Ozbow

Alex, I do not support your position but I respect your right to prosecute it. it is good to see such a discussion without spite or emnity. I apologise if what I now post offends you.

A really important point you have ignored is the huge cost of environmental damage caused by introduced pests to waterways, dams and fencing besides the often before mentioned horrendous outcomes to natives....which also includes native grasses and other plants. Pest species also damage the environment by spreading weeds and disease as well as ecto and endo parasites.

Some of these introduced pests are farmed and to a lesser degree the amout of damage is basically controlled and budgetted for but we as consumers pay the immediate extra costs but our grandchildren will really pay much more.

Personally I believe we should not be growing crops like rice in our fragile ecosystems wasting so much water; we should not be raising and eating old world hard hooved animals as they do so much damage to our extremely fragile soils and ecosystems. We should be farming kangaroos and culling excess kangaroos for the table not just for petfood {I do realise a reasonable amount gets on to the family table but there still seems a stigma attached]. In fact more of us should be out there chasing legally allowed rabbits, pigs, deer [depending on local licensing].

Jindy whilst being to my mind confirmed in support of being a hunter has put his points in a very clear manner and based upon a lot of thought, considerable research and from wearing the shoes. He has also conducted himself with considerable patience. Alex I suggest you wear those shoes or at least go to a few hunting clubs and have a yarn with a large number of ethical hunters.

Grahame A from my understanding of him is not a hunter but also raises more significant points to ponder just on a philosophical level but has the right and my moral support to do so.......my point being we are all different and have different needs. It is important to understand the other guy's point of view and probably more important the better thought out and presented.

We are all archers. Even amongst archers some have angst against crossbows and compound bows, but we all fling arrows. Some of us hunt for some of our meat. Some of us hunt feral animals. Some of us pay others to hunt or kil our meat and/or control pest animals. Some of us may be vegetarians or even Buddhists and buy our food from the same supermarkets which pay food producers on everyones behalf to raise, kill animals for meat and others during pest control. In some way no matter who we are, if we are suprting this website, we are all brothers [and sisters].
Why do we fling arrows, no matter the style, type or outcome? Because we love it as it sings to our souls and it is legally OK. Those who hunt love it and that is fair enough for me
as long as they are ethical, which is the same way target archers, trad archers or any other archer ought play.

Alex, you have stated that you would love to hunt. I do not know your circumstances and apologise if you have particular difficulties in going hunting, but why not take action to go hunting rather than talk about it? We are blessed in this country with greater opportunity than many countries. In Europe ans Asia they have thousands of years of archery as a way of life yet are not allowed to hunt animals like their forefathers. This is one of the easons why 3d archery is so popular in Europe.

Just my $0.02 worth

Kevin

Hi Kev.

longbowinfected wrote:Grahame A from my understanding of him is not a hunter

of land animals, other than with a camera, any more. Still hunts aquatic animals vigorously.

I think the aquatic hunting and especially if you eat some and release many is the most noble of leisurely pursuits. I suspect that you would do well with such undertaking.
Are you a trad aquatic hunter? Wooden or bamboo rods, bone hooks, cat gut lines?

Away from the mischief being attempted, is there such a thing as trad fishing other than bow, spear fishing or indigenous fishing [without tinnies and outboards] etc? Hang on perhaps alloy boats are ok if you use wooden oars.

Kevin
[who was recently left a 15 foot tinnie and 15 hp Mercury, soon to be used at Lake lyall with Longbow Steve

Hi Kevin.

longbowinfected wrote:... is there such a thing as trad fishing other than bow, spear fishing ....

Well if a Bow made from Glass and Epoxy is traditional than surely a rod made from Glass and Epoxy is traditional. If a bowstring made from Dacron is traditional than a fishing line made from braided Dacron is traditional. That solves all of that.

IMHO All fishing that is based on a simple one on one pursuit is "traditional". However, it may not be ethical e.g. using Fish Poisons.

