WNJ Opinion: The Truth about Hunting
I am a hunter. There, I have put it in writing for all posterity. To use a popular idiom, I have come out of the closet.
Even in this day, a time when the public prides itself on being open minded, there are those with prejudice against hunters. I twist another common word to symbolize such bias: huntophobia. Huntophobia is an intense disgust of people that hunt and is manifest in the loathing of the hunting culture.
Aside from huntophobia, the second leading cause of prejudice against hunters is ignorance, particularly in the media and the radical element of the environmental and animal rights movements. It is well documented that societies are filled with those naturally afraid of the unknown and the misunderstood. Their fears have proven to be one of the most common causes of huntophobia. This is especially true about society's attitudes towards huntsmen and huntswomen. However, hunters perform an important environmental service to society on many levels.
To become fully aware of these environmental merits it is first necessary to understand that the omnipotent force that has sustained life on earth since the dawning of time, and the designer and steward of ecosystems that maintains all earthly organisms, is Mother Nature. This grand lady has created and executed a formula that has successfully perpetuated the existence of life on our planet for four billion years. It would seem that humankind would be wise to study her formula and employ it to the best of its ability if it wants to be harmonious with the ways of nature and ecosystem health.
The way that Mother Nature sustains life on earth, and balances populations of living things with available habitat, is by means of predator and prey relationships. It is the never ending pursuit of the hunter hunting and catching the hunted (predator and prey) that is the essence of Mother Nature’s formula that provides the ebb and flow for balance in the world’s ecosystems.
We may ask ourselves why it is that nearly every living thing on our planet survives by consuming another living thing, from stealthy micro fauna to the most ungainly beast. The simple answer is that from the time of birth until the moment of death living things must consume energy in order to sustain their lives and the source of energy is found in other living things.
The huntophobe is often lulled by modern conveniences into to believing he or she does not participate in this formula. But, the huntophobe works to earn money in lieu of hunting and trades their hard earned currency with the food purveyor who in return performs the butchery.
Butchery has become an industrialized process with the food market as the end distribution point. The fact that the dirty work is often hidden from view conveniently anesthetizes the mind of the huntophobe from understanding that their own role in bloodshed is equal to that of the hunter. Additionally, the huntophobe imposes environmental damage that the hunter does not lay claim to.
The industrialization of food distribution has its origins in the farming of domesticated livestock and agriculture. In order to create farms forests are razed and in the process habitats are destroyed and wildlife is displaced or killed. Non-indigenous grasses are planted to feed animals such as cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, sheep and more. These animals may even pollute our air with methane gasses or cause further collateral environmental damage. The livestock is then slaughtered and distributed along highways and flyways in pollution-generating vehicles with final destinations being food markets. These businesses have also razed forests for their buildings and paved surfaces.
The huntsman or huntswoman leaves no such scarring on the landscape. They enter the fields and forests and leave it as it was found, perhaps with a deer or other wild animal that is the quarry that will feed their families. The hunter does not support or perpetuate the industrial engine we call food manufacturing and distribution. This seems to me to be a good thing for our environment and society.
There are additional benefits to society that comes from the practicing hunter. One of these advantages is that hunters consume a prey that is not fed with adulterated products or treated with drugs that have been shown to compromise human health over the long term. Hunting does not add to the growing list of ailments caused by processed foods, which swells the cost of providing health care and burdens an already overstressed health care delivery system.
Yes, hunters perform important environmental services to society. The benefits include culling overabundant game populations in a way that follows Mother Nature’s predator/prey formula for ecosystem balance while at the same time obtaining healthy, lean game meat as a way to obtain the energy that all things need to survive.
Yes, I’m a hunter. I’m also at ease at being out of the closet.
Anthony P. Mauro, Sr is Chairman and cofounder of the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance a group of three non-profit conservation organizations. Mr. Mauro has also authored books about conservation. He was also a member of Governor Christie’s DEP Transition Team. He can be reached at apmaurosr@njoutdooralliance.org.
Categories: WNJ Opinion, Hunting
Tags: deer hunt pro-hunting new jersey outdoor alliance bear hunt hunting
Anythony has a special talent of saying so well how it is that many of us who hunt actually feel. GREAT ARTICLE !!!
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Your article was eloquent and informative with the proper cliche justifications. Having hunted myself in New Jersey, I would opine that you represent maybe 1% of hunters I would deem safe ethical hunters. The majority of deer hunters are more driven by trophyism than actual safe culling of game. Hunters don't trespass on my property to squirrel or rabbit hunt. But they DO when deer season rolls around. You can write as much fancy prose as you want justifying deer hunting as ethical. It can't change my opinion of some deer hunters. Most deer hunters I've run into are pure knuckleheads. Only a handful practice safe ethical hunting practices and respect other peoples' properties AND the game they are pursuing. The culture of hunting has changed in the last fifty years, and not for the better. It doesn't surprise me that deer hunters are constantly cast in a negative light. Most of the negative attention they bring upon themselves. Animal rights activists don't lament hunters who pursue grouse or woodcock. Why? Is it because they don't even know what a grouse or woodcock is?! No, deer hunters are the Type-A personalities who call attention to themselves with their video cameras, "pro-hunter", "pro-staff" statuses on their personal websites. Did it ever dawn on any of them that carrying a low profile might be advantageous?
