Take a Hike, Not a Life
A Wildlife Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Jim Robertson, C.A.S.H. Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting
March 2022

Many places that provide habitat for healthy populations of deer could also support the natural predators who evolved alongside them. All that’s required of humans is to stay out of the way and let nature take its course, or, in some cases, repair the damage they’ve done by reintroducing wolves or other native carnivores who were foolhardily eradicated.

Photo © Jim Robertson

Living near prime wildlife habitat means that at any given moment you might witness the astounding sight of great Vs of migratory ducks or cackling Canada geese flying right overhead. If you’re lucky, trumpeter swans might be among the waterfowl feeding and calling in the nearby estuary. And wood ducks or hooded mergansers might pay your inland pond a visit while searching for a quiet place to nest.

The downside of living near a natural wonderland? Being awakened Sunday morning at first light by the repeated volley of shotgun blasts, as though all-out war has been declared on all things avian (as is currently happening here this morning). The Elmers (hunters) out there (no doubt dressed in the latest expensive camo-pattern—a fashion statement apparently meant to impress the other Elmers out there) must be reveling in the fact that the dense morning fog allows them to “sneak” (in their loud outboard motor boats) up close enough to the flocks so that a large number of birds will end up dead, winged or otherwise wounded when they suddenly stand up and spray lead at all things avian or otherwise.

Duck hunting is the ultimate betrayal. It happens well into the winter, long after just about any other hunting season is over, when the birds are congregated in flocks on their wintering grounds.

And it happens often on lands supposedly set aside as wildlife “refuges.” Pro-kill groups like Ducks Unlimited (DU—an appropriate acronym that looks like an abbreviation for “duh”) insist that they have the animals’ best interests in mind. But when it comes right down to it, all they really want to preserve land for to have a playground for killing. (Just listen to them scream if you try to propose a refuge be closed to hunting.)

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE (PDF).

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