The importance of Hunting

Discuss how to take action in helping wildlife and the environment.

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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by alethe » Mon Jun 29, 2015 6:48 pm

Also, most hunters respect the limits they have. Those that don't get their license taken away.
Most hunters want to preserve game populations for future generations to hunt and/or admire. They respect the animals.


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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by Latra » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:01 pm

So I must agree with the many whom say that the importance of hunting depends on the situation at hand. For example I know that hunting invasive species is beneficial in many ways, it preserves the ecosystem and the native species there. Yet hunting proves bad too, even in season sometimes. A personal example of mine, we have a lot of deer behind our house (it's "preserved" swampland along with properties around it. Now a few acres to the side we have a huge range for hunting the deer and from the sounds we hear it's fairly popular. To our other side we have hunter neighbors (despite their land also being preserved) who hunt primarily in season. So we typically have the small groups of mothers (there are usually 2-5 fawns in the group) but after a while we weren't seeing any deer (it was just about to be deer hunting season). As the investigators we are me and my father went out back and looked around, we found lots of deer dead but didn't find this too surprising as there was a mushroom spread disease (at least I think it was the shrooms can't be sure though) and when we went over into our neighbor's lands (pfft forget trespassing I don't know what you're talking about) we found dead deer with bullets in their necks and stomachs and sides etc. We only recently have begun to see fairly big groups again.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by SolitaryHowl » Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:58 pm

wolfwhisp wrote: So I must agree with the many whom say that the importance of hunting depends on the situation at hand. For example I know that hunting invasive species is beneficial in many ways, it preserves the ecosystem and the native species there. Yet hunting proves bad too, even in season sometimes. A personal example of mine, we have a lot of deer behind our house (it's "preserved" swampland along with properties around it. Now a few acres to the side we have a huge range for hunting the deer and from the sounds we hear it's fairly popular. To our other side we have hunter neighbors (despite their land also being preserved) who hunt primarily in season. So we typically have the small groups of mothers (there are usually 2-5 fawns in the group) but after a while we weren't seeing any deer (it was just about to be deer hunting season). As the investigators we are me and my father went out back and looked around, we found lots of deer dead but didn't find this too surprising as there was a mushroom spread disease (at least I think it was the shrooms can't be sure though) and when we went over into our neighbor's lands (pfft forget trespassing I don't know what you're talking about) we found dead deer with bullets in their necks and stomachs and sides etc. We only recently have begun to see fairly big groups again.
If they are hunting in preserved land and/or are hunting out of season, you should report them to your local authorities or the MNR.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by D0m » Tue Jul 21, 2015 5:17 pm

SolitaryHowl wrote:I agree with Skybreaker. I am friends with a few hunters, and they are some of the most environmentally conscious people I know. They will not take the shot unless they know it is a clean one. They probably care more for the animals than some random person on the street.

Not all hunters are nut-jobs. The ones that are appear in the news, because it is rare. Its kind of like plane crashes...they appear in the news because they are rare. But car accidents happen every day, and you rarely hear about them.
This is true, many hunters are the ones who try to promote wildlife conservation which some people seem to find surprising.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by Granger » Wed Jul 29, 2015 7:13 pm

Much of my family hunts, specifically deer, and it always goes towards feeding their families. As well, both family and friends have noted that a very important part of good hunting is making sure they make a good shot so the animal is not in pain for too long. They've noted that it really feels awful when one does bad. When it comes to those kind of people, who have sympathy for the animals and the animals do not just go to waste, I personally don't mind.

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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by D0m » Thu Jul 30, 2015 5:38 pm

I know that hunting does help keep numbers down etc and that most people holding the gun are some of the most nature aware people and have sympathy like mentioned by Liver, Solitary Howl and probably a few more people but these people I don't mind it.

It's the ones who shoot without care and make the animal suffer that make me feel sad.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by Aeva » Sat Aug 01, 2015 11:57 am

I don't know, but hunting purely for sport doesn't feel right with me. It's like, if I respect this animal and if I am an environmentally-conscious individual, I don't think I'd express this respect by shooting it. Hunting to preserve an ecosystem's integrity also feels a little awkward to me. Unless the disruption was produced by humans and people needed to intervene and correct it, that seems acceptable. But I'm not so sure on the idea of humans settling themselves atop a golden throne and acting as the planet's police. I don't know. My views are flexible, though.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by D0m » Sat Aug 01, 2015 12:34 pm

Before I did research into this I thought all hunting was terrible. Now I realise from broadening my viewpoint that some hunting is good and the reality of it. The hunting for sport though I do not agree with.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by Sambhur » Sat Aug 01, 2015 8:30 pm

