Deer Hunting is Necessary

This stress limits the animals’ ability to eat sufficiently and store the fat and energy they need t... ... middle of paper ... ...act, a fraction of the wild animal population is specially directed to be killed. Because of this hunting actually causes overpopulation and ecological disturbance. While hunters believe they control the populations of the animals they kill, natural predators, wolves, bears, and mountain lions , are the actual ecosystem managers, if they too are not hunted. Hunting is a huge problem in the world that is over looked by many. It kills millions of defenseless animals every year and wounds even more.

Because of the efforts of these concerned people the whitetail population has risen to around 20 million. The deer population has increased so much that in many areas, they suffer from chronic starvation. “Bucks only” laws passed years ago to help in re-establishing the dwindling deer herds now work against the deer by resulting in an overabundance of does. Even with the overabundance of does many hunters refuse to shoot a doe. They believe in the old saying, “It takes a doe to yield a buck.” This is entirely true but it ignores the basic law of nature that any piece of land, and the food and cover in it, can support only so much game.

Since the wolf is under the protection of Endangered Species Act a person could be punished with up to a $100,000 fine and up to 1 year in jail for killing a wolf. Back in the 1850's there was a major population increase of the wolves in America, this was due to settlers moving west. These settlers killed more than 80 million bison, the wolves started to scavenge on the carcasses left behind. By the 1880's the majority of the bison were gone, so the wolves had to change food sources. This meant that they turned their attention to domestic livestock, causing farmers and ranchers to fight back.

This program focused on predator control and alone killed 1,800 wolves in 39 U.S. National forests in just one year (Creel and Rotella, 2010). Once the gray wolf population had declined in the National Park, many ecological impacts were observed. Without a sustainable wolf population in the park, the elk population began to take over and increase in size. Due to this increase in elk, many of the deciduous woody species began to become overgrazed. With the e... ... middle of paper ... ...ions in those locations.

The following factors are responsible for their decline. Hunting, loss of habitat, and just plain apathy on part of the public to preserve the bio diversity of our land. During 1994/95, a total of 19,430 bear hunting licenses were issued to both residential and non-residential people. There were 3,790 so-called legal bear kills in BC alone. It is estimated that out of every one legally killed bear be it grizzly or black two are killed illegally by poachers primarily just for their paws, head, gall bladder, and reproductive organs.

Why were these stopped? “It’s those damn tree-huggers again.” Reintroducing Wolves into the southwest is the biggest mistake the government has made in several years. Farmers and ranchers suffer some of the most losses from wolves out of anyone in our society. For one, the wolves eat cattle, which is some rancher’s only means of income. Yes, there are programs which reimburse ranchers for their losses, but the raising calves to cows, feeding them, and immunizing them is more money than one wants to put out for one animal if it isn’t your income.

Every single caribou was wasted, as no person or animal benefited from the caribou’s plentiful meat. This harvest of caribou was common for this time period, making the caribou a threatened species and eventually led to governmental restrictions on hunting and hunting of endangered species (Mowat, NCW). A similar event happened in Michigan and the conterminous United States with gray wolves, when hunters would go out and kill wolves for no purpose other than “predator-control” (fws.org). With strict laws and restrictions, the wolf population would quickly return to normal. These two examples are reasons hunters should be concerned with the harvest of deer for sport.

Before Mayflower Landed, Indians had a Saying "you only killed what you can eat, so that you can eat tomorrow', the forest itself did not provide the optimum habitat necessary to maintain the deer population. The Deer’s were abundant, in areas were forest fires, lightening fires and other catastrophes had started to destroy parts of the forest canopy. Natural enemies of the predators of the deer like the cougars, wolves, coyotes also played a big part in regulating the population and keeping the herds relatively balanced withe habitat. As the south grew, The farmers began the grow crops, and then the war started, the need for cotton began the escalate, so land became a dire need, so the deer habitat once again was threaten, with no food to eat the nutrition stopped the production of the population, so the declining the herds once again was falling. Men hunting deer for meat was still a necessity for most families for survival was still prevalent.

The BSE epidemic officially ended when all of the cattle herds that had it or was thought to have it were killed in a major genocide of cattle. Ever since then it has spread to almost two dozen other countries, including Canada and now the United States. It was disco... ... middle of paper ... ...retty major in most countries. In the U.S., the case of VSE led to beef losses of as much as 4.5 billion in 2004. Although the study of this disease cost even more for the country we have been able to learn much about this disease and now know the precautions we must make to sustain a healthy beef environment for the people here.

The recent outbreaks of Chronic Wasting Disease on Colorado's commercial elk herds, is considered to be the worst ever. Biologists are trying to find out what this means to the wild herds of deer and elk on the Western Slope. Unfortunately, so far, the only method of treatment that has been discovered is complete eradication of the entire herd. Now, scientists are wondering if Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a disease that has been around forever, or do we need to spend millions of dollars on the research (Herring, 2002). Research and Background The origin of CWD is unknown at this day and age, but it was first discovered by researchers in a Colorado research facility in the late 1960's.