By Jake Hover via wideopenspaces.com
Whether it was in school, the workplace, or even within your own family, we’ve all had to deal with anti-hunters. There is no need to argue and bicker about hunting, because with these 10 facts anti-hunters will have a new understanding of hunting. Let’s jump right into some facts . . .
1. Avid hunter Theodore Roosevelt created our national forests and grasslands and forever protected 230 million acres for wildlife and the public to use and enjoy.
Roosevelt, an avid hunter, created some of the most well-known parks for everyone to enjoy forever.
2. An 11 percent tax on guns, ammo, bows and arrows generates $371 million a year for conservation.
$371 million is a lot of money. It puts many people to work and enables many conservation programs.
3. Hunting supports 680,000 jobs; from game wardens to waitresses, biologists to motel clerks.
Speaking of jobs, how about that anti-hunters? Well over a half a million jobs are created from hunting, according to Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
4. Through state licenses and fees, hunters pay $796 million a year for conservation programs.
In other words, hunters are essentially the backbone for conservation programs. Without hunters there would be less conservation programs.
5. When tallying up the various fees, licensing, and taxes, hunters raise $1.6 billion!
6. The best form of eating organic is hunting. Nosler said it best: “Eat Organic-Shoot Nosler”
In a world that loves to go all natural and eat organic, hunting is the purest form of organic eating. Not to mention most of game is high in protein and provides great nutritional value.
7. In the past century, elk, whitetails, turkeys, and ducks have gone from thousands to millions thanks to the help of hunters and programs funded by hunters.
That’s right. Without the efforts of hunters, many of the animals that are abundant today would have dwindling populations. The next time an anti-hunter says we are killing too many animals, share some of this information.
8. Hunters keep nuisance species in check and keep herd numbers healthy for various other animals.
9. Sport hunting in Zambia provides 143 tons of meat to rural villages with an estimated value of $600,000.
A study done by two individuals found that sport hunting offers great benefits to the inhabitants of the land. Most times the rural natives are happy when a dangerous animal is harvested, because the village becomes safer.
10. At the end of the day, “I”ll never apologize for being a hunter.”
Eva Shockey says it best;
As hunters, we need to stand strong, unite as one and NEVER apologize for being who we are! We should focus our energy on being the best hunters we can be by challenging ourselves to be ethical, respectful and responsible so as to humbly uphold our proud heritage. Now, let’s get out there and enjoy the great outdoors!
*financial info via America’s Sporting Heritage: Fueling the American Economy (January 2013) & Hunting in America: An Economic Force for Conservation (January 2013)
Teddy was an elitist Progressive who GAVE us Wilson the Bastard. He was richer than Croesus but wanted to limit the ability of “new money” types to amass their own wealth. He only created the Park System to lock up land and set the precedent for Big Daddy Gubmint to be the largest land owner in the U.S. He routinely bad mouth other hunters. HE had mounted animals but called others with a few heads on the wall frauds.
Ray
Roosevelt was not from the rich part of the family. That goes to cousin Franklin. He wan’t poor and downtrodden but by the standards of the day he was a two percenter.
This
Didn’t Croesus’ son die in a hunting accident? I’m drawing on a decades old memory from a college history class on antiquity, so I could be thinking of someone else.
Teddy did NOT give us Wilson. Teddy retired after 2 terms as was customary. Taft started screwing things up so Teddy ran again. The split with Taft allowed Wilson to win. Wilson was a Democart. Teddy carried a gun in his coat pocket. Glenn Beck is full of sh!t.
BTW, Teddy was a 2 term Republican and lost the 3rd run against Taft as a Bull Moose candidate.
11. Hunters always pack out their trash and never leave bottles of spring water along the trail
12. Hunters respect all life and thank their harvest for it’s life
13. Hunters probably kept a deer from running in front of your car
14. Hunters help keep deer out of your fancy garden, saving your tulips
15. Hunters have helped defend this country, and our citizen soldiers are more effective because of the discipline they learned hunting
I wish I could say #11 was true, but I’ve run into too many cans of Schmidt and Kodiak in the woods to believe it. That being said I try to stuff them in my pack and get them out of there.
No kidding.
There’s a particular spot on one of the rivers here where the current has carved a deep hole that during spring floods is a pocket that trash drops into. Every summer I can go there and expect to find heaps of trash from hunters — I even found a blaze orange hunting vest once!
With empty beer and pop cans at five cents each, some summers I’ve made the twenty-ish foot dive and hauled out over five bucks in empties — usually accompanied by an equal volume of shot shells.