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Bo, as a hunter I think you make some valid points. But, I also think that some of your comments reflect Mr. Mauro's points. By the way, animal rights people don't make an example of grouse because they are nearly extirpated in NJ so there are few to hunt. But animal rights people do go after duck hunters all the time. So, to say they go after "deer hunters" because these people are Type-A personalities is the very prejudiced, stereotype thinking Mr. Mauro speaks to. It's no different than the stereotypes or prejudices we have heard attributed to gays, jews, whites, blacks, etc. I can say this because I have hunted for over 40 years and the prejudices you attribute to deer hunters has not been my experience in general. How do we accommodate the two diverse experiences if not for prejudice? I think that another point Mauro is making is regardless of how a hunter behaves it has no bearing on his positive contributions in helping to keep a healthy ecology and that he feeds his family with a wild animal that doesn't go through a process that pollutes the environment. Mauro appears to be saying that we need to seperate how we feel about the hunter and see that he provides a service to society and his feeds his family. That's how I see it.
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Some compelling points made for both sides, but deer hunting in New Jersey is a sport today, it's not born out of necessity. It is also a sound economic return for NJDEP as a cost-effective solution by using hunters to reduce New Jersey's herd. The pure economics of the taking of deer for personal consumption includes the likes of license fees, permit fees, firearm, potentially the cost to procure the firearm ID to procure a firearm, ammunition, gasoline to travel over hill and dale to get to the promised land, processing fee for the butcher, private club fees, and landowner fees if any. I suspect that driving my Jeep 4x4 that gets 15MPG may fall into the category of polluting the environment with a weighty carbon footprint too. Tally these costs up and they clearly show that the cost to hunt and kill game afield outweigh the costs of going to your local butcher or farmer and purchasing grain-fed beef. The environmental no-no's of purchasing from ShopRite are clearly worse. It's certainly not about feeding one's family. New Jersey's household income is the highest in the nation; we don't need to eat deer meat. We simply choose to.
As for this comment; "The huntsman or huntswoman leaves no such scarring on the landscape. They enter the fields and forests and leave it as it was found," I only wish this were true based upon the condition I see some of our state game lands each year at the end of a hunting day. Seems there are a few stereotypical slobs who ruin it for everyone else.
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OYK, way off on this one. You didn't weigh in the cost of leveling forests, displacing wildife, adding non native grasses to feed non native animals, methane pollution, erosion, chemicals added to soil, the cost of feeding the animals and distributing their carcus, the fuels used to raise them, slaughter them, and send them via truck and plane (polluting & large carbon footprints) to markets that use energy to keep them cool, frozen and the lights on for customers. You better recheck that energy/pollution monitor. I think that 15MPG looks like an all electric car compared to what it takes to get food to the market. As for your comments about the slobs... sounds a lot like the prejudice Mauro speaks about. Based on what I've read so far it seems Mauro may be on to something with this huntophobe thing.
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The article is right on the money. Not only from an ecological standpoint and prejudice standpoint, but also touches on the huge energy usage efficiency that hunting provides versus agriculture and animal husbandry. As for some of the comments I found that the comment about hunters being knuckleheads and stereotypical slobs it looks like there is a ways to go before hunter prejudice is wiped out. But there's been progress on race, gender and sexual preference prejudice, maybe there's hope on the horizon to end huntophobia.
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This is one of the most thought out presentations I have ever read. I am a fisherman and not a hunter but fishermen bear the same trait. Commercial fishing is worse than raising cattle as their indiscriminate practice of netting everything in their way destroys some fragile species and creates waste of protected species as they are dumped back dead as accidental by-catch. Recreational fishermen are by the most part conservationists, as they practice return of undersized and protected species back alive.
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Despite all the eloquent justifications, it's my opinion that while it's a healthy, ecologically-sound meal, whitetail is not at the top of the list of my preferred meat proteins, nor it it for most American's today. Chicken, pork, lamb and the lowly methane-emitting steer are still high on my list of meats I like to savor. Something tells me that getting the rest of America to buy into the notion of changing agriculture concepts as we know them today is going to take off like a lead balloon. Feeding a nation on venison is a noble concept, only it's not 1776 today.
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I don't think he's recommending that people hunt if they don't want to. I think he's just pointing out the benefits that hunting provides.
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Mypointofvu,
I did state in my comment, "The environmental no-no's of purchasing from ShopRite are clearly worse" when comparing hunting game to food prepared for the masses. So I am not "way off on this one" as you claim. I am not a huntophobe, but I clearly see some bad apples from time to time who ruin it for everyone else.
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