Alex I have no problems giving and taking flak and I also don't mind being politically incorrect, your part of the problem not the solution I only see that you have a personal emotional argument and your determined not to have an objective think about the issues bought up in this thread.

I am not an expert, nor do I have local knowledge of the deer population and the effort that fish and game professionals in the states in their full time jobs advising, managing and assessing the management practices to sustain a healthy ecosystem put into this. So I am not going to have an emotional bleat about it; as stated above one hundred years and hunters have the opportunity at so much game and I suspect a whole lot of it is harvested for consumption.

I shoot all feral game as I am a firm believer in conservation and I harvest second, I am not about to live in your cane toad, fox, cat and boar infested wasteland Alex, I want future generations to enjoy a healthy ecosystem and we all need to do our bit, if it's not for you so be it; I respect your freedom to abstain. If your serious about only hunting for harvest and don't want that wasteland maybe you could come up with an awesome cane toad recipe and actually be productive, if it's a winner meal you'd be up for Australian of the year no doubt, I'll be happy to whip it up in the camp oven for you mate.

Give our natives a chance, step back be objective, we don't always have to like what has to be done, but throwing rocks at those that do.................

Debate is healthy and democratic, we all learn from it.

Bent Stick wrote: If your serious about only hunting for harvest and don't want that wasteland maybe you could come up with an awesome cane toad recipe and actually be productive, if it's a winner meal you'd be up for Australian of the year no doubt, I'll be happy to whip it up in the camp oven for you mate.

After this, Mate, if we hunt together you're going nowhere near the bloody camp oven!

Haha I think your pretty safe Craig I just couldn't help myself and said it out aloud.

I am on a bunch of email lists so I can keep up with all sorts of stuff hunting related and an interesting link arrived this morning. It was all about hunters safety and tree stands and while searching through the site I found a page that Alex might find helpful in his quest to understand the management of deer in the US.
This page shows the various parts to the deer season in Missouri ( Firearms Urban Portion, Firearms Early Youth Portion, Opening Weekend Firearms 'Firearms November Portion, Antlerless, Muzzleloader, Firearms Late Youth Portion, Archery ) and is broken down into counties so you can see just how nuanced the harvest each year is even if the total seems incredibly high to some (archery alone 43281 deer)
There were around 500,000 hunters last year

http://mdc.mo.gov/hunting-trapping/repo ... mary-2010-

Thanks Jindy, it'll make an interesting read

Jindy that was an awesome read with quality data, Game management that's really managed and well, my hat's off to them.

That was very interesting read. Can't see it happening in Aust. To many friends of Fur & Feather in Gov. Cheers Roadie.

Roadie wrote:That was very interesting read. Can't see it happening in Aust. To many friends of Fur & Feather in Gov. Cheers Roadie.

It was friends of fur and feather in the US that started the system there. Unfortunately the people in power here share Alex's lack of understanding of the issues, and irrational love of individual animals over the species, to see that hunting is indeed the savior of animal species. I don't know why they can't just look at the evidence, and listen to the experts, and get with the program

Managed consumptive use of wildlife is sustainable and desirable and can form the backbone of a conservation program for many species and their habitats.

The Ramsar Convention recognizes wildlife utilization as a legitimate use of protected areas, as does the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature, the guys that determine the status of wild populations)
http://www.ramsar.org/cda/en/ramsar-hom ... r/1_4000_0__


The EU also recognises hunting as a legitimate activity worthy of making an effort to protect
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/ ... dex_en.htm

With the appropriate prompting I can keep this up for a good long while yet, or I can stop if people aren't interested.

