“Atticus said to Jem, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever hear Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mocking bird.””
There are worse things than killing mockingbirds, though, like killing whooping cranes:
“Seven Kansas hunters have admitted to last weekend’s shooting of two endangered whooping cranes in Stafford County, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent said Wednesday.
One of the cranes died Wednesday morning at Kansas State University’s veterinary hospital. The other is recovering from a broken wing and several body wounds. …
The penalty for unlawfully killing a whooping crane, or any endangered species, can be a fine of up to $100,000 and up to one year in prison.
The men told officials they were afield for Saturday’s opening of goose and sandhill crane season and mistook the whooping cranes for sandhills in the early morning light. Authorities said the men fired at three whooping cranes, wounding two.”
Whooping Cranes are both one of the most beautiful species of birds in North America and one of the most endangered. They are white with black wingtips and red crowns, they stand five feet tall and have a wingspan of seven feet, and they are unbelievably gorgeous. (I ran across one who had taken up residence in an upscale community in central Florida. He seemed to like the lawns: so thoughtful of us to mow them to facilitate the gathering of worms.) There are about 230 in the wild, which represents serious progress since 1940, when there were fewer than twenty of them. In the course of efforts to bring them back from the brink of extinction, they have been taught to migrate by people wearing whooping crane costumes and flying Ultralight aircraft. After a series of rather spectacular dances, they mate for life, which makes losing one all the more tragic.
The hunters who shot them and then left claim they mistook them for Sandhill Cranes, even though the two species don’t really look all that much alike, except for both being cranes. Personally, I don’t see why hunting Sandhill Cranes is allowed in areas where Whooping Cranes might be found, but then I don’t particularly see the point of any kind of hunting, except in situations involving either the real risk of starvation or a serious need for animal population control. In any case, losing one of the two hundred thirty or so Whooping Cranes in the world is tragic.
I don’t understand hunting cranes. But i do understand hunting deer or pheasant, etc, whether or not under threat of starvation. It is fun, even if like me you never had any luck at it. And the results are delicious.
Why is hunting game worse than eating factory-farmed chicken? The chickens don’t have any chance at all, and live in miserable conditions.
I don’t particularly see the point of any kind of hunting, except in situations involving either the real risk of starvation or a serious need for animal population control.
Prey animals need predators. If we drive away the wolves and the bobcats, we have to take their place, with guns or some other method.
Just last night I had a deer run into my car — third time in four years. Last week, driving down Main Street in Phoenicia, NY, a black bear ran right across the road in front of me. (I missed her.) Recently bears have entered a shop and a home in two separate incidents in that town. There really is a very real need for animal population control in some areas.
Another purpose of hunting is to bring in tourist dollars to a lot of these little mountain towns who would be in rough shape without it.
As long as I don’t have to do it.
They should be made to take an eye exam. Anyone who can’t tell a sandhill crane from a whooping crane (assuming they’re not lying through their teeth) is too blind to be carrying a firearm.
Sandhill cranes are grey, with red heds. It’s like shooting a woodpecker and claiming you thought it was a grouse.
But i do understand hunting deer or pheasant, etc, whether or not under threat of starvation. It is fun, even if like me you never had any luck at it. And the results are delicious.
People thought bear-baiting was “fun.”
Some people think dog-fighting is “fun.”
I’m sure there are areas of this country (very, very few, however) where people must hunt to supplement their diets. However, this isn’t true for the vast majority of the country; in fact, hunting doesn’t make sense from a personal economics perspective.
Prey animals need predators. If we drive away the wolves and the bobcats, we have to take their place, with guns or some other method.
Absolutely, but you have the cart before the horse.
The reason prey animal don’t have predators is because development has pushed them out.
In my region of NY, deer hunting fills the freezer, and the garden in your back yard feeds you as well. We actually went vegetarian for awhile until we traveled to California and noted how the veggies we purchased in winter were raised (massive irrigation, draining other lands) and how far they had to be trucked. Since we couldn’t raise and can enough vegetables on our own property to remain ethical vegetarians all year, venison became an addition to our diet.
