Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Public Access 2

A friend wrote this as a comment on the "End of Hunting" post below, and I thoiught it was important enought to put up front here, with his permission:

"The loss of hunting opportunities is a real concern. I have friends from other parts of the country who are driving 100 miles or more to access hunting areas, this despite an explosion of species like white-tail deer, Canada goose, etc nearly everywhere.I lived in Kansas for a year, and my in-laws have a farm in Iowa. In both states, I would have a hard time affording a lease on my salary. Hunting leases and particularly game ranches look more and more like the European system. The game is intensively "managed" with feeders, breeding stock, even breeding facilities.When I was living in Pennsylvania, a new hunting ranch once contacted me. The owner had heard I had hunted in Africa so I guess he thought I was likely clientele for his operation. He invited me to tour the property, so I did. There were pens where they were breeding "super bucks", which were then released on the 600-acre preserve. We walked around, almost stumbling over huge deer after huge deer, with some 6x6 elk scattered about. The hunting guide said to me "The $5000 fee might seem like a lot for a deer, but it won't the second week of the season when your buddies are asking if you got your deer yet."He was wrong; it still sounded like a huge waste of money. But they had no problem drawing "hunters". For the really big deer, the fees were up to $15,000. I have enjoyed reading several stories in outdoor magazines by the outdoor marketers (I can't in honesty call them "outdoor writers") who have hunted this preserve and raved about how challenging it was. Let's at least be honest about it and call it was it is--shopping for trophies, not hunting. Some hunting ranches in Texas are funding cloning of big game at Texas A in the race to produce bigger and bigger trophies.All this seems to be getting pretty far away from the American model of wildlife and hunting. On another note, I had a very short and tame essay on meat eating picked up by Alternet recently. It advocated buying from meat from local farmers and ranchers, and eating wild game. It received over 300 responses, most of them from irate vegans who wondered how Alternet could promote such horrifying practices as hunting and ranching. So it goes. "

1 comment:

Mary Strachan Scriver said...

Consider this an endorsement of both the eating and the economics of local meat, whether bought from a known person who raised it or earned by long walks in the mountains. It's healthier, its practical, and its historical. In opposition to the tradition of "estate hunting" brought to this country by the Englist, consider the tradition of Robin Hood and other inspired poachers and their allegiance to the tradition of the American First Peoples, who practiced both local hunting and seasonal hunting on a "commons."

I recommend two scholarly books: "Hunting and the American Imagination" by Daniel Justin Herman (Smithsonian Institution Press) and "Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains" by Theodore Binnema. They're a pleasure to read in the first place and very closely reasoned on these subjects.

Ironically, one of the major Montana problems has been the proliferation of deer within the city limits, maybe related to leash laws. They are like huge rabbits, but when they turn aggressive they attack people and are armed! But the idea of hunting in town brings up nightmares of children riddled by bullets instead of by horns. It all gives new meaning to the idea of animal control.