OTOH, the back roads in the forests here are kept clear of fallen trees and other debris by hunters with a chain saw in the truck, and slides on the roads are cleared as often by hunters as by forest service crews (a friend and I once hauled off over a half pick-up load of fallen rock, and used it elsewhere in my conservation work). Of course a lot of those fallen trees end up as firewood stacked neatly back home, but the government doesn’t care because it was work they didn’t have to do.
Agree with all but “thank the harvest for its life.” The harvest is dead, and were it alive, it wouldn’t understand me.
I do thank God for His creation, as well as for His providing a tasty bit of meat for the coming months.
I think that one was metaphorical. Hunters are not just savage killers, they respect the animal they’re hunting.
Nice list, but I don’t think this would sway anti-hunters that are not already on the fence. They will just come up an excuse, “well we need the government to spend more money to protect and help populate these creatures” or “Well, those jobs created from hunting can be created by government spending doing something else.”
Or the one from a pastor where I went to university: the government should hire professional sharpshooters, to make sure the animals get killed with one shot and don’t suffer.
My reply was, “Where do you think sharpshooters come from?”
Anti-hunters. Because pissing off hungry people with high-powered rifles seems smart when your diet is mostly grass.
I think that might be Darwinism desperately trying to remove stupid people from the gene-pool. Oh well, these skinny hippies will die off next winter. Us fat meat eaters will be fine though.
I think it’s just that they feel safe in venting their spleen at hunters.
It reminds me of the dye-throwing crowd. I asked one once: If you really believe leather and fur is murder, then why aren’t you throwing dye and paint at the ladies and gents leaving Bob’s Biker Bar in the bad part of town, as well as the folks leaving the opera?
The spluttering non-answer led me to conclude the person wanted a soft target with little chance of serious repercussion. Sounds like, oh I don’t know, a rather criminal mindset, doesn’t it? Except the criminals are more honest about why they’re doing it and what they get out of it.
I used to ask fur haters where they thought their leather shoes came from, but the throwing paint/dye at leather clad bikers gibe had never occurred to me. That’s funny.
The best response I ever heard to an anti-hunting rant about how brutal and inhumane hunting deer was “Do you think deer die of old age in the wild? Do you envision them surrounded by their loved ones, lying in a soft bed, passing peacefully to the other side? Most deer die of one of two ways, disease or predation. The thump of a bullet through the lungs and heart causes an almost instantaneous death, one they don’t feel. On the other hand being run down by wolves until collapsing in exhaustion and having their guts torn out and being eaten alive is rather painful and traumatic for the deer. “
Dying of old age in the wild is called “starvation.”
My dad shot a buck one year that he basically put out of its misery – it was limping around on three legs, one of its hind legs was badly broken. It was an older buck and he said the leg looked like it had been broken for some time, preventing it from making it up into the high country during the summer. There’s no way it would’ve made it through the winter.
Man, that picture kills me to imagine. That old fella avoided almost everything that nature threw at him, but in the end, he was destined to lose. Good on your dad for that mercy killing.
“Only ghouls and horses”? Huh?
Just don’t go there. 🙂
I think it means things you are allowed to shoot: zombies, and wounded horses. Or something far more retarded.
Shall we start a guessing game?
Maybe they mean only ghouls and horses should be allowed to hunt. Ghouls don’t exist, and horses are herbivores, so then nobody would be hunting.
Or maybe that sign was written by an idiot.
Upon reflection, the second option seems far more likely.
Hunting for food is perfectly reasonable. Hunting for sport just to say “I killed this!” seems too much like a serial killer in the making.
Most males I know, and some females, hunt for sport, as do millions of other people. They all eat their kill as well, but they hunt for sport. I would guess that the percent of American sport hunters that are serial killers rounds to zero. It’s probably actually zero.
Yeeeeah, if they’re eating it, then by definition they’re not hunting for sport. I’m not sure where you got confused there.
The anti-hunting crowd acts like hunters are savage animals and animals are people. I can relate. Most deer and coyotes are more appealing than the PETA pukes and, frankly, I’d rather hang out with raccoons. At least they wash their hands when they eat.
The PETA morons would probably taste like Starbucks, bongwater and self righteous indignation anyway. I’d rather eat opossum.
Take it from someone who has eaten ‘possum (and squirrel) — it’s awful.
I still eat Squirrel, bunny, venison and goat on a regular basis but I’ve had opossum and raccoon quite a bit in the past. “Garbage critters” ie, city squirrel, opossum, raccoon and even carp can be AWESOME if you know how to prep and cook them.