One of my personal measures of local “need” is how fast it takes for someone to pull over to claim a deer when someone else hits one with their car. If people didn’t need the meat, would they really stop for fresh roadkill? There is little sport in gutting out and butchering a deer someone else ran into. But it’s common practice here. When I hit a deer a few years ago, a bank loan officer pulled over in his suit and requested the deer. Turns out bank loan officers don’t make a whole lot, suit or no suit.
I don’t see the point of hunting any crane of any species, other than the fact that it is something to shoot at. I would not call these people hunters. I would consider them equivalent to kids with BB guns out seeing what they can hit. They should stay out of the field and hang out at the rod and gun and shoot at clay pigeons if they just want to blast away at moving targets. If the rod and gun club people will tolerate them.
jadegold says “The reason prey animal don’t have predators is because development has pushed them out.”
Probably true, but in some cases, as the deer population continues to explode, the deer become less afraid to habitat fringe neighborhood, and the preditors follow them in. But, no real argument here. These ‘hunters’ are morons. They make it all that harder for legitimate hunting to support their cases.
I always like though how we talk about ‘development’ and ‘sprawl’ and agonize over drilling for energy in pristine places, but don’t want to talk about population. Humans will overpopulate themselves off the planet.
I didn’t mean to start a thread about the ethics of hunting: it’s just that, quite apart from my moral views on the subject, I just don’t get it, just as I don’t get gambling (especially when it doesn’t involve anything interesting, like football games; just slot machines.) I can see that hunting would be fun since it gets you out into nature early in the morning, etc., but I don’t see why you can’t get all the same fun (including the thrill of the chase, etc.) from birdwatching. But I only meant, here, to make the ‘I don’t get it’ point, not the ‘hunting is wrong’ one.
I would note that mac seems to assume that I eat factory farmed chicken, which, as it happens, I don’t.
To be fair (watch me bend over backwards!) to the hunters in this case, the birds were flying in low light. However, I think it’s a good rule of thumb that when you are hunting sandhill cranes during crane migration season and you are on the migratory flightpath of whooping cranes, you should not shoot unless you’re sure it’s a sandhill that you’re shooting at. I would think that one telltale sign would be that whooping cranes are typically bristling with radio tracking devices, whereas sandhills are not.
Still, maybe the word will get out. The last person to kill a whooping crane (a poacher last year) went to jail.
No need to bend hilzoy. Hunting carries with it huge responsibilities. Knowing what you’re shooting at would be near the top of the list, along with the obvious safety issues. These ‘hunters’ deserve whatever punishment they receive.
I concur. If you assert your right to pull the trigger of a firearm, you are responsible for the consequences. If you are unsure what you might hit, whether whooping crane, family cat or child, you don’t fire. I wouldn’t mind seeing these preternaturally irresponsible hunters spend a half-year in prison.
On the subject of hunting, I almost get it. I’ve fished for food and enjoyed it; hunting would seem a similar activity, just with guns. I just enjoy the taste of wild trout a whole lot more than venison.
Fresh venison is yummy.
I love it in stews, and I can’t get enough of homemade venison sausage…hmmmm…
Really. I know it required someone shooting “Bambi’s mother,” but if you’re gonna hunt dear, there’s no point in feeling all glum and guilty about eating it. Own up to your carnviore nature and conduct yourself respectfully, that’s all.
However, this isn’t true for the vast majority of the country; in fact, hunting doesn’t make sense from a personal economics perspective.
That assumes that your utility for it is the same as everyone else’s in the world, which clearly it is not. Just as you undoubtedly pursue hobbies and activities for which other people have absolutely zero utility.
Humans will overpopulate themselves off the planet.
No, they won’t. Aside from the fact that, as we’ve seen from the hemming and hawing over the electoral maps, most of the United States — if not the world — is primarily composed of empty space where nobody lives (usually because it’s prohibitively expensive or otherwise not worthwhile), nature provides its own correctives.
Phil, you just reminded me of the Sam Kinison routine about the starving Ethiopians…roughly…”it’s a DESERT, there’s no food there…”
That assumes that your utility for it is the same as everyone else’s in the world, which clearly it is not. Just as you undoubtedly pursue hobbies and activities for which other people have absolutely zero utility.
