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January 26, 2001
Hunting: The Joy of Killing
by Constance Young in the Register Herald

A January 11th Letter to the Editor criticized my earlier (December 7, 2000) letter concerning hunting, calling it an "emotional tirade." In his letter, pastor William Mayhew took umbrage at what he viewed as my personal attack on the young man in his parish whose picture had appeared in an earlier issue smiling and proudly displaying a big dead buck. In my letter I did criticize the young man's delight> in killing this brave and noble creature, but I bear no personal animosity toward this boy.

It is proven that when a person takes pride in killing it not only desensitizes that individual to the suffering of another, but it also serves as a bad example for other impressionable and less stable individuals. There is strong evidence among psychologists and law enforcement agencies that people who are cruel to animals are more likely than other people to be cruel to humans. In the words of the great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, "Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives."

Here are a few examples: On May 22, 1999, a 15-year old Georgia school boy,
Thomas Solomon, took his stepfather's gun that he had often used to kill deer and used it to kill six fellow students. In July 1998, a Minnesota13-year old used a hunting trip as an excuse to kill his 17-year-old friend. Earlier that year, in Jonesboro Arkansas, two boys aged 13 and 11 who had been hunting for years perpetrated one of the largest school massacres. Other well-known animal abusers-turned killers of humans include Oregon teenager Kip Kinkel, not to mention the notorious Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Desalvo (the Boston Strangler).

The good pastor was also offended by what he describes as my "Disneyesque" fantasies about wildlife and predation. Is it truly comparing "apples and oranges" as he claims to compare cats and dogs whom we harbor as "pets" -- to wildlife? There are certainly differences between the cats and dogs who become part of our family and deer who must fend for themselves in the wild. But this barrier is often crossed by the thousands of formerly domestic animals whom we abandon and who later become feral, or the occasional wildlife who "bond" with humans. What all of these animals all have in common is "sentience." They feel pain, and this is an emotional issue. Who can remain unmoved by the face behind the killing in this essay by Ruth Adams in The New York Times (11/1/78) about the death of a doe that she had known for several years? "A hunter who appeared to be about 14 years old ran across my land  pursuing the doe, now shattered by perhaps 20 bullets…..In two hours of shooting half her head had been blown off, one leg was gone, her abdomen slit from head to tail with her organs hanging out. Tying her up and hacking her to death with a dull axe would be more humane. At least the carnage would be stationary.  My doe would not stagger past my window, gasping, shattered, bleeding torn, still desperately trying to escape across that pleasant meadow where her gentle eyes had seen nothing to fear until that day."

This is the reality behind the frequently used euphemism of "harvesting" an animal. Hunting education courses can certainly make the killing less brutal for some marksmen, but I believe that there are kinder, not to mention more effective options to wildlife overpopulation than killing.

One such alternative is immunocontraception, which has worked on Fire Island. The other is nature's own solution. Nature has a way of balancing out populations if we use ecological wisdom and do not destroy habitat for predator and prey. Predation benefits both the predator and the prey species.  In truth, wildlife conservation as practiced by New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is a myth. It does not conserve anything but the jobs of the managers and the pastime of the mere 5% of the population who hunt. Wildlife is "managed" to encourage hunters
and hunting and to secure funds for management agencies. Moreover when one species is managed, other species who use the same land are also impacted, frequently negatively.

Let us follow the money trail to see how this works. Overhead expenses of state wildlife management agencies are paid for by our state taxes. Taxpayers pay their rent, phone, electric, supplies, postage, legal costs, computers, etc. Over and above this, wildlife management agencies have to earn their own keep. Salaries of wildlife managers are paid for out of funds earned through licenses for hunting, trapping and fishing as well as from the state's allotment (based on volume) from the federal excise taxes collected on firearms, ammunition, bows, and arrows. For every firearm and bullet purchased, money flows in to the game agencies (in our state it is the DEC) in the form of excise taxes. This means that in order to pay their salaries, managers must
encourage hunting. Because fewer people now hunt, the DEC is reaching out to promote hunting among younger and younger people and women. Thus government wildlife managers have turned our wildlife into living targets to collect excise taxes.Wildlife managers spend much of their time increasing the populations the more popular target species, such as white-tailed deer, so there will be a continuing and increasing supply for hunters. So that hunters will always have deer to shoot, wildlife managers employ the techniques of habitat manipulation and reproductive biology.> They manipulate habitat by altering the conditions of land and water to provide suitable habitat for "game" animals -- or species that the laws "protect" (by establishing seasons and "bag limits"). Wildlife managers use herbicides to kill vegetation that does not contribute to the food supply of game species; but these herbicides also destroy the homes and food supplies of other animals such as lizards, insects, rodents, and amphibians. Another habitat management technique is the "prescribed burn." Fires, which can get out of control, are set to increase browse (deer food) with full knowledge that these fires also destroy many species of animals and plants. The deer's reproductive biology is another consideration. Basically, the natural biology of the deer population revolves around the mating season ("the rut") occurring mid-October through early January. During the rut, does become receptive to mature bucks every 30 days and bucks compete with each other to mate with these receptive does. The fecundity of both does and bucks is determined largely by the amount of browse available to the deer herd. The more browse - the more fertile the herd. Birth rates are also determined by the amount of browse available to the does. Given adequate browse, a doe may give birth to twins or triplets, and when browse is sparse, they usually have a single fawn. In cases of extreme scarcity, the fetus may be reabsorbed by the doe, to be used for her own nutrition. Wildlife managers do not dispute the fact that deer are normally born in a 1:1 ratio of 50% males to 50% females, which would keep the population low because does would get only half the available food. When sport hunters take to the field things go awry. Hunters, like the young man in the picture, prefer to shoot bucks because they make impressive trophies to hang on their wall. Game agencies try to deal with this preference by usually allowing only one buck to be taken with a regular hunting permit. The natural doe-to-buck> ratio has become distorted by hunting, and in most areas in New York it has become about 5:1 (five does to one buck). This means that an increased number of doe are available to produce more fawns. If wildlife managers can manipulate the habitat to produce more browse, hunters can rejoice and wildlife officials can be assured their jobs for a few more years.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, game agents are responsible for ensuring a steady supply of target animals -- not to protect wildlife. In fact New York State even uses taxpayer's money to raise pheasants and other so-called "game" birds for hunters.
For more information about sports hunting contact Wildlife Watch at
845-255-4227 (wildwatch@worldnet.att.net; and http://all-creatures.org/cash.

Deer population initiative