens.

 

[MTGomer]

Why worry about urbanization? They vote for the party of the public land hunter just like ‘we’ do and the party of the public land Hunter has our back.

 

[88man]

Curious why anyone is against catch and release or more important to this thread why it is something to give up? Is catch and keep a better practice?

Also, this thread best illustrates the concern of the op. We can't agree on much of anything but those that are opposed to hunting are unified in taking anything they can get and well funded. Conversely we seem very content in giving up things we don't agree with. This usually depends on where we were raised more so than how we were raised. Dogs, bait, drives, and trophy tags all have regional aspects. It is this willingness to sacrifice another hunters heritage to the other side who is happy to take anything that will eventually lose it all. I know this isn't a popular thought on this thread but I haven't seen anything written that shows how it is wrong. I hope I am though.

In regards to the catch and release being a bad thing > I'm just guessing its a liberal far left thing man about living off the land. Their thoughts are you should only view wildlife not touch it. If you touch it you eat it. LOL
When Randy comes forward and says catch and release fishing is a bad thing I don't know what Ill think.

 

[88man]

In 1970, the population of the United States was roughly 205 million people. The 2010 census found 308 million. Extrapolating a 10% growth in population (which seems to be about what we grwo each census), we can look at 330-350 million people living in this nation. WOrldwide, the population has gone from 3.7 billion to 7.5 billion now. That's double what it was.

All of those people take up resources: Oil & Gas, Coal, timber, land for housing, monoculture farming, etc. We're using up what land we have while trashing what's left through climate change, etc. We're destroying the places we used to protect for wildlife, because someone wants to make some cash quickly. We're fighting for a piece of a declining pie, rather than trying to bake a bigger pie.

Killing predators to try and increase ungulates is treating the symptom of the disease, and ignoring the root cause. We're using up our wildlife habitat and we're doing next to nothing to replace or replenish it. We celebrate the opening of the last few wildlife refuges for hunting opportunity without questioning why we have less opportunity elsewhere. We push for more outdoor recreation without thinking about how it affects the migration and holding patterns of wildlife.

We encourage oil and gas development on prime wildlife habitat while gleefully popping off about reducing regulations that hindered profits.

But if we just kill off the wolves, bears and lions, then it'll be ok, because there will be a buck or bull that I may be able to shoot before we lose it all.

Ben, what about when predator #s get out of balance like wolves east & south of the park. Pretty dame hard to find a moose anymore. What is the root cause of the moose decline in north west wyoming

 

[Deleted member 28227]

In regards to the catch and release being a bad thing > I'm just guessing its a liberal far left thing man about living off the land. Their thoughts are you should only view wildlife not touch it. If you touch it you eat it. LOL
When Randy comes forward and says catch and release fishing is a bad thing I don't know what Ill think.

You have that totally flipped, non-consumptive users very much prefer catch and release, case in point sytes favorite punching bag Patagonia produces fishing gear but is against predator hunting. Patagonia is very much an advocate of catch and release, the only people who I have every heard talk about the negatives of catch and release are people like Steven Rinella, who do a lot of fishing and eat a lot of fish. On the surface catch and release seems great, but like everything it's complicated.

 

[noharleyyet]

As per usual someone asks for the time and we get a symposium on how to make the watch...

 

[shootbrownelk]

My fear tends to be more in line of what happened with the grizzly hunt in Wyoming. A group of people went to a specific judge they knew would rule in their favor in a different state I might add and closed the hunt down. That scares me. The other thing is the whole power of social media. It sickens me that a few people can basically bully companies/people/organizations into bending to their whims no matter if the majority of people agree with them or not. Let’s face it, while there are plenty of people/groups/etc promoting hunting and conservation on social media, with the demographics of the normal hunter, we are not going to win a battle fought on social media.

I'm still trying to understand how a Judge in Montana can stop a legal hunt in Wyoming. The Judge the anti's selected in Montana was an Obama appointee.....figures.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Ben, what about when predator #s get out of balance like wolves east & south of the park. Pretty dame hard to find a moose anymore. What is the root cause of the moose decline in north west Wyoming

It's complicated on Moose. THere's a growing body of research that shows warmer winters are leading to heavier parasite loads (ticks), weakening moose and causing fewer births as well as leading to higher winter mortality from a variety of issues, but the main one being increased vulnerability due to deteriorating winter readiness.

Does that mean more moose will be eaten by bears, wolves & lions? Yes. Does that mean that lions, wolves and bears are causing the crash in populations? No.

The research is showing similar results regarding ticks & brain worms across the US - both in wolf areas and outside of them.

 

[----]

It's complicated on Moose. THere's a growing body of research that shows warmer winters are leading to heavier parasite loads (ticks), weakening moose and causing fewer births as well as leading to higher winter mortality from a variety of issues, but the main one being increased vulnerability due to deteriorating winter readiness.

Does that mean more moose will be eaten by bears, wolves & lions? Yes. Does that mean that lions, wolves and bears are causing the crash in populations? No.

The research is showing similar results regarding ticks & brain worms across the US - both in wolf areas and outside of them.

Have a link to the tick study Ben?

