wow, that wolf/coyote one was pretty intense, and it had everything in it--ravens, wolves, coyote, even a bald eagle!
I never thought of freezing the stuff the dogs have killed before letting them have it. That's a good idea when they get bigger stuff, because then it would kill the worms if I froze it long enough. But usually, by the time I realize they have something, they are gulping it down.
@poeticdragon I didn't say there wasn't a need for it, just that there isn't a life or death need for it. Therefore we don't need the equivalent of driving through a forest shooting whatever deer we see, up to our limit of tags, because otherwise our families will starve. Hunters will do their best to cap out their tags regardless of which method is used. You can bet your bottom dollar that whenever I go and get my deer or hog tag/s that I'm going to do my best to take something home to pack my freezer with good meat. With how long it takes them to reproduce, and the amount of willing big game hunters, there will never be enough wolves to warrant going on helicopter sprees. Sure it might take 6 months to cull 60 wolves by non-spree methods, but nature shouldn't be managed by "shocking" populations anyways. Therefore the values and sport of hunting should be maintained vs reducing it to an act of mass killing.
I've been watching this thread for a hot minute because I really like the ideas being tossed around. I don't really have as strong a stance on the subject (though I do have some opinions), so I like seeing everyone discuss it.
Not gonna lie, that video with the coyote made me feel a type of way. I wasn't expecting something that nitty-gritty real-life and it reminded me of when London gave chase to a coyote. I'd never seen London act so aggressively - it was one of the most frightening moments in my life because I THOUGHT it was someone's dog. I still remember how haunting it was when I realized it wasn't. I didn't know if I should feel relieved or even more frightened.
There was no doubt in my mind that there would be blood when he caught up to that sucker. His hackles were up from nose to tail, I'd never seen something so wild out of him. So of course, when I watched that video, I just remembered how London looked and how scary that moment was. I felt like I was the coyote in that video for half a second. Jarring.
@cezeig.....were you addressing that to me? About the life or death need for hunting? I think I was talking about that rather than Poeticdragon.
In any case, yes, there are still subsistance hunters in the US, especially in Alaska and Canada, and by that I mean these people live on what they hunt and they would not live without being able to hunt. That's why they are able to hunt out of season in Alaska--because it is really a true subsistance lifestyle.
I had a Native student once who left college because when his father was killed in a freak accident, there was no one left to hunt for the family, and without him home to do it, his family would have starved (or have to leave the very remote place they had lived for generations). He went home.
So I would say just because it is different here in the lower 48, don't forget that true subsistance hunters do still exist in North America and in other parts of the world.
My family need wild game, my kids are like a pack if hungry jackels. I swear they pack together soon as I unload a deer or a hog from the truck and you can see them drewl as I clean out game. Lol. But seriously coyotes are savages when they get ahold of a deer. Last spring I watched four coyotes just tear this deer apart as it was screaming and trying to get away, nature is definitely not pretty.
@poeticdragon - I agree, they (wild predators) don't handicap, as far as I know, to make it more sporting.
I guess what struck me in your post, that made me get back into this conversation (which I had been avoiding), is that there is often this thought process among people of how "natural order" and "natures way" is fair and balanced in some way that humans are not...
I realize now that you were not implying that, @poeticdragon, but at first I thought you were and this was my response.
We had a discussion a long time back where I lost my cool a bit and ended up losing a forum member over a debate. So, that it why I typically don't post my real feelings on subject like this now.
All I wanted to point out with my post is that nature is not fair, and many of things that happen on a daily basis in nature are pretty horrible things. We talk about our use of tools to hunt making it unfair, but monkeys use tools to hunt too, and to hurt each other. We aren't the only ones on the planet who play dirty.
Nature's balance is a 10,000 foot view - and from up there it seems very nice and kind - and balanced. But I'm sure if animals could talk they wouldn't agree. I'm sure Elk and Deer would complain about all the animals who want to savagely eat them while they are still living - if they have/had the cognitive ability to comprehend fairness, I'm sure they'd say it's not fair... It's all pretty ugly when you get down in the trenches I guess.
@shibamistress Nope! I was addressing that the stance that there is no need to hunt, but there is a need to kill. My group of gaming buddies online are almost all from Alaska and they talk about going out for moose and other things. I've also been watching a lot of Flying Wild Alaska (pretty neat show!) and that's shown a lot of the villages that are completely cut off outside of airplanes. That's pretty intense! Living down in the lower 48 it's hard to imagine that. I can definitely see their need to pick up whatever meat they can come across in times of need.
