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Hunting and Wildlife Conservation
Some people get excited over football season. Screw that! I've never got watching sports. Why wouldn't you go out and do it yourself? I am a hunter and come from a long line out of outdoors sportsman. I'm excited hunting season in upper NY again. Bow hunting for now. Musket then rifle in a few weeks, and I'm wondering. Who in the forums plans on taking that trek out into the woods looking to bag some game and who hates me for killing Bambi???
I hunt on my Father's lease lot in the Adirondacks. I only do rifle. I've taken my Duck Identification course, but I've never used it. I can shoot a bow and can load a musket; but I'm not that into it. The more I find out about bow hunting. The more I think their should be a skill test involved. A good shot with a bow will cause the game to bleed out in about 30 minutes. A bad shot will make it suffer for 4 hours and die of an infection. I'm not into that. If you're a bad fisherman, you go hungry. If you're a bad bow hunter, you make something suffer for not reason other then you suck.
I think crossbow hunting should be legalised in NY under the same restrictions as musket. As of right now, you need to have a special license saying you are unable to draw a bow. I'm think that's silly. It would generate an increase in revenue for the state. How much? I can't say and I can say how many more animals will be harvested because of this change. I just think crossbows are cool.
Hunting with anything under a 16 inch barrel is stupid and should not be allowed. I don't agree with pistol hunting. It may work in some other states but I don't see it being practical in NY. Too many trees and too many hills. I do think handgun should be allowed to put down wounded game instead of letting it bleed out. This is especially true in the case of bow hunting. By current laws, you are only allowed to use arrows for this season.
A clip size over 5 rounds is completely unnecessary. Spend more time at the range and a little less time at the gun store.
Controlled and managed hunting is the far better choice to over population and poaching. I'm not talking about game farms. That's sick to me. You might as well pay a farmer to shoot a cow. I don't think poaching is taken seriously enough. I'd like to see higher fines and community service for the first offense. Anyone convicted of a second offense should serve jail time for animal cruelty, have their firearms confiscated and sold at public option, and be banned from further firearm ownership. Any third offense should be treated as animal cruelty and ownership of an illegal firearm.
Farmers should be restricted on the number of animals they kill protecting their crops. When I worked for the DEC, I ran into a jack ass who took a very wide interpretation of "protecting his crop." They should be required to try more preventative measures first and show a lose of profit before being given the OK to fire at will.
I hunt on my Father's lease lot in the Adirondacks. I only do rifle. I've taken my Duck Identification course, but I've never used it. I can shoot a bow and can load a musket; but I'm not that into it. The more I find out about bow hunting. The more I think their should be a skill test involved. A good shot with a bow will cause the game to bleed out in about 30 minutes. A bad shot will make it suffer for 4 hours and die of an infection. I'm not into that. If you're a bad fisherman, you go hungry. If you're a bad bow hunter, you make something suffer for not reason other then you suck.
I think crossbow hunting should be legalised in NY under the same restrictions as musket. As of right now, you need to have a special license saying you are unable to draw a bow. I'm think that's silly. It would generate an increase in revenue for the state. How much? I can't say and I can say how many more animals will be harvested because of this change. I just think crossbows are cool.
Hunting with anything under a 16 inch barrel is stupid and should not be allowed. I don't agree with pistol hunting. It may work in some other states but I don't see it being practical in NY. Too many trees and too many hills. I do think handgun should be allowed to put down wounded game instead of letting it bleed out. This is especially true in the case of bow hunting. By current laws, you are only allowed to use arrows for this season.
A clip size over 5 rounds is completely unnecessary. Spend more time at the range and a little less time at the gun store.
Controlled and managed hunting is the far better choice to over population and poaching. I'm not talking about game farms. That's sick to me. You might as well pay a farmer to shoot a cow. I don't think poaching is taken seriously enough. I'd like to see higher fines and community service for the first offense. Anyone convicted of a second offense should serve jail time for animal cruelty, have their firearms confiscated and sold at public option, and be banned from further firearm ownership. Any third offense should be treated as animal cruelty and ownership of an illegal firearm.
Farmers should be restricted on the number of animals they kill protecting their crops. When I worked for the DEC, I ran into a jack ass who took a very wide interpretation of "protecting his crop." They should be required to try more preventative measures first and show a lose of profit before being given the OK to fire at will.
Comments
I'm not some kinda hippie that is against all killing of animals, who forcefeeds my opinions down hunter's gunbarrells or anything. I think that if it serves a good, meaningful purpose (food, managed population control, etc.) then hunting is necessary. If it's -only- happening because you're a dick who feels like shooting something -because- you're a dick (makes you a man, killing stuff is fun, etc.), then fuck you.
