It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny

Lily Huang obviously hasn't done her homework on this subject and this is all sensationalism. I can???t believe the editors didn???t send her back to the drawing board on this one before it was published.
I thought this was a reputable magazine, but obviously not. How could a magazine of this standing let such one sided drivel get to the presses?
I???m not well informed on the practices on other continents, but here in North America, I???ve seen game management and antler production improve, not decline. If you visit some of the ranches in Texas and Mexico, you???ll see white-tail deer with incredible antlers in very high ratios to the number of animals with poor antler quality. Aside from the operations that import genetics from other locations, if you only take into account native, indigenous herds, you???ll see that the landowners are managing their herds very well and have improved the overall condition of the herds, beyond what would occur naturally. They maintain and sustain the number of animals for the optimum carrying capacity of the land, age structure and male to female ratios.
Sure, left well enough alone, nature would maintain the balance, but man is here and is an integral part of the ecology. Nature???s balance also can be very drastic and when man intervenes, he can sustain a more ???flat??? line in lieu of the drastic ups and downs of nature.
In reference to the Bighorn Sheep herd mentioned in this article, I think pneumonia and lung worm have had more impact on the health and horn growth than hunting. And I wonder where the funding for Marco Festa-Bianchet???s studies comes from. I???d be willing to bet that Pittman Robertson funds and funds from organizations like The Wild Sheep Foundation are either directly or indirectly involved. Hunter???s and Angler???s dollars have done more to conserve sheep habitat (by far) than any other source. Also, using this one herd as the example to make you point is very narrow minded and misleading. Here in Texas, the world record for Desert Bighorn Sheep is broken every year. That is unheard of and tells me that The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department is doing a fabulous job of managing our Desert Bighorn population.
The assertion in the last paragraph; ???most wildlife departments managing hunting harvests simply count the heads each year and decide how many to let hunters bag without thinking about genes??? is utterly ridiculous. Most, if not all, fish & wildlife departments take many, many factors into account when setting limits and quotas each season. The amount of resources devoted to this is there for anyone who wants to see it. To say that all these wildlife departments do is ???count heads??? is one of the most ignorant statements in Journalism. Again, how the editors of Newsweek let this article get to the point of being published astounds me.

More liberal clap-trap from a known liberal rag. Lily Huang can write well enough, but obviously requires no factual data for her projects. Fair enough, given the liberal slant of the magazine, but don't go looking for a real job anytime soon....when they see this garbage, they'll toss your resume in the trash right behind your finished products.
(You people just kill me.....LOL...no pun intended)

I have the solution for the problem regarding weaker and smaller sheep mating with the ewes........just bring over a couple of hundred Scottish herdsmen, givem them all the wiskey they want to drink and let them loose in the wild for about a month during the fall mating season, repeat the process for several years and wala.......nice size sheep..........ok, got that one solve............next issue on the agenda?

It can be increasingly hard to take the screaming of the gun nuts...

The article does not state that all hunting is bad, or that it should be banned; it does, however, make the point that human decisions regarding which animals to cull via hunting can have impacts on the species itself, and that hunting the ones with certain physical characteristics could lead to a reduction of the frequency of that particular characteristic in the animal population in question.

Humans can either think about the consequences of their actions, which i would argue is a very conservative political perspective, in both senses of the word, or they can just continue doing what they have been, unthinking, and then wonder "where did all the 10-point bucks go?"

This plays out again and again over human history, discovery of a natural resource, man's inventiveness figuring out a way to exploit that resource with uncanny efficiency, and depending on the resource, depleting it to the point where it is expended, or in the case of animal resources, the population collapses, as the depletion of so many saltwater fish stocks bears witness to: a resource that is thought to be inexhaustible, can actually be destroyed to over-exploitation in a short period of time, and past a certain point, it doesn't come back...

The possible consequences of "selective breeding through hunting" are so obvious, I can't imagine why people would think there might be any doubt at all about what it might mean to selectively harvest certain animals; the question is whether, in the case of animals hunted as a managed resource, such effects degrade the long-term sustainability of the resource in question, and the consequences to other resources that might not enjoy the same attention.