@brada1878 Yeah I hear you on how it is a touchy subject. I browse reddit quite often and any time someone questions predator hunting on the hunting subreddit there will be a ton of kneejerk defenses and personal attacks to whoever asked about it. One of the main reasons I haven't asked about big game hunting motivations on there. I've mostly stopped losing my temper in debates upon taking this quote to heart... and walking away for a few mins before coming back to re-edit a post on a touchy subject before posting haha. "You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence." -Robert Frost
I witness something today that hit me kinda hard at first. A local sportsman club has what they call Coyote drives. I had never really paid much attention to it until today. Today happened to be one of the drives. They had hunters spread out through several fields. Those hunters waited there while another group drove the coyotes from behind. I am not sure what they were using to drive the coyotes, it ust caught me of guard to be driving down the road and all these hunters in blaze orange holding rifles spread out along the edge of the field. They were all about 50-100 yards away from the edge of the road. Coyotes are getting bad around here and I completely agree their population needs to be checked. They are becoming way to comfortable around people and are preying on pets.
I am a little reserved about some of the rhetorics of predator-hunting advocated by anti-wolf groups. For example, whenever the ungulate populations drop-- the first thing hunters do is blame the wolves or coyotes. However, after a few months, research often offer a different reality.
Recently, Finland's moose population fell to a record low and small calves were common. Of course, people blamed the wolves and lynxes. Research has shown that moose were accidentally ingesting snails because of an unusually wet and warm summer and became infested with meningitis.
Or the time people blamed the Canadian lynxes for the decline in the caribou population in Newfoundland and Labrador: when snowshoe hares were introduced to the area so the local people have something to eat, the snowshoes competed with the native Arctic hares and caused the Arctic hare population to decline. When the snowshoe hare population crashed after reaching the carrying capacity, the lynxes turned to the caribou out of desperation and starvation. The lynxes ended up starving anyway, since the species was too much of a hare specialist unable to kill the caribou and left many of the caribou calves dying of infections. This probably wouldn't had happened if the snowshoe hares wasn't introduced; but if the snowshoe hares were not introduced, then the people wouldn't have enough protein to work efficiently in the fishing industry. Catch-22.
Another instance I could think of is when people blamed foxes and coyotes for the decline in rabbit and quail populations. The reality was when Americans left the farms in the 1940s and 1950s, the land was no longer being maintained and the rabbits and quails thrived. When the forests began growing back in the 1970s and 1980s, the quail and rabbit populations declined. Of course, we now know that in the rewilding eastern United States, elks, martens and fisher-cats are coming back to their historical range.
Similarly, research on the changing ecology, particularly the woodland caribou, in northern Alberta as the result of the tar-sands development project is causing the non-hunters to be angry at the depredation advocates.
However, I am not anti-predator hunting. Lots of people depended on coyotes for their fur. Some ranchers will not touch a coyote the rest of the year, but will employ shooters for any coyote which ventured close to the calves during birthing season. The coyotes who are wise enough to stay away don't get shot.
Also, some populations such as Black Bears are exploding because they are now feasting on landfills and dumpsters. The bears are also learning not to fear humans since they are going into settlements to take advantage of our human waste. Not to mention bear-meat is commonly consumed in the Northeast United States and in the Pacific Northwest, bear-meat is often used for dog-food.
Or if you are living in the Northwest Territories, a trapper is dependent on the price of lynxes, wolverines, martens and other game-animals to survive the year. He is also not going to waste the meat. Apparently, lynx-meat is very good.
So, I am not anti-predator hunting. However, I am skeptical of some of the claims made by anti-wolf, anti-coyote, or anti-cougar groups. Why? Every time research points to something else other than predators being the problem, it gives hunters a black eye and gives the anti-hunting crowd more ammunition why hunters are stupid in their eyes.
Great post, Souggy! I agree with your reservations about some of the rhetoric. The lynx/snowshoe hare link is (now) fairly well-known--lynx being a fairly specialized hunter of the hares, so I was surprised to think that people actually thought they preyed on caribou. But it sounds like this happened awhile ago? In any case, it was quite interesting!
It happened after the mid-19th century when the Newfoundland government introduced snowshoe hares. Newfoundland and Labrador historically didn't have snowshoe hares, so the main prey was Arctic hare. It is very seldom that shoeshoe hares' and Arctic hares' natural range overlaps within the range of Canadian Lynx. Also, because Canadian Lynx are a snowshoe specialist, their carrying capacity is very low in the range of the Arctic hares.
