Who Came Up With that Phrase?

Remember this: Form a better argument.

I have read a lot of articles by celebrity hunters, and seen posts that state, “hunting is conservation”.

I really wanted to be a thoughtful consumer when approaching this. I argue there is a hunting propaganda machine out there with a public relations department circulating this phrase-as an outdoors consumer-I should really give this some thought. For anyone reading this and seeing this type of thing circulating-maybe you should give it a second glance as well. I’m not saying act, but it is your outdoor sports, too.

Conservation is a multi-disciplinary science filled with many subdivisions-all based in science, such as wildlife, genetics, ecology, and biological. These terms can be applied to the land, air and sea as substrates in which the act of hunting takes its form. Hunting is not one of those. There are people that will suggest it as a fact.

Hunting is used as the action word here. I will stay on point with it. Given this, people who utilize the outdoors for sport can advertise “fishing is conservation”, but it’s not as catchy, or carries itself like hunting.

Hunting has become a power word. Unfortunately, those wielding it in the public as role models didn’t listen to Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben. Power words bring great responsibility.

Unfortunately, that power word is only as crucial as the one wielding it. Do not misuse your powers.

Misuse is what I see.

Hunting is an act generated from hunters, who go out and use their skills to garner a living thing and render it dead for food, or catch and release for pleasure.

Hunting and Conservation can be interchangeable tools for scientific use. Never be confused the two terms are one and the same. Someone may try to morph the two words together to further some poorly laid argument to support the argument itself-don’t be fooled.

Hunters managing an area can have a scientific study performed to tell them what Conservation plan would be best suited to build on the area they already have for maximum output and upkeep for the sake of their hunting activities. Without the quarry, the hunting act is empty.

Hunters can be conservationists. One day they can hunt, the next day they can plow their field to reseed for quail populations.

Now that I have said this, some nut somewhere is going to get his brief ready on why they need to make “Conservation Hunting” a scientific stand-alone. This is not comparable to Conservation Genetics.

People don’t hunt-technology does that for them, or so it seems.

One truth here is hunting itself becomes a monitoring data point in scientific study to issue information over a given species on a landscape. It may give information on the overall general health of the area and its inhabitants, but not the sole data point.

In a scientific study, hunting as an act is not the center of the universe-even though online posts would make it seem so.

This is not an opinion-it is a scientific fact.

If you are privy of the past and present scientific research in the ecological, biological, and natural resources of conservation, the reader discovers and understands that the act of hunting is a data point to be studied to determine what effect that particular act has on the outcome of the study groups from a list of chosen data points to be studied.

Just to exhibit layman data points in a domestic area, I give you the horse.

I will use the concept of horses in a field. The horse owner already knows they need a certain amount of acreage per horse (data point 1) and a water supply (data point 2). Horses drink about 1 gallon per 100 pounds of body weight.  Increase this by four times during the hot season (data point 3), hard work (data point 4), lactation (data point 5), and extra dry roughage consumed depending on winter or spring (data point 6). A 1000 pound horse will consume and waste three tons on average of forage dry matter during a 6 month grazing season.

The horse owner also has to take into consideration the carrying capacity of any pasture depending on soil type, soil fertility, drainage conditions, rainfall, time of year, and type of forage species present. Data point, data point, data point. Hunting can become a data point when a wayward hunter shoots into a field killing one of the horse specimens in the field. Those data points have to be noted.

Here you have a slow breeder living in domestication that is affected by its biological needs and size, and the environment it lives in. One horse in a field has its own unique set of data points to consider for its well-being and upkeep. You have to have a forage, water, and grazing plan with subsequently blocking of select areas for plants to grow and rotate the horse out for proper grazing.

Now apply that to wildlife in large expanses with human habitation living on the boundary. Somewhere there is a conservation plan for exactly how many wildebeest need to be living in a given area depending upon migration. Grazing animals living in a given area over a period of time can graze themselves right out of food without exception to the fact the weather patterns effect on forage.

An elephant can eat 200-600 pounds of food a day and drink up to 50 gallons of water a day. Now apply the horse theory to an elephant but use a conservation plan based in science.

Here you have a slow breeder, living in the wild affected by its biological needs, size, and the environment it lives in. 

Regular people living their lives do not think in terms of the needs of the animal, the ecosystem or what goes into the upkeep or management. They only know it is wrong for the animal to die at the hands of a hunter.

I have read plenty of scientific research where the data point of hunting was carefully followed to determine, with regards to that particular research, that hunting had a positive effect on the conservation of species in that given area and study. As a tool, in a given area, using a conservation plan implementing hunting as a data point, hunting can have a positive influence overall when not misused.

That is not an opinion-it has been studied and determined valid under given limits.

We can use the human animal here as an example, such as the elephant and horse. Syrian refugees have to have food, water, and a location. Someone has to come up with a plan to manage these immigrants. Apply the horse model to immigrants and their needs.

You really have to look deeper into the mud puddle past your reflection-and that mud hole goes deep.

When the hunter considers the great expansive of some parts of North and South America, Africa, Canada, and the Mongol grasslands, with huge herds of a variety of wildlife in need of a conservation plan, that are surrounded eventually by human habitation, there is a lot of mathematical application to biological work to help form a plan of management to keep those areas functioning at an acceptable level. This is not even considering the ecological impact of the land and ecosystems via other variables.

The Earth is big. It is a challenge given problems like ocean acidification. That is a whole different set of problems to talk about. Yikes! I would stay under that oak tree at the river with all this doom and gloom.

A fact is hunters do contribute a lot of money. Don't let money be your only supportive argument. Let’s own that as a fact. Hunters don’t need to argue to space that hunting is conservation when it is not. Hunter money does support a lot of scientific research and conservation effort. We shouldn’t expect gratitude from non-hunters abhorred to hunting. Just keep doing what you’re doing, don’t take more than you can use or need, and do as much work as you need to sustain the populations and habitats for future generations.

Be proud of that.

Don’t expend energy on fighting. Spend more time on contributing to organizations willing to be truthful and not manipulative in the way it directs its members to promote the outdoor sports.

If you voice your opinion, and you feel confident your stance is valid, stand your ground. If you find a person who makes more sense-maybe you should listen. Give it a second or third thought.

“Hunting is conservation” begins to look like a poor choice of words. If someone wanted to give the term hunting a home, it would be stashed amongst natural resource conservation. Don’t believe me? Look at that survey from the local Department of Natural Resources and ask yourself, “Why do they want me to send in how many turkeys I’ve seen?”  Data point for an impromptu scientific study using citizen science to give numbers because of lack of state funding. Why do you think the Department of Natural Resources controls the legalities of hunting, your permits, boats, public access areas, and wildlife managed areas?

Other than that, someone is trying to force a golden egg out the back end of a goose that is not laying. Cramming it down the throats of hunters is not going to produce a golden egg either.

Broken down as a truth, in the greater scheme of things, hunting is rendered as a scientific variable.

This is an example of a report where hunting is a variable or mode of removal to gain samples for an ecological study-hence it being a variable in a scientific research study.

You will read the term “offtake” as “a number of individuals removed from the environment through hunting or harvesting by humans”. 

See article below (circa 2015):

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss3/art40/

This article discusses deforestation and hunting pressure of the Pano Indians in the Amazon (circa 2016). Review the section entitled, "Assessing wildlife status using hunting data":

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss2/art3/

The next step on the public relations ladder is advertising “hunting is science”.

Hunting is not Conservation.

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth