In a word . . . yes. There are certainly situations where having a semiauto is needed.

For example, my hunting partner injured the ligaments in his left wrist in an on-the-job accident. After two surgeries, the final word is, the wrist is not going to get better. My friend has had to change his work from driving trucks to something that does not require him to grip with any more than 5 LBS of force. What kind of a restriction is this? When I squeeze a bathroom scale with both hands, I can get the weight up to 180 LBS, 90 LBS per hand. I am not an exceptional physical specimen and I don't work on increasing my grip. Thus, 5 LBS gripping force is a pretty severe physical limitation. My friend has had a hard time using his pump shotgun this year during the duck hunting season. He has concluded that he will simply have to dump the pump and buy an auto shotgun.

It strikes me that, given this experience and condition, that my friend may have a hard time operating a bolt action rifle. Maybe operating the bolt quickly requires one to put a very solid grip on the fore end of the stock with the left hand while working the bolt? Thus, unless my friend is content hunting big game using a single shot, he may need to move to a semi-automatic big game rifle if he want to take timely follow-up shots.

Yes, there is a need for semi-auto rifles for big game hunting. It always torques me off that people ask these kinds of questions. Because I don't have one, it ain't needed seems to be the level of thinking involved. Sorry if I am jumping your case, heinz57, I have just heard this kind of thing from the gun control crowd, for example my sister. "Well, you don't NEED an assault rifle! Therefore you should have no objection to voting for John Kerry!" Sorry, please don't presume what I do or do not have a need for in the way of assault rifles. I bet if I lived in one of the poor districts of New Orleans having a semi-auto "assault rifle" with a 30 round clip might have given one a warm, comforting sense of well being in about September 2005 when looters were running around stealing stuff.

After reading other posts on this thread, heinz57, I see you are NOT advocating banning semi-autos, but just asking a question. Given the context -- Canadian government moving to ban all semi-autos -- the question appears larger than your original question. The question, more to the point, is "do we need semi-autos for hunting?" As I explain above, my friend very definitely DOES need a semi-auto for duck hunting. Duck hunting very definitely relies upon fast follow-up shots -- either to kill an injured duck or to execute a double (I shot a double on Gadwall last Saturday evening, yay!). My friend simply cannot operate his pump shotgun any longer due to his wrist ligament injury. He went hunting with me Saturday night, shot about 6 times, and the pain in his wrist from operating his pump shotgun prevented him from going out with me to duck hunt again the next morning as had been our plan.

This issue of physical limitations comes up in a number of contexts. One of the things that was linked with the "assault weapons" ban here in the states was a pistol grip on the rifle was "bad" or a sign of a banned weapon. For a time I had a wrist injury that prevented my wrist from flexing without some pain. Gripping a standard big game rifle around the grip just behind the trigger and flexing my wrist to place the gun into shooting position against my shoulder involved flexing my wrist to a painful degree. While thankfully this wrist injury has passed, it occured to me at the time that a pistol grip stock would avoid this particular wrist flexing operation to shoot my gun.