It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny

"Hunting is evil legitimized." Leo Tolstoy

Sounds to me that hunters need to become like the gardeners that save seeds. They don't harvest the ones that are perfect, with the traits they want the most. They let them "go to seed" - in other words, reproduce as much as possible.

How that can be done with hunters is beyond my ability to regulate, but it must be done somehow. Perhaps if people would quit hunting for "trophies" and go for food instead... but that would kill the macho bragging rights, yes?

The concerns raised are legitimate, but not as applicable to game bird, rabbit, squirrel and other populations and this should have been recognized in the article. Additionally, it was a major over-sight to not state that habitat destruction is the number one cause of fish and wildlife declines world-wide - not hunting. Non-hunters contribute to habitat loss and degradation in far greater numbers than hunters, for obvious reasons. Conversely, hunting and fishing licenses fund habitat protection and restoration and have allowed the U.S. to establish the National Wildlife Refuge System.
P.S. Who ARE you people trying to comment on this article???!!! Un-fit individuals that persist in the human population at great cost to the common good.

It has long been recognized that humans who hunt for sport want to kill the trophy animals, while predators like wolves primarily take the old, the sick and the weak, because it takes less work. Now we see the unintended consequences of the argument that killing off the natural predators, like wolves, preserves the game species for human hunting. Humans and wolves are not competing for the same animals.

The fact is that the definition of a 'loser' is transitory as well. If someone is surviving to reproduce..... guess what? He ain't a loser anymore! In fact, the 'losers' are the people who are getting killed or animals who are getting killed.

Most posters here are making much ado about nothing. I don't believe the author here is against hunting as much as she is against "trophy hunting" which is to narrow in on the bucks with the biggest antlers and horns. Some of the best naturalists out there are those who hunt for food or have been doing it regularly all their lives.

These are people who will take the females (when in season) or the ones with the smaller horns and antlers. They don't skew the gene pool by looking for the peak males with the biggest horns. When jack ass trophy seekers killed off many populations early last century it was your naturlist hunter who through respect of his prey followed a moratorium that allowed the populations to rebound. This is kind of what the author was getting at.

I am a Pro-Hunting LIBERAL who simply believes that we should give a little thought to the population that we hunt. Actually read the article instead of skimming the title and firing off a knee jerk reactionary post that consists of 30 words with 15 of them beiing the word liberal.

Clearly, most readers don't like evolution, and want to hide their heads in the sand. This is just classic evolution at work, and the data shows what it shows. That said, there is an obvious corollary to this, which is what is happening to the human species?

In a few instances this article is correct in the short term. Some game species suffer a decline in trophy class animals at times, but in the long run the vast majority of species that are hunted benefit from that hunting. The general public is no real threat to the "fittest" deer, elk, ect. The average hunter never sees a true trophy class animal, the thousands of animals killed are only average at best, and in most part very young, or very old. The fittest animals are very good at learning to pattern hunters and avoid them.
Trophy hunting of any species costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes place for the most part on private lands not available to the average hunter. This business drives the private game managers to produce more and more trophy class animals, not less. Although there is a real decline in trophy class animals in Africa, the dollars spent on these species will turn this trend around. More and more game restrictions are in place there every year. For the most part, the PH's (professional hunters) that guide big game hunters to these animals will not hunt themselves out of a job. They will eventually lobby their govenments or organizations to restrict both the numbers killed and the size of the trophy taken to allow the genetics to pass on.
In just the last couple of years, the trophy managers in Texas have begun to adopt age limits on the trophies taken, now trending towards a big whitetail not being shot until he reaches the end of his breeding peak, some as late as 7 or 8 years of age. They accompany the hunter and field-age the buck, not allowing a kill unless the animal shows positive signs of being over the set age. As hunting for big game in Africa declines due to lack of real trophies, this aging of animals will become standard practice there also.
Let's face it natural selection is no longer viable, with the disappearance of natural predators and the emergence of hunting as the primary means of controlling herds in America. This is quickly becoming true in Africa as well. To see where this is going, look at the Whitetail Deer in North America. The number of deer in America is larger than when the Mayflower first landed. When I was a child, it was a big deal for my uncle to kill an 8 point buck, now more and more hunters are killing 12 pointers, and pay-as-you-go hunters seeing near record book bucks yearly. It is a routine occurance for a new state records to be set yearly all over the lower 48. Relax and quit over-reacting to short term problems.

Living in Northwest Montana, I am lucky enough to see a wide range of wildlife - Whitetail & Mule deer, Elk, Moose, Bighorn sheep, etc... In all of the bickering among the posters, I have seen no one offer an alternative solution to the big game hunting...Why does it have to be hunt or no hunt? I lived in the eradication zone in Wisconsin the first year after CWD hit the deer population - that was a waste...
My alternative solution is two-fold. First, force more states to inforce an "antlerless hunt" - Wisconsin and Illinois require an antlerless tag be filled before being allowed to take a buck when deer hunting (at least they used to - it's been a few years since I hunted in the midwest). Anyone hunting for food (as we do), will appreciate this, because the meat from a female is generally better tasting than from a male. Second, Moose hunting in montana is done on a lottery. Only a certain number of tags are offered and if your name is drawn, you are not eligible again for seven years. Utilize this same system for elk - offer a certain amount of bull elk tags and have a lottery with a non-refundable entrance fee in order to be considered. This raises additional state revenue because of the entrance fee, less hunters in the woods looking for "trophies" and the population is stabilized without forcing eradication every few years.

There is still a larger majority of hunters that hunt for the meat than for the horns. "Trophy" hunters are the few who (can) give the rest of us a bad rap. I'm sure that any true "fair-chase" hunter wouldn't think twice about shooting an animal with trophy-size antlers or horns, but that isn't what the objective is when he or she heads into the field. It's more about a personal fulfillment, a personal joy to be out in nature. Myself and the hunters I choose to hunt with can say that the trip was well worth it even if we don't bag any game. To go, to do, to see wildlife in it's natural habitat is the greater part of the experience. Taking home meat for the freezer that is lean and natural is less than half of the goal.

All the hunters I know wait for the biggest buck to shoot. And yet they claim to be stewards of the species. So tell me, how does killing off the biggest, strongest, and healthiest help a species as a whole? Maybe the Fish & Game needs to start tagging "exemplary specimens" as off-limits to help preserve the strong genes.