I am fine with hunting; I am not fine with unthinking human actions done largely for entertainment purposes irrevocably changing things for the worse because the actors in question were to complacent to question what they do.

But hey, who the Hell misses dodo birds, Carolina parakeets, herds of American bison, and passenger pigeons these days!

The points made by the article are valid - and indeed reflect the mentality of the modern hunter who sees it as a trophy sport not as means of subsistence. But there is always another viewpoint. Hunting is also a measure for population control or for assessing the health & disease status of a certain species. Take for example the Illinois/Iowa/Wisconsin border. This area is overpopulated by deer, in the absence of its natural predators (wolves). There are patches of land where the incidence of Chronic Wasting Disease in the deer population is high. The only way to control its spread is to hunt these animals. Which can be eaten for food (the meat - not the bones or other parts associated with the nervous system). The lab analysis is the sole clear indicator of CDW in absence of lengthy observation (quarrantine) - hence impractical at the population level. One also should remember that deer cause road accidents sometimes with deadly HUMAN results not just property (car) damage; they destroy crops; they eat flowers in cemeteries (as was recently the case on the North Side of Chicago). Nope, I am not saying we need to wipe out the deer population in IL and hunt down all the 10 year old bucks who successfully out-mated all other males deer. But one cannot make such a blanket statement about hunting and hunters. Thru the fees paid to IL Dept. of Natural Resources for a deer in an overpopulated area, I probably did more to aid a prairie restoration elsewhere in the State of IL ; or to restore some other endangered species to its natural habitat by paying for its controlled breeding and its eventual return to the wild than the people who leave comments such as trading guns for cameras.

Again, I am not denying the problems related to hunting being a trophy sport. But do not throw a blanket statement over the ills of hunting. The key is the considerate, accurate and appropriate management of the resources which integrates hunting as a means for species population control and health status information and revenue making while ensuring a sustainable population of whatever species you wanna choose in the zoology book.

I am a public health scientist by the way.

The points made by the article are valid - and indeed reflect the mentality of the modern hunter who sees it as a trophy sport not as means of subsitence. But there is always another viewpoint. Hunting is also a measure for population control or for assessing the health & disease status of a certain species. Take for example the Illinois/Iowa/Wisconsin border. This area is overpopulated by deer, in the absence of its natural predators (wolves; coyotes). There are patches of land where the incidence of Chronic Wasting Disease in the deer population is high. The only way to control its spread is to hunt these animals. Which can be eaten for food (the meat - not the bones or other parts associated with the nervous system). The lab analysis is the sole clear indicator of CDW short of lengthy observation of the animal (quarantine). One also should remember that deer cause road accidents sometimes with deadly HUMAN results not just property (car) damage; they destroy crops; they eat flowers in cemeteries (as was recently the case on the North Side of Chicago). Nope, I am not saying we need to wipe out the deer population in IL and hunt down all 3 of the remaining 10 year old bucks who successfully out-mated all other male deer. But one cannot make such a blanket statement about hunting and hunters. Thru the fees paid to IL Dept. of Natural Resources for a deer in an overpopulated area, I probably did more to aid a prairie restoration elsewhere in the State of IL ; or to restore some other endangered species to its natural habitat by paying for its controlled breeding and its eventual return to the wild than the people who leave comments such as hunters having to trade guns for cameras.

Again, I am not denying the problems related to hunting being a trophy sport. But do not throw a blanket statement over the ills of hunting. The key is the considerate, accurate and appropriate management of the resources which integrates hunting as a means for species population control and health status information and revenue making while ensuring a sustainable population of whatever species you wanna choose in the zoology book.

This is ridiculous! As a wildlife biologist, I am telling you that this article is completely untrue. Most animal's genetic profile is rarely allowed to mature, due to available forage and environmental conditions. Hunting is the best management tool we have. If a little research was actually done before writing this article, the author would have found that the majority of animal species in the world are at higher numbers now then 100 years ago.