I’ll cop to not making myself clear on this point. One of the reasons most often given for hunting aside from the “fun” or hobby aspects is that it’s a food source.
My point was–or should have been–it’s an uneconomical way of getting food.
My point was–or should have been–it’s an uneconomical way of getting food.
Not sure that’s always the case. If you invest in huting long-term, the only significant recurring costs you have are licenses and ammunition. Two goo-sized does, however, can fill a freezer and last the winter for a family of 5 (speaking from experience here). Much cheaper than food of a comparable quality.
“Two goo-sized does,” should be two-good sized does (as in plural of doe).
Having been on the demand end of the freezer, I’m going to agree with Edward. When I was young, we at times had only two ways of getting food: from the church, and from my dad’s hunting and fishing activities.
Of course, you can feed a lot of kids for not much money with beans and rice. Which may be the point.
Not sure that’s always the case.
Actually, it’s almost always the case. Not just in terms of the equipment (firearms, freezers, etc.) but also in terms of the time involved, some of which results in no game.
A family friend runs a meat locker in a very rural area of the Midwest. They dress and butcher game; they’ll even make sausage,jerky, smoke, or cure meats for you. Of course, the bulk of their business is in storing meat. He estimates 80% of the game brought into his business is ultimately wasted.
Slarti and I may be remembering harder times Jadegold.
Back in the 70’s, when the unemployment rate in my county was over 25% and it didn’t matter how much time you spent hunting because there were no paying jobs to occupy your time otherwise, hunting was most definitely cheaper.
Actually I had in mind the early 60s, when I was just a wee lad, and my dad was employed a small fraction of the time. Once we’d hit our teen years, times were much better. We even had shoes.
Sure, Edward. I’m sure there are rural areas where hunting is almost a necessary way to supplement the family’s diet.
I spent time (actually as part of a hunting trip 20+ years back) in Grygla,MN where I met a family of subsistence farmers. Without hunting, those folks didn’t eat so well in the winter.
My “harder times” were the 70’s…yours the 60’s…my overarching point is that perhaps what we’re basing our assessment on here doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe Jadegold is right.
I hate to go all global on stuff like this. My aunt and uncle live in rural Wisconsin. They’re both schoolteachers, so there’s no question in my mind that hunting is an economic plus for them. They don’t need it for survival, but it makes life a little better.
One of the cranes died Wednesday morning at Kansas State University’s veterinary hospital. The other is recovering from a broken wing and several body wounds. …
It’s a damn sad day in this country when a whooping crane gets better medical attention than a human with no health insurance. A damn sad day.
As for the hunting to provide food argument, please show me any part of the United States where malnutrition is a bigger health problem than obesity.
You can’t.
Furthermore, if you are worried about deer overpopulation, stop letting people kill coyotes. It’s not rocket science.
There are no coyotes in Ohio that I know of…but there are so many deer you see a dead one every half mile or so along the highway.
Google: coyotes Ohio, first link:
“Today coyotes can be found in all eighty-eight counties, with the greatest abundance in central Ohio”.
From another link on the first page of results:
“Rep. Jimmy Stewart has introduced HB 444, a bill that would create a $50 bounty payment for coyotes in Ohio”.
And yet another:
“Coyotes are legal game to pursue in the state of Ohio”.
Worried about deer overpopulation? Stop letting people kill coyotes.
And while you’re at it, mow down all that grain. With all that food around, the deer population is going to go absolutely nuts.
With all that food around, the deer population is going to go absolutely nuts.
Unless there is a predator species to control them.
Why not wolves, then? Or, you know, you could consider man a predator species.
felizrayman….
who knew?
Why not wolves, then? Or, you know, you could consider man a predator species.
I’d have no problem with wolves. Other people would. They also have problems with coyotes, but coyotes are smarter and stealthier than wolves. The range of wolves has shrunk to a few small places in the US while coyotes have expanded to take over the wolves former range.
Part of this is due to what Edward pointed out – although there are likely coyotes living within a few miles of him, he has never seen or heard one (or if he did, he thought it was a dog).
