One of my acquaintances on facebook posted a link to a huffingtonpost article that I should have known better than to click on...but I did anyway.
Day of Shame: Michigan Wolf Slaughter Commences
After clicking on an article I shouldn't have clicked on...I then read it, AND was dumb enough to rebut the article...which is stupid, because I usually try to steer clear of emotional issues, and the fact is that hunters going out after animals as photogenic as wolves is a PURELY emotional issue...there is no real logic at all in the discussion.
Obviously, as a hunter of deer and potentially elk, cougar and bears(if one crosses my path) I am a little biased. I see no evil, or shame in hunting something that the state has accepted my money and given me a tag to hunt. Personally, I have no interest in going out specifically for bear, cougar, OR wolf...they don't taste as good as deer or elk, and getting the skin turned into a rug is NOT cheap. I've got better things to do with my time.
However...the author of this article trips my trigger in his 3rd and 4th paragraphs, when he ratios the number of humans to the number of wolves, and states that people are the ones out of control. I'm sorry...I strongly disagree with any position implying that any number of animals are more important than ANY number of people.
Especially because the author leaves out the fact that that the wolf population in Michigan has increased from 20 animals to 658 animals in only 21 years! Since 1992! The increase rate has actually decreased in the last 5 years due to increased rates of winter kill because there isn't enough food to around for them.
Or the fact that a wolf kills approximately 20 deer a year...so, where are the tears for those 13,000 deer that hunters aren't going to get an opportunity to hunt? All the families that could go hungry because they can't go deer hunting?
Okay...I made that last paragraph up...last year hunters harvested 420,000 deer in Michigan last year...meaning wolves accounted for 3% of the deer people did...looks like I'm ready to write for the Huffingtonpost.
I just think that in the end, wolves ARE animals(even if they are cute ones), and that state Fish and Game Departments should be able to manage them just like any other animals, without people implying we need less people instead of less wolves
"emotional issues" Do you mean emotionally unstable people?
ReplyDelete"I strongly disagree with any position implying that any number of animals are more important than ANY number of people." That's... very good. I'm never sure about anybody, but if they have that basic bit down, I can debate the rest.
"even if they are cute ones" Cute? They are very dangerous animals. I have faced off against a mere wolf-shepherd mix and I'll tell you, I would not want to meet a group of their bigger cousins... anywhere. They don't just kill deer, or livestock, they kill pets as well. Cute, maybe from a distance. Me? I'd send the people who love these animals more than people out to pet them.