Where are the Lentils? - A Response to Audubon’s “incite” article
We were shocked by Audubon’s “incite” article, “Public Menace,” the
purpose of which was to gain public support for sport hunting.
The article contained many essential elements in the soup of wildlife
management: game and forest managers, the game commission, bucks, does,
natural predators, hunters, and environmental groups, and animal
protection organizations. However, the main element that was glaringly
avoided was the firearms industry.
Leaving out the role of the firearms industry is like leaving out the
lentils from a lentil soup. It can’t be done. Well, it can be, but how
in the world will people ever know what lentil soup tastes like if the
lentils are missing?
What the readers cannot ascertain from the article is that “game”
species are managed to be the recipients of bullets and shot. That’s the
crux of the business. In the 1930s, the Pittman-Robertson Act
inextricably linked wildlife management agencies to the firearms
industry, later bows and arrows were added to the mix. That feat was
achieved by placing an excise tax on firearms and ammunition, which,
once collected, goes into the Conservation Fund. The Conservation Fund
is set up in a circular fashion to promote hunting and hunting
opportunity which provides a continuing market for weapons and
ammunition, which provides funding for wildlife management to provide
more hunting through game species population manipulation. Manipulation
for hunting impacts homeowners, farmers, insurance companies and
drivers.
Wildlife management agencies were set up to promote hunting by
ensuring a continuing supply of deer for hunters. There are now two main
faction groups, those who want Quality Deer Management (QDM) and those
who want quantity deer hunting (just bring ‘em on).
The Quality Deer Management Association in Georgia writes on their
website that QDM is a:
“philosophy/practice that unites landowners, hunters, and managers
in a common goal of producing biologically and socially balanced deer
herds within existing environmental, social, and legal constraints.
This approach typically involves the protection of young bucks
(yearlings and some 2.5 year-olds) combined with an adequate harvest
of female deer to maintain a healthy population in balance with
existing habitat conditions and landowner desires. This level of deer
management involves the production of quality deer (bucks, does, and
fawns), quality habitat, quality hunting experiences, and, most
importantly, quality hunters.
…Pleasure can be derived from each hunting experience, regardless
if a shot is fired. What is important is the chance to harvest a
quality buck - an opportunity lacking in many areas under traditional
management. When a quality buck is taken on a QDM area, the pride can
be shared by all property hunters because it was they who produced it
by allowing it to reach the older age classes which are necessary for
large bodies and antlers.”
In other words, they are catering to the hunters who are looking for
big bodies and big racks. There is a fundamental difference in how deer
would be managed if large racks are the objective rather than number of
deer.
Most hunters want to kill bucks, male deer. Yet for QDM, the females
need to be killed to restore the ratio to a much smaller percentage of
females. Deer are naturally born in a 1:1 male to female ratio, but
quantity management, which caters to natural preferences of hunters and
seeks a lot of animals for the gun, has skewed the population so that
there are many more females to males. Than ensures a continuing supply
of deer for the bullets and shot. QDM would, no doubt, bring the
population in general down, but should it come to pass, the car-deer
collisions would result in far more fatalities with a greater number of
larger, heavier bucks. That aside, the fundamental question is, should
the society continue to tolerate wildlife management agencies that focus
on less than 1% of all species and so heavily impact the public. Notice
that I am even leaving out the ethical issues.
It is actually wildlife management that has caused deer-car
collisions, and an insurance company, headquartered in PA has proven
that it is hunting, and not the rut (as game managers like to claim)
that causes deer to flee onto the highways and roads to then be
slaughtered by vehicles. Our point is that management for hunting isn’t
good for drivers or insurance companies.
There was so much hodge-podge in the article to comment on, but the
most glaring misinformation was when Mr. Williams said that hunters
alone pay the bills. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The
Pittman-Robertson Act required states to provide a 25% matching amount
to the federal excise tax allocated to the state (based on the number of
hunting licenses sold). That 25% comes out of the General Fund and
amounts to millions of dollars that won’t go to education or health
care, bur rather to the management of deer and other wildlife for
hunting.
In addition, the wildlife management agencies use General Fund monies
for all of their overhead: printing, PR, support staff salaries, legal,
printing, and postage needs. That overhead no doubt far exceeds the
firearms money that they bring in for this self-serving division of the
states’ environmental agency.
While public money is being used to support this carnage, not one
person who would like to see alternative forms of management employed is
a member of the game commission. This is truly taxation without
representation.
Audubon appears to have sold out to the hunting interests. We find
this appalling and deceitful. Instead of advocating hunting, Audubon
should be seeking and lobbying for other forms of wildlife management,
such as wildlife watching.
http://magazine.audubon.org/incite/incite0507.html