You can certainly consider man a predator species. As the US population becomes more and more suburban, or exurban, using man as a predator species is going to mean relying, in residential areas, on the marksmanship of people who can’t see well enough to distinguish between a sandhill and a whooping crane. Personally, I know which predator species I would rather have walking around my neighborhood, but preferences may vary, and people who own bite-sized dogs or livestock may disagree with me.
Part of this is due to what Edward pointed out – although there are likely coyotes living within a few miles of him, he has never seen or heard one (or if he did, he thought it was a dog).
Not that it changes your point at all, but I no longer live in Ohio. I’m pretty sure the only coyotes within a mile of me now are members of Lower East Side motorcycle gang.
Anyone who can’t tell a sandhill crane from a whooping crane (assuming they’re not lying through their teeth) is too blind to be carrying a firearm.
Could not agree more.
I’m assuming they are both lying through their teeth and are the kind of idiots who blaze away at anthing that moves and some things that don’t.
The cool thing about mankind is we serve as our own predators, even though we won’t eat each other.
I didn’t mean “cool”. I meant “odd’, or “weird”. 😉
On the subject of hunting, I like all kinds of yummy packaged animal parts. And I have pictures of my grandfather and my dad and my uncle holding up the carcasses of most of the squirrels and hedgehogs in northeastern Ohio. And I have friends who hunt and fish and give me their kill, which I freeze or not, and braise, saute, roast, and grill.
But here’s what gets me. Sometimes I watch hunting shows on the telly and watch whispering, camoflaged, guys with big-looking guns and telescopic sights hiding behind trees as they stalk turkeys. The turkey minds his own business and comes into a clearing and fans out his marvelous tail feathers and ka-boom, he be dead. Then the hunters, panting and huffing, run over and invariably exclaim to the camera that this turkey is an absolutely gorgeous creature, and then the camera pans to the turkey sprawled there, its turkiness steaming out and its head lolling, and its tail feathers not quite catching the light the way they did a few minutes ago, and I want to say: Actually, it was a gorgeous creature. Now it’s an effing hunk of dead meat. So, shut up, and get it home and eat it before it rots.
Why can’t these guys convert the turkeys to Christianity and invite them to Thanksgiving dinner for some soy cake? Or at least get out my face.
And that goes for what’s-his-name the rock star from Michigan who cheats on his numerous wives and has the head of every creature on his wall and will be President one day if we don’t watch out. Then my head will be on the wall of the Lincoln bedroom.
They make me head for the cookbook for the grilled soycake recipes.
It’s a damn sad day in this country when a whooping crane gets better medical attention than a human with no health insurance. A damn sad day.
See, vets usually don’t operate on or treat humans, and I’m inclined to say that’s a good thing.
oops, italics should be the other way round
I’m pretty sure the only coyotes within a mile of me now are members of Lower East Side motorcycle gang.
How far are you from Central Park?
I knew you’d ask that…more than a mile.
I knew you’d ask that…more than a mile.
Well, I originally said “a few miles”, and of course, depending on what the definition of “few” is…
well, in the interest of being exact, Yahoo tells me I live exactly 5.2 miles from the zoo. Don’t think that would fall in under anyone’s rational sense of a “few miles”, but compared to the distance from here to Ohio, I guess it’s closer than not.
Not just the zoo – coyotes have been seen (and captured) in Central Park “in the wild”, whatever wild means in a place like Central Park, as well as in Woodlawn Cemetery and Van Cortland Park in the Bronx.
There’s some more info here including the description of a coyote chase zigzagging through midtown.
That coyote. He’s really a crazy clown, isn’t he? When will he learn he can never mow him down?
I saw a movie once where there were wolves in hiding all over NYC. Of course, in the end the bad guy had his head bitten off by a wolf.
“but it makes life a little better.”