Yep, legal hunting (i.e. not poaching) is often pretty good for the environment. Especially here in Australia, where the species that are hunted are almost always invasive species that are destroying our environment just by existing here. :/ This happens through either preying on native animals, or eating/killing plants (some deer ringbark young native trees here), and as a result there are a lot of native species here that are threatened. Examples are foxes, deer, pigs, rabbits, etc. While I agree that it's best to use the whole animal and eat what you hunt, you're helping a lot of animals here just by shooting a fox you pass while hunting deer. We don't have any big predators here that can keep the deer or pig population in check, so humans are the only animals that can kill them and attempt to somehow control the population.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by D0m » Sun Aug 02, 2015 12:45 pm

I'm not to familiar with hunting as its illegal in most of the UK I believe, it is at least where I live. But I do know that keeping sown numbers is difficult in areas like Australia so humans have to step in. Though I do have a question, what would happen if we did let nature take its course?
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by Sambhur » Sun Aug 02, 2015 5:49 pm

LupaValdo2001-2014 wrote:I'm not to familiar with hunting as its illegal in most of the UK I believe, it is at least where I live. But I do know that keeping sown numbers is difficult in areas like Australia so humans have to step in. Though I do have a question, what would happen if we did let nature take its course?
I hope you're asking about Australia since that's the only place I can give a good answer on! Here, if we just stopped hunting and let nature take its course, the invasive species would continue to become overpopulated as they have no main predators here. Unlike the US, we don't have animals that can take down a deer, or would regularly kill a fox. Dingos are our biggest terrestrial predator, but they already have a list of prey they choose to hunt. Deer, pigs, foxes, rabbits, feral cats & dogs, they're all not supposed to be here, so the impact that they're having on the environment is purely negative as they disturb Australia's unique ecosystems. This document from the Victorian government lists some threats to native wildlife: http://web.archive.org/web/200609110738 ... l+2006.pdf and in it they mention things like
Predation of native wildlife by the cat, Felis catus.
Predation of native wildlife by the introduced Red Fox Vulpes vulpes.
...
Reduction in biomass and biodiversity of native vegetation through grazing by the Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus.

And that's just the beginning of it. Deer do way more damage to vegetation than rabbits do, since they not only eat things, but the adult male Sambar deer for example (where I got my username from <; ) like to destroy plants by ripping branches off shrubs and ringbarking (killing) young trees. The deer don't know what damage they're causing, they don't understand the difference between an endangered shrub and one in the least concern category. When they eat a lot of plants and fruit in a certain area, they also leave less food for our native animals. We also have the predators like cats, dogs, and foxes, who prey on whatever small native animal they can when they're hungry, or even when they're not hungry, since we all know plenty of cats just like to kill things for fun. From our government, http://www.environment.gov.au/biodivers ... ed/species
Australia’s biodiversity is currently in decline; in Australia, more than 1,700 species and ecological communities are known to be threatened and at risk of extinction.

The key threats to species are loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat, invasive species and altered fire regimes
I don't think I even have to mention what damage pigs can do, because oh gosh, it's just so bad.

So yeah, the presence of invasive species has disturbed our ecosystems, and these animals (many plants too, but this is about hunting) continue to pose a threat to biodiversity as they continue to exist here. They have no predators in the Aussie wild (dingos hunt rabbits sometimes I think, but there aren't many dingos these days, and they can't/don't hunt deer) keeping their populations down, so without human intervention it's very likely that the populations will continue to grow, when these populations shouldn't exist at all. Invasive species are pests here (except some species are considered game species in some areas which is annoying), and depending on the state's laws, they're often able to be hunted with no bag limit (no limit to how many you're allowed to kill) because they just need to go. They can't stay here without threatening the Australian natural environment.
Here's another link I just found about feral animals in Aus, http://www.environment.gov.au/biodivers ... -australia I'd actually forgotten all about the goats, buffalo, and camels. Wow.
It's also important to note that biodiversity is extremely important to Australia, since if we lose species, we can't always just bring them back in from another place:
Australia is home to between 600,000 and 700,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. About 84 per cent of plants, 83 per cent of mammals, and 45 per cent of birds are only found in Australia.
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened

TL;DR: If you let nature take its course, bad things happen. Species eventually go extinct, and they can't be brought back.
Sorry if I rambled or repeated myself a bit! I woke up not very long ago.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by D0m » Mon Aug 03, 2015 10:08 am

Ah now I understand a bit more! Thank you for elaborating. Sambhur! I now understand more about the importance, I guess sometimes reintroduction or animals being released can be quite bad then for nature! (That's a whole different subject though). Hunting must be very important to protecting endangered species.

