“The children of avid hunters routinely face questions and criticism about the hunting lifestyle they cherish. Billy Goes Hunting is the story of a young boy whose hunting beliefs have been challenged by his peers. In response to those challenges, on a trip to visit Grandfather’s farm, Billy asks the question – “Why do we hunt?” – and his Grandfather explains the many reasons behind the heritage, sport and tradition of the hunting lifestyle. Reading this book to your children will allow you as a parent to explain all of these reasons in detail and provide a great platform to discuss any other questions your children might have…
Read more about this book here: http://www.billygoeshunting.com/index.html
Read about the author Matt Butler here: http://www.billygoeshunting.com/author.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Much of hunting practises have zero to do with environmentalism or eating organic , free range animals.
What value has for the envoronment has trohpy hunting?
What value for the environment has ” hunt for fun” , for example , going out to the forest and shoot down small song birds, that hardly have any meat at all?
Nobody shoots small songbirds, you damn fool! You would be charged, and the penalties are heavy! Hunting licenses allow various grouse, and you pay extra for migratory geese and ducks. In some areas there are pheasant, for which you also pay extra.
Fishing is also quite heavily policed, and you need a fishing license, of course. I fish for Rainbow Trout, is that ok with you?
Cheers….theoldhogger
Sorry…I should have previewed and removed the “damn fool”. Namecalling doesn’t help!
Name calling doesn’t help and neither does not checking facts:-
http://www.savethedoves.org/
http://www.surfbirds.com/sbirdsnews/archives/proact/
http://physis.pnw.fi/pipermail/ebn/2005-July/000300.html
And the list goes on.
Mr. Hyde ,
” Slaughter of endangered bird species in Romania
The escalating hunting of migrating birds, especially by foreign hunters, the widespread shooting of song birds with automatic weapons and using of electronic decoy devices, has made Romania into a death trap for European migrants.
The state earns enormous amounts of foreign currency, amounting to millions of Euro, from well-heeled foreign hunters mostly from Italy and Germany. This shameful trade affects highly endangered birds such as the Ruff (Philomachus pugnax). Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) and the Skylark (Alauda arvensis). ”
There is a widespread practise in mostly southern Europe to shoot migrating birds, among them song birds….
Thanks Travis!
I think the Maltese have been trapping quail and pigeons for a few millenia. And it must be said that the hunting that is the subject of this book is not carried out in eastern europe and generally involves larger species. If the doves (pigeons) in Michigan were taken off a threatened list then there is no reason why they could not be hunted under appropriate supervision.
It is certainly the case that many working class rural families in USA and Canada rely on an annual hunt of Deer or Caribou to supply the bulk of their annual red meat consumption.
Most Australian hunting is for feral pigs, goats, foxes etc. Kangaroos can only be culled under license and it an almost unanimous view of landholders that the de-stocking (cull) of the Kangaroo herd during drought is nowhere near what is required to prevent serious degradation of the grassland ecosystems.
It is now well documented that the imposition of stricter gun laws in Australia has resulted in an explosion of feral animals. The problem has not been the limiting of certain types of automatic weapons but, rather, the imposition of other measures (outside the mandate) that try to discourage all gun ownership and make it much more difficult to lawfully keep the gun in a place that would facilitate the hunting of ferals.
For example, guns may no longer be kept (even with bolt removed) behind the seat of the ute. They must now be kept in a lockable storage, even out on the farm with no-one within 10km, and this means that they are usually left at home. And that means that all the opportunistic sightings of foxes or pigs etc that still take place at all sorts of odd hours of the day are not followed up with a bullet.
Meanwhile the policies of gross medical neglect of mental patients, that produced Martin Bryant and his massacre, have continued. The public got their “feel good” response through the application of an indiscriminant blunt instrument and the community is now getting the environment they deserve.
Automatic weapons are illegal. Hunters use the proper legal weapons. Hunters hunt game birds with shotguns. Pigeons are not game birds, although they are a nuisance in cities, where discharge of a firearm is illegal within city limits. I don’t know what they do in Lower Slobovia, and I don’t really care. Cry me a river!