I'm really only familiar with the FWP/DeCesare study (http://fwp.mt.gov/fishAndWildlife/diseasesAndResearch/research/moose/populationsMonitoring/), and last update I heard on that one was that the population dealing with heavy tick numbers was actually growing, while the populations that were dealing with predation and arterial worms were declining.

It really seems like each population of moose has their own issues, and it's not one widespread problem.

 

[88man]

It's complicated on Moose. THere's a growing body of research that shows warmer winters are leading to heavier parasite loads (ticks), weakening moose and causing fewer births as well as leading to higher winter mortality from a variety of issues, but the main one being increased vulnerability due to deteriorating winter readiness.

Does that mean more moose will be eaten by bears, wolves & lions? Yes. Does that mean that lions, wolves and bears are causing the crash in populations? No.

The research is showing similar results regarding ticks & brain worms across the US - both in wolf areas and outside of them.

I thought that area has had 3 of the coldest winters in the past 13 years
So you really don't think the wolves have been the leading cause of the decline in that area???

 

[Ben Lamb]

Have a link to the tick study Ben?

I'm really only familiar with the FWP/DeCesare study (http://fwp.mt.gov/fishAndWildlife/diseasesAndResearch/research/moose/populationsMonitoring/), and last update I heard on that one was that the population dealing with heavy tick numbers was actually growing, while the populations that were dealing with predation and arterial worms were declining.

It really seems like each population of moose has their own issues, and it's not one widespread problem.

Not off hand, but will try to find it later today.

88man - predation is not a root cause in 99% of the issues. Habitat is what causes the biggest issue with ungulate recruitment, and habitat quality has been sliding downwards for decades now. 3 cold winters won't reverse 3 decades of warming & drought.

 

[----]

Not off hand, but will try to find it later today.

88man - predation is not a root cause in 99% of the issues. Habitat is what causes the biggest issue with ungulate recruitment, and habitat quality has been sliding downwards for decades now. 3 cold winters won't reverse 3 decades of warming & drought.

I've been digging, and while what you said seems to be absolutely true of Canadian moose in the NE part of the country and great lakes, I'm not finding anything about it linked to Shiras. I could definitely be wrong, but it'd just be news to me that anyone has made a connection between our moose decline and ticks.

It's a very complex issue, and even the idea of whether or not it is an issue is debatable. There's very little evidence of moose in the lower Rockies before European settlement. If I remember correctly, the Corps of Discovery didn't see a single moose in the mountains.

 

[TwistedSage]

On the surface catch and release seems great, but like everything it's complicated.

There will be a morality rate of fish caught no matter how careful people are to use barbless hooks or practice gentle handling.

The catch and release only fishermen could catch 50 fish a day, in the first 20 fish 5 of the fish he released could have died after. Then goes on to catch another 30 and maybe 5 more died. The catch and release fishermen just took more fish than the guy who caught his 5 fish limit and stopped.

To each their own, I'm sure the fisheries biologists use this information when setting reg for the waters. I catch and release bass. I keep fish I consider good table fare.

I have a bigger issue with some slot or size limits when I am trying to keep fish. Prime example the 16 inch size limit for summer flounder in NJ. If a smaller flounder engulfs my bait as they do so often do and gut hooks itself I need tho throw that dead fish in the water when I could keep is as part of the 2 fish limit.

Sorry for the digression

 

[RockinU]

Not off hand, but will try to find it later today.

88man - predation is not a root cause in 99% of the issues. Habitat is what causes the biggest issue with ungulate recruitment, and habitat quality has been sliding downwards for decades now. 3 cold winters won't reverse 3 decades of warming & drought.

While I definitely won’t argue against habitat being the biggest concern, I feel like I have recently read about a study noting significantly lowered pregnancy rates in elk herds with heavy wolf pressure...might have even seen it here, but since I can’t remember for sure, I might also be talking out my ass.

 

[JLS]

he population dealing with heavy tick numbers was actually growing, while the populations that were dealing with predation and arterial worms were declining.

It's a definite contributing factor to moose populations, specifically calf survival.

 

[JLS]

While I definitely won’t argue against habitat being the biggest concern, I feel like I have recently read about a study noting significantly lowered pregnancy rates in elk herds with heavy wolf pressure...might have even seen it here, but since I can’t remember for sure, I might also be talking out my ass.

It's possible there is a correlation, but not necessarily a causation in pregnancy rates. Wyoming G&F did an extensive study on this and found the lower pregnancy rates were likely more related to forage quality.

I think it's pretty safe to say the habitat characteristics (topography and vegetative cover) play a significant role as well.

 

[RockinU]

So probably the safest thing that could be said with any certainty is that it is a complex system with many moving parts that we possibly don’t have a complete grasp of yet, and in fact may never...

 

[VAspeedgoat]

Maybe it's different out west with other fish. But in the east of you have a Brook trout stream with say a 7 inch minimum, the research shows that in less than 5 years the stream is nearly depleted of trout. That same stream is sustainable for generations under catch and release regs. I have no specific research paper to cite but I have dozens of special reg streams that are fine versus an equivalent number of unprotected stream that must be stocked to maintain a trout fishery.