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In Defense of Hunting: Cruella DeVille or Captain Planet?

April 18, 2008

by William Ramsdell

With the Environmental or “Green” Revolution finally coming into full swing in our generation, there has never been more criticism of our past indiscretions against Mother Nature. I would be the first to agree with these criticisms. However, there is a deep, dark, camouflaged past in the American environmental movement that is too often overlooked and, quite frankly, misrepresented: the role of hunters in the preservation of the great American wilderness.

In 1934, the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Act was passed in response to growing concern about the state of the all-important American wetlands. These freshwater areas serve as water purification and recharge zones, and as reservoirs for excessive flood waters caused by deforestation and erosion. The world over, fresh water comprises only 1% of the planet’s surface, yet it houses twelve percent of animal species and forty percent of all species total. This stamp act places a tax on all sporting arms, ammunition, hunting tags and apparel, and requires hunters to annually purchase a “duck stamp” or license in order to legally hunt. One hundred percent of the revenue goes to conservation, and 4.5 million acres have been saved since 1934 from stamp sales alone. What’s so interesting is that this crucial government step towards conservation was and continues to be funded by the same group of people who brought the issue to Congress in the first place: hunters. Since then, federal taxes have been implemented which allocate funds to conservation, but the stamp continues to provide more than half of the money used to protect these vital lands.

So I ask you, my fellow Jumbos, why the harsh faces when I say to you that “Yes, I hunt”? Hunting has been a necessary, honorable, recreational, and even sacred activity throughout the entire course of human history, not to mention an absolute necessity for the vast majority of the animal kingdom. Furthermore, the life of a cow is so much more nightmarish than that of a dear that it is hard to fathom how hunters come off as cruel next to every burger and lactose product consumer.

The old statement, “Yeah, but you’re killing the animals you claim to protect” is worn out and uninformed. Any hunting operation allows only a small number of animals to be taken annually, the proceeds of which protect both that species and all other species on the property, hunted or not. During this process, biological data is recorded and submitted to Wildlife Services in order to keep close tabs on the overall health and population of the species. Since so much of the fertile husbandry land, especially in America, has been converted into land for cattle and people, natural predators like coyotes and the endangered wolf have been exterminated to an alarming extent. As a result, species like deer that still exist outside of wreaking stockyards and concrete jungles have no predators. Without predators, such species would reproduce to the point of population-food curve destabilization — but for the attention of hunters and the data they provide Wildlife Services. It is in ignorance of the basics of biology that some people hold fast to the possibility of a species that has no natural or unnatural predators and is left to its own devices. The only result is a population that repeatedly over-consumes the food base to the point of sickening die off and so fourth. So, no, we (hunters) cannot just “leave Bambi alone” because we (humanity) have violently disrupted his ecosystem and now we (hunters) are the ones holding it together.

But alas, it goes further. People are obsessed with profit margins and productivity, which is why we landed ourselves in this chlorofluorocarbon catastrophy called global warming. So how much productivity do you think a thousand acres of prime Texas scrub land is worth assuming it isn’t covered in cows, oil wells, or Walmarts? Squat is the answer. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, if sportsmen had not placed economic importance and value on lands and species otherwise profitable only for development and abuse, massive wildlife depopulation and possibly extinction would have already taken place to an extent worse than it already has. Why can’t we save animals without killing any? Because we are a greedy, self-interested race for whom that which lacks obvious economic profitability holds little value. As the human population rises, the economic incentive to bulldoze animal habitats trails close behind. If hunters were not paying to fight off developers, the only thing standing in the way would be animals’ inherent qualities of grace and beauty. For a crash course on how humanity evaluates true, natural, romantic beauty, just look at our planet’s maimed rain forests and polluted oceans.