This is ridiculous! As a wildlife biologist, I am telling you that this article is completely untrue. Most animal's genetic profile is rarely allowed to mature, due to available forage and environmental conditions. Hunting is the best management tool we have. If a little research was actually done before writing this article, the author would have found that the majority of animal species in the world are at higher numbers now then 100 years ago.

With the size and greed of our current human population, hunting is unsustainable. Hunters need to trade out their guns for cameras.

The trophy animals are at the end of their life cycle; i.e., they are dominant because they are the largest and oldest but their breeding days are numbered and controlled hunting of these animals should not impact the overall herd for two reasons: (1) they are at the end of their breeding cycle and will die one way or another in another year or two; and, (2) assuming they had the best genes; i.e., the animal was the herd breeder,, those genes are now carried in many, many of the subordinate males and females that will mature into herd bosses in the following few years. Don't bellieve,me, check the Boone & Crockett record books for entries and note how many new records are being broken each year with larger animals being taken. Why? Controlled hunting and demand for large antlers makes them valuable and therefore protected. In Colorado, poachers of trophy animals are prosecuted under the "Samson Act" named after a huge bull elk poached in Estes Park, Colorado. There is probably more wild game now in the United States then ever before in the history at least of the European experience settling here. As they say in Africa: "if it pays, it stays".

This Newsweek article is based on research that was publiched in the scientific journal 'Nature' a few years ago and not cited here. The study monitored bighorn sheep body and horn size over time. It would be great if the was a control group however one is not requireed for mapping a trend. One major point that is not in the Newsweek article but inthe original, The fastest growng individuals and thier DNA are removed from t he population. Over time there has been a decrease in the average body size and horn size. The strong, fast growing genes are being selected against. (Not to get into an argument about evolution but genetic shifts due to selection is well known and proven.)The data is very solid. Can one extrapolate the conclusion from this study and apply this to other species in other areas? No. But it should set up further study. Perhpas use this Boone and Crocket database so many have mentioned. Nonhuman predation removes the old , weak, the sick and the stupid. Human predation can target the opposite charecteristics.

I am a very green liberal and I am also an ecologist. I hope that all nature lovers would buy hunting and fishing licenses and duck stamps. These funds support most state's conservation efforts and have been in amny cases the only funds available for these purposes. And befriend a hunter... when these people are not around bad things happen to the habitat. We can't have conservation without the hunters. (OK guys...I have praised you hunters. Who is going to hook me up with some venison?)

I am a hunter in Pa and love it. However I always was a hunter of the wounded, just for the meat, NOT the trophy. I prized myself on my talent to take a deer or two a year the would have died due to some unskilled "hunter" wounding the animal and being tooo lazy to track it and take it properly. However since the regulations have changed and now you have to take a Buck with at least three points on one side, I can no longer have my choice and now we are all forced to take the stronge breeders and let the weak run the woods, to reproduce. This is backwards to the way nature and the american Indian work. We are doing things backwards

SLIM-361 is dead on with his comment. The age of a sheep or deer has more to do with the size of their horns or antlers than genetics. Just because he breeds at a young age and has smaller head gear does not change good or bad genetics being passed down. You also have the female side of the genetics that are not affected at all.

As a gun owning member of the left more than right side of the population, that doesn't actively hunt but would like to keep the right to....I gotta say, I think if you're going to deny this article entirely, you're probably also in the same set that still denies global warming as a reality.
It makes perfect sense. It's exactly the way that evolution works. Survival of the fittest. Face it...we're not out hunting the weak and old ones. If we were...why do we have trophy bucks with horns. We'd have a wall full of saggy, hornless animals.

Now, there is a lot not mentioned in the article, which some of you have touched on.
1.) Animal confinement to preserves. Yes, if you have a bunch of no-tusk elephants in a herd, you're more likely to get no-tusk elephants.
2.) Disappearing land. Goldfish grow to the size of the aquarium, giraffes have long necks for tall trees, moles have crappy eyesight because there is no light underground. What's to keep the animals from getting smaller due to limited range?

Other readers...don't get me wrong. This article does have obvious intentions, and is not supported well by facts. I think that PETA and the Sierra Club are both full of whiners and should be ignored...but if you don't believe that humans can have this sort of impact...then we're probably all doomed.