However, since the landscape never had a population of snowshoe hares, the new species easily over-populated in a new ecosystem. So, by early 1900s, the population crashed. Surprisingly, it turned out both snowshoe hares and Arctic hares have a ten-years cycle. then the lynx, whose carrying capacity increased after the introduction of the snowshoes, turned to the caribou calves. However, the lynxes couldn't kill the calves so most of the young caribou died of diseases. This scenario is common example in textbooks for when two species competing for the same niche (snowshoe hares and Arctic hares) have an impact the apex predators.
Great posts @souggy That's pretty interested and I never knew about that! I think it's very much a knee-jerk, oversimplification when the fast choice is made to reduce predator numbers. One of the reasons I'm very against predators being tagged out in large quantities without legitimate study.
@brada1878 Great video! Makes me want to move out to Saskatchewan and take up ranching instead of programming Really cool to hear about the different roles that each breed takes upon itself.
"we put spike collars on them. It really helps mitigate the pack interactions, so we felt we also needed to protect the younger dogs especially as they grow up in the pack situations and so things didn't get carried on too far."
This sounds like the spike collars are intended to keep the dogs from fighting among themselves?
@WrylyBrindle - I heard that too and was kinda a taken back by it. Tho I also kinda found it interesting as I had not considered using those collars in that way. Made me wonder if that is the origin of the typical mastiff (decorative) spike collar...
Odd thing about the spike collar: after my vet has had to patch up Toby after too many incidents of Bel getting loose and attacking him, she suggested I get a spike collar for him, something serious, so at least if it happened again, Bel couldn't get at his neck (where she does tend to bite). So yeah, maybe some people do use them that way?
@WrylyBrindle@brada1878@shibamistressThat is pretty interesting that they use the spike collars for that purpose, along with protection while fighting predators I'm sure. It must be no different than people, sometimes getting so involved in a fight/argument that one just sees red. Along with not having constant human oversight, so the dogs settle their disputes among themselves.
I still can't get over how gorgeous that countryside is.
For the ethic of hunting apex predators, consider reading "Monster of God" by David Quammen. He made the case Romanians only tolerated brown-bears because of the money from trophy-hunting, or otherwise the species would had been hunted by sheep-shepherds to extinction. Same thing for saltwater crocodiles: Australians only tolerated them during the 1970s because of the leather industry and so on; otherwise the saltwater crocodiles would been extinct.
Comments
I never thought of freezing the stuff the dogs have killed before letting them have it. That's a good idea when they get bigger stuff, because then it would kill the worms if I froze it long enough. But usually, by the time I realize they have something, they are gulping it down.
Bel eats birds whole--feathers, bones and all.
With how long it takes them to reproduce, and the amount of willing big game hunters, there will never be enough wolves to warrant going on helicopter sprees. Sure it might take 6 months to cull 60 wolves by non-spree methods, but nature shouldn't be managed by "shocking" populations anyways. Therefore the values and sport of hunting should be maintained vs reducing it to an act of mass killing.
Not gonna lie, that video with the coyote made me feel a type of way. I wasn't expecting something that nitty-gritty real-life and it reminded me of when London gave chase to a coyote. I'd never seen London act so aggressively - it was one of the most frightening moments in my life because I THOUGHT it was someone's dog. I still remember how haunting it was when I realized it wasn't. I didn't know if I should feel relieved or even more frightened.
There was no doubt in my mind that there would be blood when he caught up to that sucker. His hackles were up from nose to tail, I'd never seen something so wild out of him. So of course, when I watched that video, I just remembered how London looked and how scary that moment was. I felt like I was the coyote in that video for half a second. Jarring.
In any case, yes, there are still subsistance hunters in the US, especially in Alaska and Canada, and by that I mean these people live on what they hunt and they would not live without being able to hunt. That's why they are able to hunt out of season in Alaska--because it is really a true subsistance lifestyle.
I had a Native student once who left college because when his father was killed in a freak accident, there was no one left to hunt for the family, and without him home to do it, his family would have starved (or have to leave the very remote place they had lived for generations). He went home.
So I would say just because it is different here in the lower 48, don't forget that true subsistance hunters do still exist in North America and in other parts of the world.
I guess what struck me in your post, that made me get back into this conversation (which I had been avoiding), is that there is often this thought process among people of how "natural order" and "natures way" is fair and balanced in some way that humans are not...
I realize now that you were not implying that, @poeticdragon, but at first I thought you were and this was my response.
We had a discussion a long time back where I lost my cool a bit and ended up losing a forum member over a debate. So, that it why I typically don't post my real feelings on subject like this now.
All I wanted to point out with my post is that nature is not fair, and many of things that happen on a daily basis in nature are pretty horrible things. We talk about our use of tools to hunt making it unfair, but monkeys use tools to hunt too, and to hurt each other. We aren't the only ones on the planet who play dirty.
