Here’s a little something that got caught up in my mind on the ride to work this morning. I can’t even remember what started this train of thought, but it rolled down the tracks and I realized it’s been clanking away up there in my mind for a while.
The core of it all is that I think we, as hunters (or as humans) often lose track of the big picture. We get so caught up in things that are important to us individually that I think we lose the global perspective and start to narrow things down. Suddenly the shades of meaning fade until every issue seems black and white.
As hunters, we really should all be experts at the “big picture.” We all know the pitfalls of looking for a whole hog in the chemise, right? You’ll almost never see it. Instead, we look for the pieces of a hog… the angled line of a leg, the sudden flick of an ear, or the gleam of an eye.
As trackers, we know it’s not just about the footprint. What’s in the trail ahead and what’s in the trail behind? Where’s he been, where’s he going, what might cause him to change course, and why is he moving at all? We can look at a piece of land and tell in a glance if it’s likely to produce game… and what kind of game we’d find there, where it will be, and why it will be there. We take in the big picture and sift it out until we see the things we’re looking for.
We need to take the same approach when we’re looking at the issues and politics that impact our sport and our behaviors.
For example, a lot of hunters get pretty worked up when county or state agencies take on the control or eradication of wild hogs on public land. Almost invariably, the approach relies on professional trappers and/or sharpshooters. Hunters get angry, crying out that, “Hey! We could do that instead, and the county or state could make money instead of spending our tax dollars!”
On the surface, that certainly makes a lot of sense. Hunters want more access to productive land. Parks have a surfeit of hogs that are presenting a risk to people, pets, and property. We pay for tags, licenses, and our taxes pay for those parks. Most of us would even be willing to pay a special fee to hunt the parklands.
But that’s taking a pretty narrow viewpoint, and a tunnel vision approach tends to exclude too many other valid viewpoints.
First of all, we have to consider the bigger problem… management of a large, public land for multiple constituents. Nationwide, hunters are a tiny fraction of the population. What about all those other folks who want to use those parklands for their own purposes… birdwatching, hiking, getting the kids out of the house and into open land? Who screams the loudest when it comes down to public land decisions? (Hint, the screamers are seldom wearing camo.) Point is, public land is PUBLIC, and the managers must bow to the wishes of the majority… and that is not us.
The other consideration is, if we’re honest about this, how efficient would we be at eradication? That’s not sport hunting. It’s pest control. It’s indiscriminate slaughter of old and young alike. It’s one thing to pass on a trophy boar and opt for the meat hog and another altogether to kill every pig we can find, right on down to the tiny, striped babies.
Eradication is hard, ugly work and requires a certain coldness of heart that, frankly, most hunters simply can’t muster… that’s not why we’re out there.
Unfortunately, too many hunters simply see a lost hunting opportunity and don’t think of any of the realities of the situation.
Likewise, the issue with the wolf reintroduction in elk country. “They’re decimating the elk,” scream the hunters! “Where I used to see elk tracks everywhere, now all I see is wolves!”
No one seems to remember that part of the rationale for a restoration of these predators is that the elk population was getting way out of balance with the habitat. Human hunters simply don’t kill enough. Perhaps the screaming hunters should consider that maybe elk tracks shouldn’t have covered the ground in the first place? Maybe elk shouldn’t be so thick that any nimrod with a rifle and few days to kill could go out and whack one. Maybe elk hunting is supposed to be a little tougher?
Sure, there needs to be balance. I’m not saying that the wolves haven’t done some damage, and I know for a fact that they have the potential to do a lot more harm than good. That’s why I’m glad to see the wolves delisted and lethal management programs (including sport hunting) implemented. The wolves aren’t that much different than people in a lot of ways… turn them loose on a land of milk and honey (or elk and deer) and they’re gonna set up shop and proliferate until the bounty is gone. It’s not a natural situation (there really is no “natural” situation in this country), and it wouldn’t be too hard to shift the balance too much, too quickly.
As hunters and self-proclaimed conservationists, we need to strike a balance of our own and recognize that our desire to have plenty of game should not necessarily outweigh the schemes of nature… and that includes the need for wild predators. Yes, a healthy population of wild predators will reduce the availability of easy game for human hunters. But wild game shouldn’t be so easily available in the first place… that’s overpopulation, and uncontrolled overpopulation leads to environmental disaster.
In an even bigger picture, we have to remember that we (humans) are trying to manage almost every major game species because our impacts created this imbalance in the first place. Wildlife Management is a necessary science, because without it, there’d be a lot less wildlife in this country. We wouldn’t have whitetails in the southeast. We’d probably have seen a practical end to the wild turkey, the bison, and the pronghorn. Elk would be a rare animal indeed. Alligators were pretty much pushed into the Florida swamps and gone from their natural range.
The thing is, we’re still not very good at wildlife management.
