Transcript from Dan Ashe, USFWS Director

[Irrelevant]

http://blog.trcp.org/2016/06/27/dan...make-or-break-moment-in-conservation-history/

I thought this was a great summary of the current state of conservation. He pulled no punches in discussing the current plight and the path forward.

 

[LopeHunter]

I agree with Dan that conservationists are sliding into irrelevancy. There is not a strong alliance between hunters and foresters, for example. Meanwhile, most youth that are age 10 in America have never slept around a campfire under the stars dreaming of being Huck Finn or Daniel Boone. Many of us did and we get the importance of managing habitat rather than just creating National Monuments or Parks. Try conveying that importance to someone who lives next to Central Park in NYC. The nuance is difficult to relay without involving so much detail their eyes glaze over.

As hunters, we are often seen as too controversial to be allowed to have a visible place at the leadership table of non-hunting organizations. The hunter of my youth was a mythical badass that waded out into the forest and returned with meat for the table. The Depression was not that long ago when I was a kid so putting a rabbit in the stew pot was valued.

Today, hunters are rarely held in esteem by the General Public that are typically mostly urban and suburban. Those folks equate gun use with very bad things. Mass shootings. School shootings. Killing of a famous lion. Decimation of rhinos and elephants. Hunters use guns therefore must be bad, uncaring sadistic people just a trigger away from doing bad things.

Much like how we Americans hate politicians yet often our representative to the House of Rep gets re-elected...many of my acquaintances are leery of hunters but like me since I tout the organic, free-range nature of the game I harvest and they have a face to place with hunting rather than some faceless sadistic blob with too many guns and headed out to shoot up road signs.

Like it or not, there are too many guns being used to do bad things and hunters are being soiled by those actions.

There needs to be a folk hero that hunts and looks normal. I think that is why Randy is such a fine ambassador for our sport. Mild-mannered CPA. Speaks eloquently. Has a full mouth of teeth. Married. Family. Steve is another ambassador since he focuses on acquiring the meat rather than measuring the antlers then creating meals that would hold up in a NYC eatery. We need more ambassadors. Something along the lines of how the recent movie series created a jump in young girls participating in archery.

Horn porn is not helpful. It brings out the worst in a small percentage of men and women who will lie, cheat and trespass to get that mega beast in the back of their pickup. Those poachers or merely those who hire a posse to sit on a bull and chase away other hunters become the face of our sport. Old, white, out of shape and taking the life of an animal without adequate sweat and effort.

P&Y and B&C are a problem in my opinion but focusing on inches of bone rather than the age of animal. A trophy to my grandpa was a big-bodied animal measure by pounds of meat put in the stew pot. Is now difficult to find praise of anything other than the antler or horn inches.

I wish I was smart enough to offer a solution rather than bitch or point out the obvious. Perhaps a screenplay or novel with a role model hunter as a key character.

 

[RobG]

From the link

We need our own Eleventh Amendment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow conservationist. Sure, we may disagree from time to time, but these need to be professional, courteous, and respectful differences of opinion. Those in our community who sow seeds of anger and adversity must meet with what Aldo Leopold called social disapproval. If we let these people divide us, and play us off each other, then we, and the resource we love, will lose. How can we expect the faith and confidence of the public if we do not reflect faith and confidence in one another?

 

[James Riley]

Barring an apocalypse, I think we are headed toward Europe. Population growth and social/technological changes demand it. We probably have two or three more generations of "hunting" in a few isolated pockets of the country. Those pockets will be museum pieces for the majority to look down their noses at, and wonder about like an anthropologist studying a tribe in the Amazon. There might be a few old men in tweed who are allowed to hunt (surreptitiously, of course) on some rich guy's giant ranch. How quaint!

The "wild" will lose it's constituency to virtual reality. Without a vote for it, the raiders will plunder and divide.

Where man is the measure of all things, he will cease to measure himself against most of them.

The infatuation with post-apocalyptic worlds is merely a sentimental longing for the hunt, and a legal revenge upon those who deprived us of it (us).

 

[davembehr]

Something about this article doesn't jive with me. I'm particularly concerned that this person is such a strong advocate but doesn't use his/her name as it's author. It's titled Dan Ashe's manifesto, but nothing in the article denotes who actually wrote it. I just see some red flags with some of its content. Reader beware.

 

[Oak]

It's no an article, it's the transcript of his speech at TRCP's Western Media Summit in Ft Collins last week. I suppose someone could have written the speech for him...