Although for the trees, could you use guards around them? We do this in the UK and it works enough for like places where endangered species for trees are. Or would this not work? It was just a thought.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by Sambhur » Mon Aug 03, 2015 5:12 pm

This is getting a bit off topic but I'll try to quickly answer your question anyway. So guards around trees, you mean those fence things right around the tree? That might be difficult since Australia is very big, with a lot of area to cover, and it'd also be pretty difficult to get a guard around every threatened young tree in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain or something like that. It's just really not practical, and even a fence around areas of trees might not work either considering how high deer can jump (also pigs destroy fences sometimes). But yeah, it's just really impractical. It's just easier to get rid of the source of the problem, by hunting the deer. Anyway by killing a deer you're helping more than just some young trees, you're helping other threatened plant species and the local fauna as well.
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by SolitaryHowl » Sun Aug 09, 2015 12:33 pm

Sambhur wrote:
LupaValdo2001-2014 wrote:I'm not to familiar with hunting as its illegal in most of the UK I believe, it is at least where I live. But I do know that keeping sown numbers is difficult in areas like Australia so humans have to step in. Though I do have a question, what would happen if we did let nature take its course?
I hope you're asking about Australia since that's the only place I can give a good answer on! Here, if we just stopped hunting and let nature take its course, the invasive species would continue to become overpopulated as they have no main predators here. Unlike the US, we don't have animals that can take down a deer, or would regularly kill a fox. Dingos are our biggest terrestrial predator, but they already have a list of prey they choose to hunt. Deer, pigs, foxes, rabbits, feral cats & dogs, they're all not supposed to be here, so the impact that they're having on the environment is purely negative as they disturb Australia's unique ecosystems. This document from the Victorian government lists some threats to native wildlife: http://web.archive.org/web/200609110738 ... l+2006.pdf and in it they mention things like
Predation of native wildlife by the cat, Felis catus.
Predation of native wildlife by the introduced Red Fox Vulpes vulpes.
...
Reduction in biomass and biodiversity of native vegetation through grazing by the Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus.

And that's just the beginning of it. Deer do way more damage to vegetation than rabbits do, since they not only eat things, but the adult male Sambar deer for example (where I got my username from <; ) like to destroy plants by ripping branches off shrubs and ringbarking (killing) young trees. The deer don't know what damage they're causing, they don't understand the difference between an endangered shrub and one in the least concern category. When they eat a lot of plants and fruit in a certain area, they also leave less food for our native animals. We also have the predators like cats, dogs, and foxes, who prey on whatever small native animal they can when they're hungry, or even when they're not hungry, since we all know plenty of cats just like to kill things for fun. From our government, http://www.environment.gov.au/biodivers ... ed/species
Australia’s biodiversity is currently in decline; in Australia, more than 1,700 species and ecological communities are known to be threatened and at risk of extinction.

The key threats to species are loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat, invasive species and altered fire regimes
I don't think I even have to mention what damage pigs can do, because oh gosh, it's just so bad.

So yeah, the presence of invasive species has disturbed our ecosystems, and these animals (many plants too, but this is about hunting) continue to pose a threat to biodiversity as they continue to exist here. They have no predators in the Aussie wild (dingos hunt rabbits sometimes I think, but there aren't many dingos these days, and they can't/don't hunt deer) keeping their populations down, so without human intervention it's very likely that the populations will continue to grow, when these populations shouldn't exist at all. Invasive species are pests here (except some species are considered game species in some areas which is annoying), and depending on the state's laws, they're often able to be hunted with no bag limit (no limit to how many you're allowed to kill) because they just need to go. They can't stay here without threatening the Australian natural environment.
Here's another link I just found about feral animals in Aus, http://www.environment.gov.au/biodivers ... -australia I'd actually forgotten all about the goats, buffalo, and camels. Wow.
It's also important to note that biodiversity is extremely important to Australia, since if we lose species, we can't always just bring them back in from another place:
Australia is home to between 600,000 and 700,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. About 84 per cent of plants, 83 per cent of mammals, and 45 per cent of birds are only found in Australia.
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened

TL;DR: If you let nature take its course, bad things happen. Species eventually go extinct, and they can't be brought back.
Sorry if I rambled or repeated myself a bit! I woke up not very long ago.
Very solid answer. I'm majoring in Ecology, and you took what I was going to say right out of my mouth!

Another example is Isle Royale. The wolves there are in a lot of trouble - but we need the wolves there to keep the moose population in check. If we just let nature 'take its course', the moose will practically destroy the island's green resources, decimating the ecosystem (which will starve out every other animal that lives on the island, including the moose themselves.)
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Re: The importance of Hunting

Post by Sambhur » Sun Aug 09, 2015 7:01 pm

SolitaryHowl wrote:Very solid answer. I'm majoring in Ecology, and you took what I was going to say right out of my mouth!

Another example is Isle Royale. The wolves there are in a lot of trouble - but we need the wolves there to keep the moose population in check. If we just let nature 'take its course', the moose will practically destroy the island's green resources, decimating the ecosystem (which will starve out every other animal that lives on the island, including the moose themselves.)
Aw, thank you so much! I'd heard about Isle Royale but didn't know that many details about it, so thanks for providing that example too.
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