“Since the late 1990s, the number of deer in Japan has jumped from less than 400,000 to more than 3 million,” reuters.com reports from the “gun free” island nation. “The boar population doubled to 1 million over the same period.” Understandably, Japanese farmers are unhappy about this population explosion.
Japanese farmers have lost up to 23 billion yen ($170 million) annually since 2008 because of rising numbers of deer, boar, monkeys and birds, the Ministry of Agriculture said last month . . .
Farmer Manabu Ushiyachi said he welcomed any hunter, male or female, to help fend off the wild boar that feast on vegetable crops.
“There are farms that have been completely devastated,” he said, adding that attempts to trap the animals had failed . . .
“We’ve tried methods such as building fences or chasing animals away to minimise their deaths, but it wasn’t enough,” said Kazuhiro Akiba, head of the ministry’s Wildlife Management Office in Tokyo . . .
Of Japan’s 105,000 registered hunters, two-thirds are 60 or older, and only 1,169 are female, according to the National Hunting Association, which counted 500,000 hunters in the 1970s.
The answer? Women hunters, apparently.
The national association’s website has a blog page titled “Aspire to be a Female Hunter!”, where women write about their hunting experiences. One writer noted the “kind gesture” when she found portable toilets for female hunters in rest huts.
In some prefectures, women can sign up for hunting courses or join a hunting tour.
Yeah,
I don’t think that’s going to do it. But you’ve got to wonder if this desire for pest species eradication will lead to a loosening of Japan’s anti-gun regulations. And then stop wondering.