Whose life? Certainly not the elk’s ;).
semi-occasional poem spam:
Wile E. Coyote
Wile E. Coyote –
Supergenius,
Western Daedalus or Icarus,
Prometheus or Tantalus unchained,
Tortured less by the bird
Than his own desires –
Has been edited
From his cartoon hell
Of dry river beds,
Boulders, and anvils,
Treacherous hand-grenades
And fickle physical laws,
Into a worse purgatory,
(Not spared the mid-air
Realization
That he has run too far,
The shock that the Sisyphean stone
Is rolling back to him)
Where he must fall,
Pursued by half a cliff,
But never crash,
Be crushed and crawl away,
Impossibly alive and hungry
To try again,
By some who’d rather children read
Of the slaughter of the Trojan War,
Of Pyrrhus’s words to Priam,
Of Odysseus’s hall spattered
With blood and the twitching
Feet of his sluttish servants
Hanged like doves in the garden.
Coincidence. I just got called out on an injured buck. An eight point that had apparently been hit by a car. Police wanted me to evaluate his condition, but he was gone by the time I got there. They said they “hadn’t looked too hard” because this didn’t really want to find him and have to discharge a firearm in that populated area. But a couple of maintenance guys came out and said “The eight point? He’s been hurt for weeks. He uses all four legs to run, so he’ll be OK. Doesn’t slow him down any. He was chasing and breeding does back here this morning.”
Survival of the species.
As for the hunting to provide food argument, please show me any part of the United States where malnutrition is a bigger health problem than obesity.
Your statement presumes that the only reason to hunt for food is the threat of malnutrition. There are people out there, actually, who would prefer to eat something they shot, dressed and prepared over something that lived its short, miserable life confined in brutal conditions and pumped full of chemicals, then was tortured and inhumanely slaughtered before being processed and packaged. I am not one of them, as I neither hunt nor eat meat, but they are out there.
There are people out there, actually, who would prefer to eat something they shot, dressed and prepared over something that lived its short, miserable life confined in brutal conditions and pumped full of chemicals, then was tortured and inhumanely slaughtered before being processed and packaged.
That’s a good point, although I was responding to specific claims of economic reasons for hunting. I’m not opposed to hunting, and am omnivorous, but many of the justifications given (economic reasons, animal overpopulation) ring false to me.
Oh, I’m with you there. The so-called “deer overpopulation” is really a “human habitat encroachment” problem.
Actually, no, it’s not just a human encroachment problem.
The fact that there are not many Large Carnivores out there means that there is no natural check on their population, making it susceptible to spikes followed by crashes, caused by diseases related to overcrowding and stress caused by hunger from overgrazing.
Here in much of NE, most of what once was farmland has in fact been abandoned and depopulated and gone back to woods. Thus, miles of stone fences through which are growing hundred-year-old trees.
When Thoreau was alive, the sight of a deer near Walden was a shocking incursion of the wilds into civilization.
But after the flight from the stone-growing farms to the mill-cities in hopes of a better life, and the abandonment of the land, about a hundred and fifty years ago, things changed and the deer started to come back.
We have some coyotes and some bear, and they do keep the population down here. You don’t see the insane flocks of deer out under the lights as in PA, for example. But there are areas where the deer starve to death, because they overgraze and then crash, and the sentimental locals in certain towns will not allow hunting. Is this more humane than shooting? I don’t think so.
I don’t hunt myself, I don’t enjoy killing things and I could not afford it if I did. I have friends who do, from whom I have heard many hunting anecdotes, and I enjoy eating what they shoot – which I do not consider hypocrisy, any more than it is hypocritcal for people who find making bread a disgusting mess to enjoy toast.
It’s certainly healthier for you than most store-bought meat, and there are enough poor people in the North Country where mills have failed in the past century for it to be a significant part of the Yankee lifestyle – real Yankees that is, the folks whose names have been here for 200 years and more, and who live off the beaten path in this upper end of the Appalachians.
The sf series “Foreigner” by C.J. Cherryh, posits the problems that happen when a colony ship filled with people with middle-American middle-class sensiblities is shipwrecked on a planet at the rough edge between a feudal age and a technological revolution, one of which among many interesting conceits, is the culture clash of such mainstream sensibilities confronted with a society which looks upon eating domesticated animals as unfair and immoral, and considers the only legitmate way of taking meat to be in fair predatorial fashion, either by hunting in the field with guns, or fishing from boats, and only in the proper season, to be eaten with proper reverence.
Both sides therefore consider the others’ customs to be grotesque and obscene…