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The C.A.S.H. Courier
ARTICLE from the Winter 2009 Issue
Ask Uncle Joe
 BY JOE MIELE
GOT A QUESTION FOR UNCLE JOE?
YOU CAN E-MAIL IT TO ASKUNCLEJOE@HOTMAIL.COM .
WOULD YOU RATHER SNAIL MAIL YOUR QUESTION? SEND IT TO: ASK UNCLE JOE,
C/O WILDLIFE WATCH, BOX 562, NEW PALTZ, NY 12561.
UNCLE JOE GETS A LOT OF MAIL SO DON’T BE OFFENDED IF HE CANNOT ANSWER YOUR QUESTION IN THE COURIER. HECK, HE’S GOTTA WORK A DAY JOB, TOO.
Letters are printed as received. They are unedited.
Hello Friends –
Have you ever wanted to reply to some of the letters that make their way
into the Dear Uncle Joe column? If so, now’s your chance! Send in your
response to the letter pasted below.
Uncle Joe and the C.A.S.H. brain
trust will review the submissions and the best one will appear in the next
Dear Uncle Joe column and on the C.A.S.H. website.
The best response should be both
educational (it will offer a solution to a problem), and entertaining (we
love sarcasm).
The deadline for submissions is a
couple of days before the next issue of the Courier goes to print, whenever
that is. Your submission should be sent to
askunclejoe@hotmail.com
or to
“I Want to Be Uncle Joe,”
C/O The Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting,
P.O. Box 13815, Las Cruces, NM 88013.
This is your chance to become
famous and revered by being Uncle Joe for a day! Here’s the letter:
Dear Uncle Joe:
Your group is nothing but a bunch of Idiots. Abolishing sport hunting is an
extremely done. You say it destroys the ecosystem people have been doing it
for thousands of years and it has worked out great. Many picutres that are
drawn for the Audobon Society were done by killing the animals. We do
try to keep people from killing off the protective species - seals, whales,
etc. what makes you so smart? What should I do about the bears that run
through my property and kill my goats and chiskens? Without hunting those
damn bears I’d lose more chikens all the time. They smashed out the fence
and came in so how am I supposed to stop them. ? wioth a camera like your
dumb site says to?
Lucas,
Nough, TN
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Dear Uncle Joe:
I just read the article about where it says that deer hunting putting mens’
hearts at risk..... I could only laugh when I read it.....The deer hunting
does not put the person at risk....It’s the smoking, overweight, high
cholesterol, heart disease that puts the person at risk....not the deer
hunting.....You guys really need to get educated a little more before you
make such claims....
Louie P.
Milltown, IN
Dear Mr. P:
If you read the article again, it states “In a study of 25 middle-aged male
deer hunters, researchers found that the activities inherent in hunting —
like walking over rough terrain, shooting an animal and dragging its carcass
— …led to potentially dangerous heart-rhythm disturbances, or diminished
oxygen supply to the heart.”
It states that “activities inherent in hunting” are the ones causing
problems. If these activities are inherent in hunting, the sport
itself is indeed putting people at risk. Since hunters are generally
not the healthiest people (the study also indicated that 100% of hunters
studied had either coronary heart disease, were overweight, smoked or had
high blood pressure or cholesterol), my advice is to stop hunting and
smoking and to start exercising. If you take up an activity such as hiking,
you’ll be able to enjoy nature while getting in some exercise and
stress-relieving relaxation at the same time.
Peace,
Uncle Joe
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Dear Uncle Joe:
Have you ever bothered to check in to see who is hunting in the country.
Mostly folks with incomes over $50,000.00 a year. It’s funny how you
like to make fun and point out peoples punctuation and grammer, like there
fools and I guess this somehow is meant to belittle them and give less
validity to there opinions. No sir I’m not in any way an English scholar but
I’m not an ediot either. By the way I plan to come out to N.M. in the near
future to kill one of your magnificant bull elk! But rest assured it will be
eaten and not wasted and his stately head will adorn the fower of my home.
Jake M.
Chemung, NY
Dear Jake:
I thought hunters tell us that they need to kill animals to feed their
families? But if they are making over $50k a year, it seems that they have
plenty of money to buy fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds and legumes. As for
wanting to come to kill a bull elk, you better start saving your money – a
non-resident elk hunting permit can set you back $781.00. If hunters were
truly interested in feeding their families, they would spend that $781 on
food, rather than on a single hunting permit.
Peace,
Uncle Joe
-------------------------------------------------------
Dear Uncle Joe:
I really like your letter to justify your website and believes. How do
you know that hunters only shoot healthy deer and leave the unhealthy to
breed? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Hunters do more for
the environment and wildlife than anyone else. Why don’t you use the money
that you get for promoting anti-hunting and instead use it for wildlife
habitat. Ask a farmer that provides your food if hunting is necessary
or not? Look at Gettysburg National Park and see why NOT Hunting
doesn’t work. The deer didn’t ‘correct’ themselves. They ate
everything in site. Research it and stop putting misinformation on
here. Humans are part of the food chain. We are animals in this
ecosystem as well.
Pete V.
Yelm, WA
Dear Pete:
Common sense tells us that hunters kill the strongest and healthiest
animals, leaving the weakest to breed. But if you don’t want to rely on
common sense (since hunters rarely do), you can look to science for proof.
Researcher Chris Darimont of the University of California, Santa Cruz
reviewed 34 studies that tracked 29 species across 40 different geographic
systems, and found that hunted animal populations are on average 20 percent
smaller in body size than previous generations. “Harvested organisms are the
fastest-changing organisms of their kind in the wild, likely because we take
such high proportions of a population and target the largest,” said Mr.
Darimont.
Additionally, Douglas Chadwick wrote in National Geographic magazine that
trophy hunting “has caused a decline in the average size of Kodiak Bears [in
Alaska] over the years.” Columbia University biologist Don Melnick recently
said trophy hunting is “highly likely to result in the end of a species.”
Human hunters are a destructive force that cannot be compared to
predators in the wild. Whereas natural predators take out the small, the old
and the weak, human hunters kill the largest trophies they can find, harming
those species in the process.
This information was published in the journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences on January 12, 2009.
And as per your suggestion, I did research the Gettysburg National Military
Park deer hunts and I found them to be typical of what is happening
elsewhere.
The Pennsylvania State University College of Agricultural Sciences conducted
a study of the state of the park as it relates to deer and native
vegetation.
For some reason that was not mentioned in their report, the goal of the
“Deer Management Program” was to have only 25 deer per square mile in the
park.
The deer were heavily hunted for years following the implementation of
the hunting program in 1995, and surprise, surprise, the goal of 25 deer per
sq. mile had yet to be achieved when their report was published nine years
later.
This indicates that since hunting increases the reproduction of whitetail
deer, nothing short of a near eradication effort will be able to drastically
reduce their numbers.
Also, these hunts are being managed to allow deer hunting in perpetuity
rather than to achieve any sort of balance within the ecosystem.
Peace,
Uncle Joe
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