Sure, restoration efforts have certainly been successful. Too successful, in fact, as evidenced by the overpopulations of whitetail that result today in billions of dollars in crop damage annually, a high rate of deer/auto collisions, and the spread of disease such as CWD. Elk are overrunning the habitat in many parts of the west, stripping the landscape, destroying farm crops, and displacing other creatures (including mule deer). Snow geese have rebounded to the point that they’re wiping out their own breeding grounds.
Hunters, and our efforts at conservation, have been largely responsible for all of this… both the good and the not-so-good. We spend a lot of time trumpeting our successes, in fact, while we seem to ignore the negative impacts. We’re forgetting about the bigger picture. We’re not achieving balance, we’ve just provided richer hunting grounds, and this is why so many antis accuse us of being concerned only with making more animals to kill, rather than “real” conservation. Sometimes, I almost find myself agreeing with them on that.
Of course, most of us know better. We know, for example, that habitat restoration and preservation provides for all kinds of wildlife. It’s not just about the deer or ducks we want to shoot. We (most of us) don’t go hunting to sit in a shooting gallery. We go to experience nature, and all that it entails. We recognize the risks posed by overpopulation or by species encroaching into new habitat (e.g. whitetail deer in Montana and Colorado), and know something needs to be done. Unfortunately, far too many of us simply suggest more hunting as the solution, and we buck and kick whenever someone suggests alternatives that don’t agree.
That’s when we get caught up in our tiny arguments, and lose sight of the bigger picture.
In many ways, this country is facing an ongoing wildlife crisis. We’ve got waning populations in some areas while we’re overrun by others. I think a lot of progress is being made, as the science of the environment and wildlife improves, but we’ve got a lot of challenges still ahead. Many of those challenges can’t be resolved simply by opening up more lands and longer seasons for hunting. Hunting is only a tool, not the only solution.
We need to remember that, and we need to use that knowledge to work together with other organizations toward resolution of some of the crises facing our wild resources. And we need to accept that sometimes those resolutions may mean we don’t get to hunt when, what, and where we want to.
Nothing is simple, and everything I’ve said so far can probably be challenged, both logically and emotionally. This short screed, itself, has narrowed the “big picture”, but as always, my purpose for writing it is simply to spur thought… to challenge the status quo a bit and get some discussion going.
I’m heading out for our Coon Camp Springs mule deer hunts in just a little while, and I’ll be offline for about two weeks. I won’t be here to engage in the immediate debate, but I do hope some of you folks will toss in your thoughts in my absence. I know, particularly, that there are some of you who don’t respond in comments but send me emails instead. Please, take the opportunity to speak up here now. Many of you have some interesting and valuable insights, and your thoughts could add a lot to the discussion… both here, and in the larger scheme.
Well-written piece, Phillip!
Would love to read more of your comments on the problem we have in CA with mountain lions. Yes, I say, “problem” because unlike other states with a healthy population, Fish and Game has been unable, because of politics not available population control practices, to do anything.
My experience with sound and unsound conservation practices that occur either because of pandering to the antis like the Mountain Lion Foundation or hunters who want to get a deer even if the area/zone can’t provide it without damaging the breeding pool.
As a result we have some of the worst deer populations in the West, eventhough the terrain is available, such in areas of Sonoma County hammered by coyotes and cougars over the last 15 years. And we have a desert bighorn sheep herd in SoCal in danger of extinction, solely because of cougars.
I find it funny that groups like the Nature Conservancy would have us take the land back to what it was before the “Europeans” arrived. But, it actually seems they’d like to bring it back before the Native Americans.
From my research I started as a columnist for the San Mateo Times in 1994, I’ve learned that not an animal was not stewarded by the first arrivers in America. Just locally in Central CA there were the Chumash who burned hills for the improvement of feed for deer. They also hunted and used everything from grizzlies, cougars, seals, otters, salmon and steelhead. Balance was through Man’s interaction, not through abstinence.
Or, how many know how delighted the indigenous were when the first Spanish arrived with their cattle, because the trees that covered so much potential grazing land were cut and burned to offer that grazing land, which also led to an explosion in deer herds?
And now as budgets cuts become worse, DFG isn’t even thinking of conducting the research necessary to convince a judge to open up hunting of mountain lion in CA…it’s going to be interesting seeing how the economy and political/non-biological research advised measures continue over the next 3 years.
As for elk, well, my favorite elk hears to hunt up near McCall and the Frank Church Wilderness were pounded by wolves. If Fish and Wildlife had planted wolves more indigenous, instead of the Canadian timber wolves, it wouldn’t have been so disastrous…thankfully they’ve at least started opening up a season, but hunting an elk is a whole lot easier than hunting a wolf, which brings us back to the problem: not enough hunters, either for being an active participant in conservation or as voters.
…Frankly I also get tired of hearing kids ask: “Does DFG still shoot cougars, wolfs and coyotes from helicopters?” No, I say, except for the remoteness of Canada and Alaska, where economies and livelihoods of residents is effected by the number of moose and caribou, they haven’t used that practice since the late 1960s. Yet, it’s these old films from the 1970s, films I watched in school as a child, that are still used to depict the predator populations of now.
Cheers,
Cork