Teresa,
You mention Ted Nugent being the face of hunting as if that is a bad thing. Like him or hate him, Ted has one thing going for him…..he’s right. When was the last time you saw anyone debate hunting with Ted? They use to line up to try to match wits with him but everyone of them left with their tail between their legs. It has been a long time and that is because no one can win, he points out there erant logic and defeats every thing they throw at him.
You may not care for his style or manner, but when it comes to articulating the facts to the uninformed, no one does it better.

Call it a sport or not if you wish, but the price of beef alone has encouraged me to put four deer in the freezer this year instead of the usual two.

And I consider it my civic duty to continue to control the population. Bob Barker wants our pets spayed or neutered. I permanently spay or neuter 2-5 deer a year, preventing overpopulation.

I don’t hunt, never have, and have no intention of ever trying it. However, I’m not going to try to talk others out of it; hunting simply isn’t my thinkg. I don’t see the enjoyment or even the ability within myself, of killing something for reasons other than self-defense. That being said, I don’t feel that killing a wild animal for food is anymore humane than killing a cow that was raised to be slaughtered. Sure, I doubt the cow knows it’s going to be hamburger, but the principle is that cow’s purpose in life was to be food for humans. The poor wild deer, rabbit, etc., are forced to play life as a gamble–maybe they’ll die naturally after a long life, or maybe they will end up as a “trophy” on some “man”’s wall. Now, what about staged hunts, or whatever they’re called, where you go to PoDunk, MO to shoot “wild” exotic animals that are fenced in and are defintely not native to the area, like a rhino or something? Man-oh-man.

I love people like Boyd who thinks that “others” are destroying wildlife habitat. Reality check, Boyd; If you consume anything, anything you are a co-conspirator in the destruction of wildlife. Do you live in a grass hut or a home? Your home is located in an area once inhabited by wildlife. You are as guilty as the next guy.

By the way, I too get a kick out of the deer turning the tables and bulls getting revenge. If a deer did this to someone I know, that guy would live with that the rest of his years cuz I sure wouldn’t let him forget it.

Boyd, you say “Nature regulates itself”…Humans are part of nature/part of the “equation” and top of the food chain. I’m an avid deer hunter. I don’t believe it’s a sport either. However, it’s part of our ancestry and a hell of alot better than eating processed meat.

I think it is interesting that people forget how much money is created and generated by the hunters in Missouri Economy. Look it up on MDC website to see how much revenue is created in licenses along. And you have to realize that the success rate is 50% or less for most hunters. That is 1/2 of the licenses are not used and money is donated to MDC.
I grew up in the Country and live in the city. I grew up learning about hunting, fishing, farming, biology and the benefits of mother nature to humans. How do you think this nation was created and survived from its discovery. There was reason why Indians and settlers farmed, hunted and fished they did it for food. You people that thinking hunting is wrong. Look back at your family tree and see when your ancestors came and see how they survived and where they lived at. I guarante they survived off eating livestock and hunting wild game. Our country was created by settlers who used what the land provided to survive. So a hunter who takes a deer because its morally wrong that is crazy. Our country was founded and survived based on harvesting the wild game and creating a society based on trade of fur and fish.
I am a avid Bow Hunter and I do occassionly rifle hunt but its not much of a challenge as bow hunting. If people don’t want to harm a animal at all take a hard look at history books review the expansion of the west and early settlements. Granted now that we have grocery stores to provide food it all comes from the earth people. In the end we are all consumers of what mother nature provides (beef, chicken, deer, fish).

Although I’ve hunted twice I work with many that Do hunt. Deer Season being the big time of year for most of them. I’ve found the majority of these otherwise fairly smart at their IT jobs people, all men to be a rascist, redneck, intolerant, sloppy, drunken bunch of louts.
I was asked to go along once to help them scout deer for tree-stand locations and hunting on the property they had access to. I went along and even though I didn’t plan on doing any hunting myself I very much enjoy the outdoors and was thinking that would be a big part. It was not. It was mainly about getting ripping drunk, watching porn, playing cards and spouting rascist intolerance that would make Rush blush. The hunting portion was a minor part of the event and was treated as an afterthought by lazy, fat, out of shape middle-class family men who seemed more interested in getting away from their wives and kids for a weekend of drunken debauchery.
Although I know there are dedicated hunters out there I think the majority are as described above.
I wouldn’t have minded seeing a few of these jerks I went with getting racked by a deer.
It would have been quite karmic.

While it doesn’t take arming a kid with a rifle (bad idea given how violent they’ve become), there is something to be said for those criticizing and name calling the little darlings these days. They are fat hogs. People should take their kids out to the woods and go hiking and get some of the fat off these lazy obese loads. These children are waddling around and you can hear them huffing and puffing through their nose and mouth. They’ve got a two-liter bottle of soda under one arm and a bag of “Family Size” Doritos under the other arm and their got a sausage in each fist and wearing a backpack full of snack cakes, Twizzlers, KING SIZE ripple chips. It’s disgusting. These little wussies look like “Fat Bastard” and are afraid of spiders or other insects yet sit in front of the computer for most of the day playing violent video games while their lifeless, mindless, parents dote over their every need. I think we should take them out in the woods and set them loose. Without a supply of snack cakes the deer population would be reduced in days. They’d be shouting at the deer “GET IN MY BELLY!”

Ted Nugent, if I recall, only eats meat that he kills. So, for him, it’s more than sport, it’s food. I did an exercise in my 6th grade science class that demonstrated the importance of hunting. Deers’ natural predators are few and far between and they will starve to death if they get over populated.

I normally won’t rise to the bait, but will today. WB, if Ted Nugent is your designated banner-carrier for the hunting crowd, you are hurting for a role model big-time. Nugent is a drunken moron who ran through millions of dollars and wound up broke, while hurting God knows how many people around him. And when the day comes that I or anyone with reasonable intelligence can’t out-debate him, I’ll never touch a keyboard again.

“Amazed,” as ever you make some good points, but I do not exempt myself from guilt in our contribution toward habitat destruction. I just try to minimize my impact as much as possible, by recycling, buying already-standing homes instead of new ones, conserving energy with small cars, and in general leaving as small an imprint on the planet as I can. Oh — and by not hunting. I don’t deny that deer overpopulation is a problem, but I’ve never met a hunter whose decision to shoot Bambi was in any way influenced by that. Shoot whatever you want; just don’t wait for me to cheer you on.

And Hoytowner, you are missing the point. It doesn’t matter that our ancestors hunted for food. That has nothing to do with us. We are modern, sentient beings who are not indelibly imprinted with the need to hunt for survival. If we hunt, we do it because we enjoy it, and it doesn’t elevate hunters to a status of nobility because Great-Great Grandpaw shot squirrels for lunch.