Unless the population is insanely high, the animals pose a heavy threat to the human population, or there is some other very convincing argument that I have yet to hear, I am against predator control. We don't eat bears, or wolves, or wolverines. We don't need their fur anymore. Most of the large predators in this country are endangered or on the verge of it, so I hardly see how they need to be "controlled". I was heavily against the removal of the grey wolf from the endangered species list and I am still furious over that decision. If ranchers in Idaho and Montana weren't prepared to lose some of their livestock to predators, then they should try out ranching in Chicago or New York - or maybe they're in the wrong profession. It takes a short time to destroy a population, but years and years to build it back up.
Seeing a photo of a man in Idaho holding a wolf corpse by its hind leg and posing for a photo doesn't really bring the best thoughts to my mind. Neither does the photo that my boss has in his office of himself standing proudly over a dead boar. Nor that infamous Palin-kills-Rudolph picture. While I understand the feeling of pride, if one's reasoning is truly "we eat, therefore we hunt"... then a little tribute to your ego is completely unneccesary. A lion pride doesn't stop and pose with their freshly dead zebra before eating. The butcher doesn't photograph every himself with dead cow before preparing it. (I hope) The coroner won't stand next to your corpse and take a snapshot after pronouncing you dead. This is a trifle, I know, but it's always struck me as extremely disrespectful to the life you just took and bad for the image of the hunter in the minds of people like myself. QFT.
Getting up before the crack of dawn to freeze my ass off in a tree waiting for a deer that may or may not show up is just not my idea of a good time. :P
All kidding aside, my father goes hunting with his friends. He enjoys going out camping and what not. He can make some really good stew, jerky, or steak out of deer or elk.
Some people have a pretty legitimate reason to hunt; if you live in the Adirondacks, make shit for money, and get snowed in weeks at a time, it makes sense to take a few deer to supplement your food budget and get through a long winter. Particularly resourceful hunters make complete use of the animal. Game meat is also very lean, and is generally quite healthy. It's also a very effective method of population control when implemented properly and managed by an outside agency.
Bad hunters are bad people. Poachers and the like are despicable, as are the people who do canned hunts.
Also, my boss occasionally duck hunts, so being willing and able to join him helps me stay in his good graces.
Hehe, I just wanted to say Nippletop.
@Jason: We both grew up south of Lake Placid. I'm from Crown Point, Wyatt's from Hague. They both lie outside of Ticonderoga.
I like venison cut thin about a half inch and country fried. I also like tenderloin wrapped in bacon. The meal is super lean and you need that much extra fat.
I knew a girl that lived off of grey squirrels and ramen noodles after she moved out of her parents house.
Hunting and fishing can provide both recreation and resources.
@loltsundere: I eat bear. It's super tasty. "Pest" animals should be relocated or deterred from entering people space before they are exterminated.
EDIT: On population control: Why would the NYS pay money to do something people are willing to pay for and are able to do effectively?
My grandparents owned a cabin on the lakefront, and I spent many a summer on a boat out in the lake, fishing the day away. Good times, good times.
Things I like about hunting.
1. It takes effort to get your meat. People take meat for granted too much, and this shows them what a difficult, time consuming, and messy process that killing for food is.
2. Good hunters are environmentalists. They respect the ecosystem and don't take more than what the population can support. I totally agree with Loltsudere about the killing of the predators. If we are to compete with them for prey, we shouldn't cheat by offing them with helicopters.
3. The animals live free and naturally until their death. Guns kill them less painfully then claws. Humans, if they choose to fill the predator role, must think of themselves in exactly that way. My folks too. When they were poor in the U.P., my great uncle would give them venison. God, that venison you made for us last time was the best I'd ever had. Good meat.
Basically, some hunters are sadistic jackasses who don't care about anything except the fun of killing, like a cat with a full bowl of food catching mice. Those who hunt with a serious heart, who understand the weight of killing, who love nature despite it's cruelty, those are the hunters I respect.
Anyone who eats meat, but disparages responsible hunters is hypocritical. Vegetarians, however, go nuts.
In NC, we have the opposite problem most ignorant hippies seem to think; we can't get the hunters to take ENOUGH deer. They usually only kill what they can eat, and the limit has been raised to a number generally higher than that. It's a huge problem, because the deer population has rebounded so successfully that they are way overcrowded. When a species population overshoots its carrying capacity, it causes disease outbreaks, starvation, and other crappy things. Individual regulated hunting is probably the most effective method of population control I know of.
Some cities have actually started organizing bow-hunt days where people go out as a group and hunt deer, and then they drop them off at soup kitchens. It's a pretty good way to kill two birds with one stone, and the group setting ensures that the animals don't suffer unduly from lack of skilled shooting.
Sure, there are other method of population control...but why not provide low-cost, free-range, cruelty-free meat to people? It sure beats the horrible farming practices of some of the meats at the grocery store.
There is a huge difference between hunting and shooting an animal threatening your shit. I agree that property owners of any kind should be limited in what they can do to wildlife. If something is killing your livestock once a week, then you need to invest in better facilities, not kill all of the predators.