Cheers….tholdhogger
i hunt for fun and food. i enjoy being out in the wilderness hunting. it takes me back to a time when or ancestors were a lot closer to our food soources than we are now. the fact that i know exactly where my meat is coming from is very important to me. no added hormones, etc… it has been years since i purchased a steak at a supermarket. i average 1 moose or 5 caribou a year. all taken legally and with a fair chase method. that along with the 80 pounds of vacuum sealed silver salmon filets i put in the freezer gets me and my family through the year.
hunting trophy animals provides for the younger males to mature to a breedable age. for a animal to reach trophy size it has lived so long that it is most likely out of the breeding pool due to the fact that the younger animals are stronger. the stronger are the ones that breed, not neccessairly the biggest. also, these trophy size animals are so old that they may not make it through another winter and die a slow death by starvation. i’d rather see it on my table than starving to death.
hunting small birds with automatic weapons? thats a crock. the only people who have automatic weapoons in the u.s. are the military and a few select individuals who have gone through extensive checks. besides, trying to hit a sparrow with a machine gun is preposterous. even trying to hit a sparrow with a single shot .22 pistol is pretty tough.
another reason for hunting that is rarely mentioned is that it is a replacive mortality factor. due to the fact that predator numbers have been reduced, game populations have the ability to overpopulate their range. during times of poor feed conditions this results in large dieoffs due to starvation.
Just how ludicrous is it that we will charge, & fine, a cruising yachtie [if we can catch him], for taking a goat off an uninhabited island, or a wild cow or pig off our newer, wilder national parks.
Having lost this free culling effort, what do we do? We send in park rangers, who in my experience, can not hit a barn wall, from the INSIDE, with a shot gun.
Nothing like a good barbeque, with a bunch of hungry yachties, on an isolated beach.
Once they have failed, we send in professional shooters, at huge expence, often in helicopters, to do a quick reduction shoot, which achieves absolutely nothing., except to prove that “something” is being done.
Nothing like a good barbeque, with a bunch of yachties, on an isolated beach.
“Much of hunting practises have zero to do with environmentalism or eating organic , free range animals.”
That has got to be your stupidest and most narrow minded comment yet Ann.
Congratulations!
I realise you prefer petro-chemical plants to productive eco-systems but please put down your blinkers.
If everyone were hunting the bigger animals you’d have a problem with that too; no doubt.
Thanks for the book tip Jen.
I’ll be sure to pick up a copy online.
Now we have farm animals, who somehow are surviving on an uninhabited island, being hunted from yachts! What has this to do with the book about teaching your son to hunt properly? Off topic or what! Presumably, governments should expend great expense to prevent the odd rich yacht owner from illegal hunting. Of course, governments are just loaded with extra money because of all the taxes they collect. and we can always use more SWAT teams on this planet! What Looney Toons!
Cheers…..theoldhogger
I’m surprised that hunting has nothing to do with environmentalism.
Does that men that the effort that I have put in to remove feral pigs, goats, rabbits, deer, cats, dogs etc from my bush block is for nought.
Like the control of weeds, the people of NSW have decided through the Govt that I have an obligation to control these feral animals on the land I manage to the benefit of the environment.
I suppose I could bait for these feral animals but this would expose the native fauna to a risk of being killed.
I don’t hunt for fun, I hunt to control the local feral fauna as I am obliged to by law!
Thanks for the Aussie perspectives on hunting.
Many years ago, there was a referendum in California about prohibiting the hunting of mountain lions. The main argument was that the usual trophy-hunting method is inhumane. First you set some dogs on a cougar scent. The dogs tree the big cat. Then the hunter shoots the cougar with a puny little .22, in order to minimize damage to the pelt. The mountain lion slowly bleeds to death in the tree, while the dogs are barking their heads off. Quite a sendoff, eh?
That argument sounded reasonable to me; so I voted for the prohibition. Yes, there are other ways to make cougar hunting more humane. For example, you could say that the big cats must be shot with hollowpoint bullets, having a specified minimum kinetic energy. However the alternative approaches were not on the ballot.
The cougar-hunting ban is not especially popular with ranchers and small-town residents in the Sierra foothills. Some 15 years ago, a woman was killed by a mountain lion in my local foothills. She was running (stimulates prey drive) on a trail BY HERSELF. If she had taken the obvious safety precautions, the tragedy may have been avoided.
The answer to the next question is no, I would not vote for a ban on deer hunting.
Name calling is fun, specially if it happens in the internet just don’t take it in the field with rifles on… 🙂