Originally Posted by
tangozulu
So you would get rid of the blackies, cats and grizzlies outside the parks. Od course this would kill off the grizzlies in short order within the parks too.
Why are some hunter so intollerant of the wild continueing to exist as it was created? Thirty years ago we would have been.
Okay, I've been away for awhile.
TZ, I suggest you take a step back from your position for a moment and read once more what I posted. I did not - I say again, DID NOT - infer the elimination of blackies, cats, and grizzlies outside the parks. That you appear to have jumped so quickly to that conclusion says a lot about the underlying tone and the assumptions of your arguments ever since.
You focus an awful lot on the "competition" piece of the argument, that hunters who don't want wolves simply can't stand for the competition. Having a Freudian moment? After thirty years in the field, I'll be more than willing to claim that human hunters have been far more disruptive to my hunts than have the mountain lions that we seem to have no limit to anymore in my home range. Yes, with the explosive population expansion of cats in the Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota, I've noted significant changes in deer behavior over what it was thirty years ago. As well, a decline in deer populations. And yet, I always seem to find myself passing a shot on a deer or two each season, knowing that there will be another.
Interestingly though, when cats were sparse thirty years ago, I never heard anyone react to them with a loud "SSS" comment. Instead, we'd boast that we'd found the tracks of the elusive and mysterious mountain lion. Now that the "elusive" and "mysterious" has evolved into my cutting nine sets of tracks in six days last fall, four in a single day, cats aren't such a special find anymore. And, the mystery gone, "SSS" is heard far more often.
As the cats became more common, their intrinsic and aesthetic value here decreased. So now also goes the wolf. When you see them digging in the same garbage cans the coyotes did, our societal opinion of them will be different.
I'd much rather have the hair on my neck stand up when I find wolf sign like it did after I cut my first set of cat tracks, or like it still does when I find grizzly sign. When it happens, I know I'm in the wild again. That's a big part of why I hunt.
And while I'm at it FinnBear....
One of the phenomena we cover when we teach hunters' safety is how individuals' perceptions of hunting evolve over the years. New hunters tend to focus on things like "limiting out", evolving into "trophy-seeking". Then we "specialize." Trust me, there are guys on the bowhunting section here who'll be repulsed by your avatar, standing over an animal holding a bipodded rifle. And eventually, we just become the old geezers that we are. We enjoy hunting for the fresh air, and the opportunity to commune with nature and tell tall tales in camp, whether we kill something or not. Rather than lecturing some of the younger people here, try understanding them a bit. Obviously, I think we want them all to experience hunting the way we do - but not until they've learned it the way we have. They have to earn it!
