Good Will Hunting

It’s funny when I hear someone talk about “saving the deer.” Environmentalists that absolutely hate hunting. Not all the “tree-huggers” are bad, and most of their points of discussion are well deserved. But some people seem so far out of touch of the facts it’s almost sickening.

Where I live hunting is a city-wide affair. Every single friend that I have owns a gun, and just as many hunt. Archery, muzzleloader, shotguns and bolt-action rifles. Deer hunting is such a sport in St. Marys that the schools shut down on the first day of buck season. If you were to take a look at the deer herd population statistics, there would be a huge depression in the number of deer for all of Elk County. I myself have never hunted, and our family has never owned a gun. But I respect the sport and its purpose, something the environmentalists seem to miss.

Firstly, there is a major reason why deer hunting takes place: deer population control. No one wants to have cougars in their back lawn. No one wants a pack of wolves living in the forest across the street, most certainly not with children playing outside. So, the wolf, cougar, bears, and mountain lion populations were hunted to near extermination. This left the deer with no natural predators. What does this mean? Uncontrolled population explosion. The deer would literally eat themselves into starvation, where the population would exhaust all natural resources.

This is where hunting comes into play. By replacing the natural predators with unnatural ones, namely the hunters themselves, the herd can be reduced in size so that the environment can handle the herd. Hunting prevents the mass starvation that would otherwise happen, keeping the overall health of the deer good.

Of course, to reduce the “senseless killing of innocent animals,” we would need to reintroduce the deer’s natural predators. Then, we would also need to be willing to deal with the animal attacks. These natural predators do attack humans, for various reasons (such as a territory violation, or simple hunger). The environmentalists would need to make a conscience decision to allow attacks on people so that the deer population could be maintained, something that could be done without the attacks with hunting.

So, what is it? Bears attacking children, or hunters mounting a deer above their fireplace?