Hunting Social Justice

But I know what you Tufts Crusaders for Humanity like: Social Justice. This a little story I picked up hunting — in Africa. Zimbabwe is run by a corrupt man named Robert Mugabe. Mugabe ran out every land-owning white person several years ago in the name of native reclamation, and in so doing completely destroyed their once thriving agricultural base. In a few years, the inflation went from 3 Z$ / $1 US to over a 30,000 Z$ / $1 (as of 4.12.08) and poaching for food and trophy horn sales is decimating animal populations. But one industry remains incorrupt and profitable. The Lemco land session is a privately-owned hunting operation that holds 0.9% of Zimbabwe’s total area. Managing to stay unhindered by the government, it provides a huge boost to the economy by bringing in hunters from around the world to take relatively small numbers of animals at high prices. Since the meat cannot be shipped internationally, it goes (for rock bottom prices) to the Zimbabweans inhabitants. Most importantly however, Lemco provides jobs to the local population that enable them to support their families without becoming illegal poachers. Single handedly Lemco manages to provide food and legal jobs to otherwise destitute Zimbabweans while preserving the populations of thousands of animal species in one of the most exotic and highly evolved biological regions of the world. Once again, it is payed for exclusively by hunters.

Back home, sportsmens’ generosity towards conservation does not stop at the high taxes levied on their goods, nor even at conservation. For example, Hunters for the Hungry is an organization that accepts hunters’ surplus game meat and distributes it to soup kitchens and homeless shelters where the historically lacking item from most soups is enough meat to impart a little flavor. Not only is game meat leaner than processed, hormone and antibiotic sodden meat, but it is truly organic and comes from one animal — in case anyone else was ever creeped-out by the realization that your hamburger and milk contains the substance of several hundred different cows, all fed on corn that they were not even biologically intended to consume.

Another organization known as Ducks Unlimited is a not-for-profit group dedicated to saving the habitats of waterfowl and all manner of American wildlife. The critical habitats of over 900 species are protected by Ducks Unlimited, which has acquired and protected over 2,000,000 acres of grass land since its inception. They also dabble in conservation of fish habitats in support of angling, a sport which had net expenditures of $38 billion in 1994 alone. DU also participates in reforestation efforts that have planted over 15 million hardwood trees in the once bare Mississippi Aluvian Valley. Ducks Unlimited is graciously supported by both hunters and non-hunters, and although the former makes up the vast part, it is encouraging that no division need exist.

Hunters, Hippis, or Hicks?

Now after the second salvo of sportsmanly history and action, I reiterate my query as to why hunters are still looked down up and ridiculed? One West Wing episode hypothesized that there may be some outlandish judgements made by north-easterners about their fellow Americans from more temperate, southern climates. But I don’t like to believe that Tufts, a paragon of social justice, would harbor people who categorize the South as a bunch of hicks anymore than I would say that the East coast is full of…well, let’s keep this friendly. (Truth is, the South rose again ‘while back, but decided not to tell y’all ‘cause we knew you’d get ‘tal bend outa shape ‘bout it and we’d jus as soon let’chall freeze up thar anyhow). But I needn’t worry as to regional prejudices need I? Especially since hunters by no means come only from the South, another generalization that causes me to cast a skeptical eye on Elmer J. Fudd and his eternal struggle against a rabbit with a suspiciously New York accent.

So yes, bohemian pleather-wearing activist, I feel you. I love the majesty of these animals, and I too want to save them — from extinction. But before you look down on me for taking sparingly from the land what it brings fourth in abundance, try to know our side. Know that we are the ones at 4 a.m. in the bitter cold just watching and appreciating, not shooting perhaps for weeks, until the time and animal are right. We are the ones who know these creatures and respect them for their grace and magnificence because we have observed that magnificence by the light of countless dawns and dusks. Before assuming we waste life, know that my father and I tracked a wounded buffalo for two days in the African heat after we shot it, lest its wounds prove fatal and we cause the wasting of an animal life. I was war-painted in the blood of my first kill to instill in me the importance of every life, as well as the sadness (amidst bitter beauty and exhilaration) that encompassed the taking of a life for your own. In the blood streaking my face and covering my hands was the energy of a life that lived, not sedated and stupid in its own feces, but free until it was taken, like its ancestor, by a predator. Not all hunters had the privilege of being instilled with the morals that my father insisted upon and not all eat everything they kill — but I do, and let me tell you, I have eaten some funky stuff in the name of never wasting a sacrifice. Please remember who started this conservation thing in the first place and who continues to contribute more than all others combined: it was people like Theodore Roosevelt, the walrus mustache-toting champion of the “National Park” and prolific, lifelong hunter.





William Ramsdell is a freshman planning to major in Architectural Studies and Philosophy.