Fair Chase is central to hunting. If you run an animal to exhaustion from the air and then shoot it you are not hunting you are killing. Plain (or Palin) and simple, if there is no fair chase then you’re not hunting.

Respect for the animal being hunted, which mainly entails humanely killing the animal you hunt is central to ethical hunting. Shooting a moveing animal from a moveing vehicle, plane or boat with underpowered rifle, does not promote this. Shooting from a boat pretty much dispels the “it’s all about shot placement” argument that might be made for useing a .22-caliber firearm.

Also there is no science that has been done that I have found, and I’ve looked, that shows there is any need or scientific reason to cull wolves in order to protect Alaska’s other big game species. If you know of any please turn me on.

Thanks for the forum Teak!

I’d like to clarify two things:

1. This should not be considered hunting, at least by our modern, sporting, definition. This is a predator conservation technique that has been controversial because of some groups’ perception that it is inhumane.

2. This technique is not unique to Alaska, although the recent attention to Gov. Palin’s recorded support has made it seem like it is. Some western states have used aerial hunting to kill coyotes, and Missouri has used it to kill feral hogs, which are not protected game animals in this state.

Luigi:

“Hunting” is a non-specific term which covers all sorts of activities, only one of which is modern regulated recreational sport hunting. The principle of “fair chase” really only applies in that one instance.

In non-recreational wildlife management, or subsistence hunting, the point is to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Running the “animal to exhaustion” first certainly doesn’t fit in that mold. You see the shot, you take the shot. To portray the shooters as torturing the animals first is a twisted fantasy.

As for potting swimming caribou with a .22, I have never heard of that but would bet all the money in my wallet that in whatever very rare instances it may be legal, nearly all who shot them swimming would be local subsistence hunters. And absolutely all who used a .22 to do it would be that group. Though a .22 mag can be effective in the right hands and in the right situation, sport hunters just don’t go out caribou hunting with a .22.

As for your exhaustive research on the reasons for a wolf cull, you must have skipped googling “alaska wolf management”. You will find it instructive, though I prefer not to guess if it will turn you on.

Wolves should be on the protected list. I find it very inhumane to hunt and shoot them from a helicopter. I guess the hunter isn’t skilled enough to track them on foot. Hunters shouldn’t be hunting them at all. The wolf should be allowed to protect itself from the idiots shooting at them. Next thing they will do is blame the wolf when the helicopter crashes.

As a form of “sport” — not a good idea. It’s like spotlighting deer– it can be done, but why?

As a form of predator control, why not? I don’t buy that “subsistence hunters” are shooting wolves from plane or copters. If so, that is just an excuse.

And if you are crazy enough to shoot caribou at close range with a .22– be my guest. But I won’t be there to save you from goring.

Fair conservation or inhumane? Aerial wolf hunts have nothing to do with conversation and everything to do with boosting moose and caribou populations for Alaska’s lucrative hunting industry.

A hunter in a low-flying aircraft aims his assault rifle at terrified wolves with no camouflage against a backdrop of white snow. A same-day airborne hunter harasses wolves till exhausted, then corners them in snow banks and fires away at close range. Is this inhumane? Duh.

In 1972, Congress enacted the Federal Airborne Hunting Act to ban use of an aircraft to “attempt to shoot for the purpose of capturing or killing any bird, fish, or other animal” or to “harass any bird, fish, or other animal.” Yet Governor Palin, and Alaskan Governor Frank Murkowsi before her, permit private hunters to slaughter wolves from aircrafts under the guise of “conservation.”

Moreover, Alaskan voters passed ballot measures in both 1996 and 2000 to ban aerial and land-and-shoot wolf hunts. In one of many polls (this one conducted by Dittman Research Corporation) responders, including hunters, disapproved of aerial predator-control as a system to augment moose and caribou numbers.

Ultimately, politicians have failed to produce a definitive scientific assessment that justifies aerial wolf hunts. In fact, many studies attest to the valuable predatory role wolves play in an ecosystem. Wolves help sustain caribou and moose herds by eliminating old, feeble, and sick individuals and fortifying gene pools over time. Aerial gunning, on the other hand, has yet to undergo site-specific studies to measure its effect on local ecosystems.

Sarah Palin calls buzzing around in planes to blow away wolves a “safari.” I call her bounty offer of $150 for the right front legs of freshly killed wolves “sadistic.” But Palin is determined to eke out every last penny before her state’s fish and wildlife die out. This summer, Palin poured $400,000 of taxpayer money into her mission to defeat Measure 2 — an initiative to ban aerial wolf hunts as sport. Those of us who dispute sportsmen bombing wildlife from planes simply don’t “understand rural Alaska.”

Sarah Palin is the one who fails to understand that violence against nature is not an effective campaign tool. Most voters are savvy enough to oppose Palin’s pro-death platform on animals and environment.