Sorry missed a link

www.traffic.org/general-reports/traffic_pub_gen12.pdf

Page 14 is the go

Pollies have great difficulty cultivating and keeping loyal followers.
Many forget what happened to Unsworth.
Their minders and number crunchers cowtow to political correctness nearly every time...otherwise they lose their spot at the trough.
So young to be so cynical.
Kevin

Hi Jindy.

jindydiver wrote:... the people in power here share Alex's lack of understanding of the issues, and irrational love of individual animals over the species, to see that hunting is indeed the savior of animal species. I don't know why they can't just look at the evidence, and listen to the experts, and get with the program

It is cultural, however I am uncertain what the cultural cause is. As an example Australia as a nation does not value good design or designers (or best designs and designers always seem to end up overseas). There is a strong body of opinion that this is a result of the country not having a design heritage in that modern Australia came into being post the Industrial Revolution. So people who designed things were never part of the Australian Culture.

There is more than likely a cultural background in Australia that sees hunting in certain light. I would start looking at things like modern Australia has always been an urban society - the majority of people have always lived in cities and purchased food via shops. How has affected the way in which things are viewed?

G'day Grahame
I think you are right about the disconnect Australians have with the bush and their food. Amongst OECD countries Australia is the most urbanised and we see it becoming even more so year after year. Sure we see the tree changers in the news a lot lately but really a couple of decades after these "rural estates" open up we see urbanism sweeping in to the areas and they just become another suburb.
People in Australia like to talk all "bushie" but in reality the majority have never been more than a hundred k's from a woolworths or a KFC. Their farm exists because they just want to be able to imagine they are living a rural life but many still buy all their food in town and they couldn't last a week without their access to the amenities of the urban areas their land abuts. Unfortunately these people also vote and their ignorance of what happens outside their 100k wide strip around the coast means they are easily misled on rural issues by snake oil salesmen from all sides of politics.
While things are changing for the better in NSW with the advent of the Shooters and Fishers Party and the setting up of the Game council we see other States in Australia going backwards. In QLD recently we saw new laws introduced surrounding the status of deer (pest declarations mandating extermination of many herds where possible). You have to wonder what is going through the minds of those in power when they want to wipe out a population of animals that may not be causing any real harm to the ecology of their habitat but that provide cultural and economic benefits to the people living near them. We understand very well the economic benefits of hunting and we also have a growing understanding of the societal benefits (mental health and wellbeing, cultural, and cross cultural cohesion) surrounding hunting, but we have limited studies of the deer to ascertain what damage they may indeed be responsible for and yet someone working in an ivory tower in a capital city has decided that the deer must be wiped out.
If only the people who make decisions about who can hunt where and what they can hunt could get over their personal distaste for our lifestyle choice, understand the principles of adaptive management and get over the old thinking of feral = bad, native = good.

Hi Mick.

jindydiver wrote: You have to wonder what is going through the minds of those in power ....(

For me, it is a constant source off wonder. It may be that they are poor at promoting their message or I am not smart enough to hear what they are saying. Then again, after watching and listening to the elected Members of our various Parliaments I am reminded more of squabbling schoolyard children than the elected leaders of the nation and things go down from there. On the other side we, the voters of Australia, keep putting them back in.

From a hunting viewpoint (or any viewpoint really) the only thing that will cause change are very hard statistics and scientific studies supporting a case plus a campaign of why such a change is appropriate.

I was talking to some Americans on Traditional Bowhunter and they don't have "Ferals", they have "Exotics" and see them as an economic resource, and not a pest to go to war against. We could learn a lot from our U.S. cousins, I think.

