Hunters are a big lobby here. They don’t want competition by predators. As long as there’s no natural balance, they can tell everyone their hobby is essential work for the preservation of nature. An actually sustainable solution is against their interests.
The big problem with hunters “managing” wildlife is that they go out and shoot the big strong healthy ones, and not the small weak sickly ones. Overall it weakens the population.
Hunting is huge in Indiana (we’re full of Republican rednecks after all), but even hunters have come to admit there’s just not enough of them and too many deer at this point. They’re the first ones seeing the effects.
As it is, I support them because it’s them- and they generally eat what they hunt- or the Indiana Department of Natural Resources sends people out with rifles and puts the carcasses in a big pile and sets fire to it or whatever wasteful thing they would do.
AFAIK the policy shift has more to do with wolf population increasing and now getting into more inhabited areas and killing domesticated animals. The rural/farming community has previously been pretty split on the issue, since they are quite often engaged in nature preservation & wildlife issues aside from hunting. However, these incidents have polarized the public against wolves.
For context, wolves were extinct in southern Sweden for roughly a century (since the early 1900s), and in northern Sweden for several decades before being artificially reintroduced there during the 1970s and slowly spreading southwards.
Hunters are a big lobby here. They don’t want competition by predators. As long as there’s no natural balance, they can tell everyone their hobby is essential work for the preservation of nature. An actually sustainable solution is against their interests.
The big problem with hunters “managing” wildlife is that they go out and shoot the big strong healthy ones, and not the small weak sickly ones. Overall it weakens the population.
I mean we also don’t want all the Chad super strong genetic freak deer running around. So maybe that’s ok?
Hunting is huge in Indiana (we’re full of Republican rednecks after all), but even hunters have come to admit there’s just not enough of them and too many deer at this point. They’re the first ones seeing the effects.
As it is, I support them because it’s them- and they generally eat what they hunt- or the Indiana Department of Natural Resources sends people out with rifles and puts the carcasses in a big pile and sets fire to it or whatever wasteful thing they would do.
AFAIK the policy shift has more to do with wolf population increasing and now getting into more inhabited areas and killing domesticated animals. The rural/farming community has previously been pretty split on the issue, since they are quite often engaged in nature preservation & wildlife issues aside from hunting. However, these incidents have polarized the public against wolves.
For context, wolves were extinct in southern Sweden for roughly a century (since the early 1900s), and in northern Sweden for several decades before being artificially reintroduced there during the 1970s and slowly spreading southwards.
Bloodthirsty nuts want a license to be able to shoot and kill things legally, to the surprise of no one