Opossum and raccoon can be slow cooked/steamed in apple juice while covered in alum. foil(to keep the steam in) then shredded to make amazing BBQ sandwiches or cubed and cooked in with veggies for an extremely flavorful stew.
The apple juice/alum foil combo takes some of the “game” out of the meat while keeping it very moist.
Cooking/steaming in root beer rocks!
As with any game, the critter’s diet makes a world of difference. I’ve had possum from the Everglades and the only way you would know it wasn’t pork is the bones are smaller.
Meh, this is a great list, but I tend to find anti-hunting types to be generally ignorant of the way the world works, and thus, not worth trying to convert. First off, if you are anti-hunting, you damn well better be a vegetarian, or you are REALLY missing the point. Ever visit a slaughterhouse? I have, and I think the deer that takes a bullet after living free in the woods is better off than a stockyard cow.
Then you should really understand that nature is cruel, unfair, and wholly indifferent to the belief systems of mankind. In the wild you will find, herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores, and you need all three types to keep populations of flora and fauna in check. This is perfectly natural, and omnivores like humans can and should eat a mix of both meats and vegetables to stay healthy and nourished.
People never seem to grasp the fact that just because they don’t like something, that doesn’t mean it should be illegal. There are plenty of activities that are not detrimental to society, but we may not agree with them. If you don’t like hunting, no one will force you to participate. Just ignore it and move on.
“anti-hunters will have a new understanding of hunting.”
False. Facts have no sway over their emotional drivel.
How about that dying of a bullet from a skilled hunter is a more humane death than any other that animal could ever have in the wild and a more humane death than livestock get.
$371 million is a lot of money. It puts many people to work and enables many conservation programs.
They take that $371M out of the free market, by force. Many of the people it puts to “work” are government bureaucrats who push money around in the various departments and bureaus or the execs at companies with the good government contacts that get them the nice contracts. They do nothing productive with that wealth. If it’s typical government efficiency, only about half of the money actually goes to employing and supporting the people who actually do something useful (e.g. the park wardens and forest rangers).
Additionally, there is now $371M less in the free market for capital investments and real job growth.
You can argue that it it diverts money into conservation programs (which most anti-hunters will support), but the argument that it puts people to work is a Keynesian con game that exploits the broken window fallacy up there with TARP, Obamacare, or Cash for Clunkers.
Thank you for this comment. I was about to write something very similar. I personally was dismayed by most of the list. Trying to justify hunting to people who are already statists by giving them statist reasons that hunting is “good” is just sad and ridiculous.
Ya know, it would be easier to jump on the help-a-hunter bandwagon if the fudds weren’t always throwing us under the bus. Not that I’m not for them, just they don’t make it easy.
How about # 11…I saw the NRA show yesterday about over 10million pounds of wild game being DONATED to food banks across the nation. I would think that would give pause to even the worst anti-hunting a##hole…
11) It’s time for whiney liberal pantywaists to actually practice what they preach and be tolerant of others. I’m no hunter; I will kill for survival but not for sport. However that doesn’t make hunters wrong because I do not hunt; it makes then different from me. The whole point of being tolerant is to actually allow people to live according to their own customs.
The same f*ckers who are eager to get me to engage in a political discussion at STARBUCKS on a Monday are damning hunters as murderers on Tuesday. Hypocrites.
I had an antihunting neighbor that was new to the community. Started saying there was no good reason to kill any animal. He put out a really nice garden putting a lot of time and effort into it. I started stopping a couple times a week at the local feed barn and would buy some young female rabbits, every once in a while I would throw a male in to make sure nature would happen. I would chuck them into his fenced in backyard and let them do their thing. He changed his mind after they stripped his 3 planting a and it was a great fall for me; fresh veggies and rabbit into the roasting pan from my garden.
Vegen and vegetarians diets still cause the deaths of countless furry little animals. They just don’t have to see a plowed field with the little dead bodies being picked over by scavengers. Out of sight, out of mind. It sounds just like the anti gun people that “feel safe” as long as they don’t see a gun. The reality is, organisms have to die to support the creatures higher on the food chain.
Who is Eva Shockey, and where do I send my marriage proposal?
trunk,
Too late. She’s engaged to a pro hockey player.
And yes, she is very naturally beautiful. I’ve been fortunate to have met her and her dad. Neat people.
Ghouls do exist, they are known by many names, like the IRS, or the communists. Anyone who has no respect for God given Biblical inheritance rights is a ghoul.
Hunting is a God given right. People hunted for survival and recreation long before big govt existed. Hunting like Traditional Marriage, predates the civil govt.
Anti-hunters are usually city people who know nothing about animals or the wild.