Nature's balance is a 10,000 foot view - and from up there it seems very nice and kind - and balanced. But I'm sure if animals could talk they wouldn't agree. I'm sure Elk and Deer would complain about all the animals who want to savagely eat them while they are still living - if they have/had the cognitive ability to comprehend fairness, I'm sure they'd say it's not fair... It's all pretty ugly when you get down in the trenches I guess.
That's a dirty game.
@brada1878 Yeah I hear you on how it is a touchy subject. I browse reddit quite often and any time someone questions predator hunting on the hunting subreddit there will be a ton of kneejerk defenses and personal attacks to whoever asked about it. One of the main reasons I haven't asked about big game hunting motivations on there.
I've mostly stopped losing my temper in debates upon taking this quote to heart... and walking away for a few mins before coming back to re-edit a post on a touchy subject before posting haha.
"You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence." -Robert Frost
Recently, Finland's moose population fell to a record low and small calves were common. Of course, people blamed the wolves and lynxes. Research has shown that moose were accidentally ingesting snails because of an unusually wet and warm summer and became infested with meningitis.
Or the time people blamed the Canadian lynxes for the decline in the caribou population in Newfoundland and Labrador: when snowshoe hares were introduced to the area so the local people have something to eat, the snowshoes competed with the native Arctic hares and caused the Arctic hare population to decline. When the snowshoe hare population crashed after reaching the carrying capacity, the lynxes turned to the caribou out of desperation and starvation. The lynxes ended up starving anyway, since the species was too much of a hare specialist unable to kill the caribou and left many of the caribou calves dying of infections. This probably wouldn't had happened if the snowshoe hares wasn't introduced; but if the snowshoe hares were not introduced, then the people wouldn't have enough protein to work efficiently in the fishing industry. Catch-22.
Another instance I could think of is when people blamed foxes and coyotes for the decline in rabbit and quail populations. The reality was when Americans left the farms in the 1940s and 1950s, the land was no longer being maintained and the rabbits and quails thrived. When the forests began growing back in the 1970s and 1980s, the quail and rabbit populations declined. Of course, we now know that in the rewilding eastern United States, elks, martens and fisher-cats are coming back to their historical range.
Similarly, research on the changing ecology, particularly the woodland caribou, in northern Alberta as the result of the tar-sands development project is causing the non-hunters to be angry at the depredation advocates.
However, I am not anti-predator hunting. Lots of people depended on coyotes for their fur. Some ranchers will not touch a coyote the rest of the year, but will employ shooters for any coyote which ventured close to the calves during birthing season. The coyotes who are wise enough to stay away don't get shot.
Also, some populations such as Black Bears are exploding because they are now feasting on landfills and dumpsters. The bears are also learning not to fear humans since they are going into settlements to take advantage of our human waste. Not to mention bear-meat is commonly consumed in the Northeast United States and in the Pacific Northwest, bear-meat is often used for dog-food.
Or if you are living in the Northwest Territories, a trapper is dependent on the price of lynxes, wolverines, martens and other game-animals to survive the year. He is also not going to waste the meat. Apparently, lynx-meat is very good.
So, I am not anti-predator hunting. However, I am skeptical of some of the claims made by anti-wolf, anti-coyote, or anti-cougar groups. Why? Every time research points to something else other than predators being the problem, it gives hunters a black eye and gives the anti-hunting crowd more ammunition why hunters are stupid in their eyes.
However, since the landscape never had a population of snowshoe hares, the new species easily over-populated in a new ecosystem. So, by early 1900s, the population crashed. Surprisingly, it turned out both snowshoe hares and Arctic hares have a ten-years cycle. then the lynx, whose carrying capacity increased after the introduction of the snowshoes, turned to the caribou calves. However, the lynxes couldn't kill the calves so most of the young caribou died of diseases. This scenario is common example in textbooks for when two species competing for the same niche (snowshoe hares and Arctic hares) have an impact the apex predators.
@brada1878 Great video! Makes me want to move out to Saskatchewan and take up ranching instead of programming
This sounds like the spike collars are intended to keep the dogs from fighting among themselves?
(And yeah, I do consider it....)
I still can't get over how gorgeous that countryside is.
For the ethic of hunting apex predators, consider reading "Monster of God" by David Quammen. He made the case Romanians only tolerated brown-bears because of the money from trophy-hunting, or otherwise the species would had been hunted by sheep-shepherds to extinction. Same thing for saltwater crocodiles: Australians only tolerated them during the 1970s because of the leather industry and so on; otherwise the saltwater crocodiles would been extinct.