What many people don't realize, is that at one time in America, there were so few deer that there was no bowhunting season. With sound management the population exploded, some estimates put the whitetail deer population around 23 million in the early 90's. So many deer that they became a pest and many states liberalized the bag limit and lengthened the seasons. Some southern states let you kill one deer a day, 365 days a year! I hunted in Missouri a couple times, when you bought your license, you got 1 any deer tag and 3 doe tags, then you could buy extra UNLIMITED doe tags for $7 each. These tags allowed you to hunt archery, modern rifle, and/or muzzleloader seasons. Keep in mind that high deer populations cause huge economic losses to farmers (eating crops), homeowners (destroying landscaping) , and insurance companies (from car/deer collisions). While it sounds like we are wiping out our deer populations, it has taken years of these liberal seasons and bag limits to see any reduction of deer numbers. The vast majority of American deer hunters are meat hunters, not trophy hunters and turn their kills into food, though every one likes to take a nice buck. In fact, all states require by law that the meat be taken from the field and utilized. There are some animals that are considered predators or vermin that the meat isn't required to be utilized, cougars, brown bears, coyotes, crows, are some examples. Black bear meat must be removed from the field, but you don't have to utilize it if you fear trichinosis, you can have the meat tested if you want to eat it. Exotics (ferals) don't typically have to be utilized and there aren't too many places that have many ferals, other than pigs, in the wild. Most exotics live on private land and the state doesn't manage them other than to license the owner to raise the animals and to ensure that the animals are kept in an adequate enclosure (these are high fence operations). I think Maryland has some Sika deer on public land where they can be hunted with the proper license and tag, the same with oryx in New Mexico. As far as elk, yes, they were extirpated from the eastern states in the 1800's and early 1900's. There is has been an effort to reintroduce them to their former range which has been very successful, Kentucky now has over 10,000 head and holds a hunt, both archery and rifle. Missouri just released elk into its portion of the Ozarks, Arkansas and Tennessee also have elk. Elk thrive in the western US, the population in Colorado is about 300,000. I have personally seen herds that number in the 1000's migrating out of the mountains to their winter range, quite a sight. The North American Model of Wildlife Management states that wildlife is owned by the public to be utilized by the public and works very well when applied properly but must be backed with sound science. It's not perfect and unfortunately politics ends up putting it's ugly head into the works, but overall, it works.

Alex-Fear not, whitetail deer populations are in no danger of being wiped out. Their numbers are stable, even with the seemingly high annual harvest. Mule deer numbers are declining, but not due to hunting pressure, it's a combination of habitat loss (primarily winter range), drought, predation of fawns by coyotes, cougars, wolves and bears, and collisions with cars. Elk and moose populations are stable, though under the same pressures. While many people complain about how their wildlife is managed, not enough deer, too many deer, not enough big bucks, too many small buck, wildlife management is a difficult profession. It's a science and an art, trying to keep the majority happy and is every bit about managing people as well as wildlife.

Moreton wrote: they don't have "Ferals", they have "Exotics" and see them as an economic resource, and not a pest to go to war against.

Again that is very black and white. If exotic species are causing damage they are called a pest and they are ruthlessly hunted. Many States don't like the idea of feral pigs getting a toe hold and allow hunting of them as you please, Texas even has aerial shooting for pigs, while in California you must buy tags to even hunt them on private land unless you are the land owner.

Thanks for your input slvrslngr

Well, yeah that's a fair point, Mick. In fact, most of what you have said was explained to me in the thread I mentioned. No excuse, I was just plain lazy and didn't include details I should have to give a more accurate portrayal of what was said to me.

Just to keep Alex thinking...

http://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/hunters-shoo ... ng-weekend

JEFFERSON CITY–Hunters checked 89,728 deer during the opening weekend of Missouri’s November firearms deer hunt, a decrease of 8.3 percent from 2010.

Let's not make Alex think too hard, it's pretty dry at the moment; if someone smells smoke he's bound to get a douche.

Earlier I wrote about how hunting is hardwired into humans, here is an example of what happens when people eschew real hunting and replace it with striving for consumer goods that are not necessary in their lives.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... aming.html

This is an extreme example but it is not rare.

jindydiver wrote:Earlier I wrote about how hunting is hardwired into humans, here is an example of what happens when people eschew real hunting and replace it with striving for consumer goods that are not necessary in their lives.

I don't agree with you on that Mick. IMO that is about on the same level as people who say gun owners and hunters are more likely to be violent toward other people.

Jeff

I was not referring to the violence in the act, I was referring to the competition and the "must get" attitude. That it descended into violence is a symptom of other social ills I suspect.

