Paid to Kill: The Result of the Decline of Hunting & Hunters
According to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation, only five percent of Americans now call themselves hunters. This sad fact is driven home by situations like the one in Solebury, Pennsylvania where they are paying the U.S. Department of Agriculture over $250,000 for sharpshooters to get the deer population under control. There is something seriously wrong with people being paid to kill deer because hunter numbers aren’t great enough to control the ever growing deer population.
It could be argued that hunter efforts at conservation and rebuilding the deer population have been too successful and are at the heart of such problems. The problem with this argument, though, is that the same efforts have been made all across the nation without the same effects. Where hunter numbers are greater, the population of deer have been kept at a manageable level. So that leaves us with the likely fact that lower hunter numbers create the need for the hiring of sharpshooters.
Here are my thoughts on it.
Instead of spending a quarter million dollars on paid killers to take care of a problem that will only happen again without constant maintenance, that money could have been spent on promoting hunting and recruiting new hunters. Once done, these new hunters and their hunting would ensure the deer population would be kept at a manageable level. All without any more money being paid out by the town, and money actually coming in from the hunters through varying expenses incurred by them for hunting.
It makes sense to me, how about to you? Should money be spent on paid killers or on promoting the growth of hunter numbers and hunting? Maybe this should be the wake-up call that hunters are a necessity, and hunting isn’t just something done for recreation.
hunting, deer hunting, hunters, conservation, deer population, sharpshooters, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2006 National Survey of Fishing Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation, Solebury, Pennsylvania
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Here in central Texas, from Sept 1 to around March 1, we are covered up by hunters. Folks can hunt exotics all year round!
I heard the the population of Pennsylvania averages the oldest in our country. That may have something to do with it.
If our game and fish dept tried something like that we would send them to Mexico!