“If you compost, drive a hybrid or electric car, enjoy being outdoors, get your groceries from a farmers’ market, pride yourself on buying regeneratively raised, 100% grass-fed beef or bison and sustainably sourced wild-caught Alaskan seafood, want to be more self-sufficient and love animals, then you're in the right place. You are primed to become a hunter or hunting advocate.” – The Shotgun Conservationist
In 1942, an animated film by Walt Disney introduced a young male deer to audiences in the United States. Bambi, a tale of life in the forest, told the story of a deer, his family, and his friends who occasionally encountered human hunters seeking to kill one of their own. As a result, what is now called The Bambi Effect, has had an emotional impact on the anti-hunting population who believe that some animals are just too cute to shoot. But they also ignore the brutality of nature at the hands of predators.
Today, hunters represent a mere 5 percent of the American population, or approximately 15 million sportsmen and women. Yet, this small percentage of the population, hunters, has an undue positive influence on the environment and animal habitat. While a love of animals and a distaste for guns prevail, evidence that hunters have a net positive impact on conservation, has eco-minded individuals giving the sporting life another look.
In Brant MacDuff’s 2023 book, “The Shotgun Conservationist”, MacDuff makes the case for hunting as a means of conservation. Through the purchase of hunting and angling licenses along with an excise tax on the manufacturers of guns and gear, outdoorsmen do more to preserve wildlife habitat than any other. With annual revenues in the billions, everything from wildlife habitat protections to revenue for local communities should turn anti-hunters into advocates for a system that protects the land and provides positive assets for the community. In fact, hunting is the most humane and environmentally friendly way to expand habitats for wildlife.
Today, there are thousands of state and federal laws regulating hunting and wildlife conservation, implemented primarily to protect animals and their habitats, as well as the purchase and maintenance of public land. Controlled hunting by the US Fish and Wildlife Services regulates and stabilizes the species' population for a balanced ecosystem. For instance, hunting seasons and bag limits help to maintain a proper balance of bucks to does. Hunters are also tapped to manage wildlife overpopulations from the higher rates of disease and conflicts with humans and reduce invasive species by paying hunters to eliminate the oversupply.
Hunting is not only ancestral but the most ethical way to source food, much better than buying meat in grocery stores that primarily originate in factory farms. Knowing where your meat comes from is the start of good health. Hunted meat comes without antibiotics, or hormones and is not mixed with other species of animals. Despite claims to the contrary, animal meat is a great source of nutrient-dense protein. Economically as well, a single deer can provide nearly 40 pounds of clean meat.
Overgrazing, overhunting, and over-poaching also threatened animal extinction and harm to habitat. Hunters, alternately, understand the life cycle of animals and their habitats. Hunting is the opposite of poaching. They protect public land management, support ecosystems, and encourage biodiversity (diversity of living things). Industrialized factory farms harm the environment by displacing and killing wildlife for raw materials from the land that animals graze on, and is more lethal to animals than hunting.
Trophy hunting, the culling of exotic animals, brings in large sums of money for conservation protections and allows for the selective slaughter of animals that are no longer breeding. It is also a major source of revenue for local communities and parks, often providing jobs and food to locals. Although trophy photos are known to trigger animal lovers, their practice exists to avoid extinction. Hunters pay for access to private land. Large bounties put a price on an animal making it more valuable and incentivizing the community to protect animals from poaching. These bounties result in maintaining wildlife and their habitat, while local communities profit.
To increase conservation funds, a user tax on all outdoor activities, along with an excise tax on manufacturers of outdoor gear, should be extended to all outdoor activities, including all foraging. Let the people who want to use the outdoors pay for its conservation.
Animal lovers and environmental activists typically disapprove of hunting. But no one does more to safeguard and sustain land habitat, and animal preservation than hunters. As long as there are laws regulating animal species, and a financial incentive to keep animals from extinction, all forms of outdoor recreation should be supported and encouraged. Hunters are the ultimate friends of the environment.
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