Get on to any freeway and you will see examples of what I am talking about. People powerless and hemmed in by society and modern life become idiots behind the wheel when they experience the power they have over their own destiny when they drive their own car. Everybody racing to beat everyone else and win some race that only they understand. Unfortunately many don't understand it at all and can't recognise what they are doing for themselves. I bet there isn't a person here who hasn't done this at some stage. You know the feeling, you see someone doing something stupid in front of you, do you back right off and hang back there even though you see others following? or do you accelerate and overtake them thinking to yourself you are better off being clear of them? Be honest with yourselves, I bet 9 times out of 10 you pass them and rationalise the risk.
Do you drive along the freeway at the speed limit, or do you do the same speed as everyone else? Does your speed reduce slightly once you have miles of empty road ahead of you, and do you find yourself speeding up once you see a car in the distance? If you do all these things you are normal. That some people take it to an extreme and road rage ensues is another thing altogether.

The hunting of bargains has replaced the hunting of game.
Here in Australia we see it all the time when we go to sales. Just a couple of weeks ago I went to an Anaconda store opening day. Many times while I was looking around (with no intention to buy really, just curious at what they could be selling that BCF and Rays across the street don't already sell) I had people race me to get in to an aisle even though they could have no idea what was in there any more than I did. One lady was very free with her elbows as she jostled a young bloke in front of me and I did wonder how far people could take this competition for consumer goods. I hope it is our culture, not our legislated restriction on pepper spray, that meant it never escalated to real violence. Just this week I had a lady take offence at me putting plums in a bag while she wanted to get her trolley past at the fruit market. It wasn't like I was stopping her going around, but she wanted to get to something or another so desperately she lost her sense of proportion and wasted time trying to make a point by running me down with the trolley. What makes people turn shopping into a competition, it is the hardwiring of striving into our brains.
When we used to compete with nature and our quarry, we now compete with each other. This competition is now seen as normal and is even encouraged, who would have thought we would now see tv shows where kids compete at cooking Ever wondered why rubbish like Survivor even got a start let alone a run of many years? What I am talking about, competition and hunting by proxy are why.

jindydiver wrote:What I am talking about, competition and hunting by proxy are why.

I can't say I agree with that line of thinking at all.

Jeff

Stickbow Hunter wrote:

jindydiver wrote:What I am talking about, competition and hunting by proxy are why.

I can't say I agree with that line of thinking at all.

Jeff

That is fine, when we are talking about philosophy rather than hard science it is normal to have a wide range of views

An essay people might want to read about why we hunt...
http://www.cic-wildlife.org/index.php?id=18

But back into science
From some work done by two professors at South Carolina’s Winthrop University, about these same sales mentioned above

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/11/25/b ... ck-friday/

jindydiver wrote:

Stickbow Hunter wrote:

jindydiver wrote:What I am talking about, competition and hunting by proxy are why.

I can't say I agree with that line of thinking at all.

Jeff

That is fine, when we are talking about philosophy rather than hard science it is normal to have a wide range of views

An essay people might want to read about why we hunt...
http://www.cic-wildlife.org/index.php?id=18

But back into science
From some work done by two professors at South Carolina’s Winthrop University, about these same sales mentioned above

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/11/25/b ... ck-friday/

Hey Jindy,

I have to say that I do agree with your line of thinking. Our natural instinctive behaviours do seem to be sublimated into
"shopping-as-the-hunt" & aggressive driving, fights in pubs & nightclubs, amongst other things.....

The Bangor Daily News article (re: bargain shopping) you linked to had a great reader comment from 25/11/2011:

"People urged to buy commodities they cannot afford in order to acquire a happiness that cannot be bought."

SteelIsReal wrote:
"People urged to buy commodities they cannot afford in order to acquire a happiness that cannot be bought."

Sad but true

Some more info
http://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/firearms-dee ... shy-239000

JEFFERSON CITY Mo – Hunters age 6 through 15 checked 2,193 deer during the late youth hunt Jan. 7 and 8, bringing the total harvest for the 2011-2012 firearms deer season to 238,921 compared to last year’s total of 231,513.