It’s now November, and hunting seasons are well underway for many species. I will be heading out for a plains whitetail hunt in a couple of days, and I am excited about that. I won’t have the chance for turkey again this fall just because of the timing of my deer hunt, but that’s OK, pheasants and waterfowl will be close behind. As I mentioned in a previous post, now is the time that I could be hunting something everyday, and someday I hope to have the opportunity to do that. Until then, I will have to hunt when I can, which will still be a lot over the coming months. When I think about how differently hunting is thought of in our society lately as opposed to when it was necessary for survival, it makes me want to educate people, which is a driving goal of this website.
I know I can’t do that in a day, but I always look for the chance to share information and thoughts to get people to think differently about hunting and conservation. Colorado Hunters in the Late 1800’s This section below was not something I wrote, but something a friend sent me, and I want to share with my readers. I did rewrite it a bit because the writing style was a little annoying to me. From my knowledge, the total number of hunters in the USA is closer to 14 million, still an impressive number. But the person that wrote this below didn’t take into account hunters that hunt in other states, so he/she came to some incorrect conclusions. He/she also did not even mention all of the other kinds of hunters out there, like birds, small game, and waterfowl, but you get the idea. I am still sharing it because I think it makes a good point, even if the total number of hunters in the USA is 14 million. Thoughts on Hunters, this is an interesting slant on things. The world’s largest army; America’s hunters! I had never thought about this, but a blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion: There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin. Allow me to restate that number: 600,000. Over the last several months, Wisconsin’s hunters became the eighth largest army in the world: more men in arms than in Iran. More than France and Germany combined. These men and women deployed to the woods of a single American state, Wisconsin, to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed. That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan’s 700,000 hunters, all of whom have now returned home safely. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world. And then add in the total number of hunters in the other 46 states. It’s millions more.
The point? America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower. Hunting, it’s not just a way to fill the freezer; it’s a matter of national security. That’s why all enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed. Food for thought, when next we consider gun control. Overall it’s true, so if we disregard some assumptions that hunters don’t possess the same skills as soldiers, the question would still remain, what army of 2 million would want to face 30, 40, 50 million armed citizens? For the sake of our freedom, don’t ever allow gun control or confiscation of guns. This discussion does bring up some interesting thoughts, and she/he doesn’t even mention the benefit that hunters provide to preserve our animals and our wilderness, which is another article for another time. In Colorado there is an ad campaign on TV from the Colorado Parks & Wildlife that talks about some of these benefits, it’s called “Hug a Hunter,” and it sends a really good message. As hunters we should all be sending the same message every chance we get ( via bearmilleroutdoors.com )
Jasper and Sardine 