December 23, 2003
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THE DAYS ARE GETTING LONGER!
Today, here at this latitude (62° North), is nine seconds longer than yesterday, for a whopping 5 hours, 27 minutes, and 12 seconds of official sunrise-to-sunset daylight. I’m loving every second of it, or will be as soon as the sun is up. It is still dawnlight out there now.
…aaand,
Predator Control Revisited:
This is my personal vision of predator control:
…but others view it differently.
When I blogged recently about the state-mandated aerial wolf hunt now underway here, all the comments I got were pro-wolf even though I had tried in my inept way to present the Bush Alaska viewpoint. The following letter to the editor from ADN.com does a better job, I think.
Anchorage Daily News | Letters from the People
So-called Friends of Animals should get their house in order, leave us be.
My family lives in the Bush. It would be nice to go the local grocery store and purchase a steak for less than nine bucks a pound, but with a family of three teenagers, we depend on moose to eat with rising costs of living in the Bush. I invite the so-called Friends of Animals to visit the Bush and see how their precious wolves have killed a cow moose and eaten only the tongue. Please, let them take their misguided and uneducated ideas and practice them in their urban environments while they are sitting at a stoplight in their gas-guzzling SUVs. We don’t want them or need them to interfere with us. They should get their own house in order before messing with ours. As far as we are concerned, they can go someplace else on vacation. It’s sportsmen we want here to enjoy what Alaska has to offer. Quit trying to force your misguided ideas on us and leave us alone. We don’t need or want them here to interfere with Alaska.
– Johnny Evans
Dillingham
After having listened to the “subsistence” debate for all of the three decades I’ve lived in Alaska, my firm conviction is that this is one insoluble problem. State and Federal constitutions mandate that all citizens have equal rights. Apparently the only people who believe that urban dwellers should have equal rights to “subsistence” hunting licenses (which cost much less than sport licenses –a token 25¢ when I arrived in Alaska in the ‘seventies and now up to $5.00– and allow for some loosened restrictions on time and place and methods of hunting) are urban-dwelling hunters and a few civil rights lawyers.
The rural preference movement, or “Bush preference” as we usually prefer to say it since “rural” conjures visions of farms and farms exist here only on the Railbelt, has long and loudly expressed the rational point of view that the available “game” (translation: wildlife for consumption) should be reserved for those without ready access to reasonably-priced beef and pork. Citified hunters counter that NO beef or pork (or fish or fowl) is reasonably priced. I tend to agree with both of those statements, decisive fence-sitter that I am.
But I still deplore the wholesale killing of wolves, wiping out entire packs. To me, gunning down competing predators is cowardly and ill-befits the nobility one might expect from the predator at the top of the food chain. Picking ‘em off one at a time when you see them stalking the same moose you’re after… now that seems more “sporting” to me. I remember what it was like in neolithic times. Hunting was hard, dangerous, time-consuming work. Mechanization of transportation and vastly “improved” weaponry have made hunters a soft lot, in my opinion. I say if they’re gonna behave like beastly predators they should back off a bit on the hi-tech shit.
Comments (7)
just came to wish you a great Christmas day and a new year full of blessings!
Right on! In my book, the predator most in need of control is the domesticated primate, especially when alcohol-fed. Sport hunters are, I think, largely pathological, but I should tread lightly on this subject, being far from pathology-free myself. (Loud cries of “Hear hear!” from my family.)
Animal-rights people should be doing something about the deplorable conditions nation-wide in puppy farms, and the wholesale sexual mutilation of dogs and cats. A dog that has been neutered suffers all his miserable life–whole males mount him, and whole females beat up on him. People who do this to their pets should have the same damn thing done to them, see how THEY like it, the morons.
And ALF–they say Animal Liberation Front, I say Assholes and Lamebrains Forever–should be locked up for the terrorists they are.
I belong to PETA–People for Eating Tasty Animals.
Reminds me of when I used to live in Fairbanks…I remember green lights in the sky, Native American classmates, and being a world away from the Lower 48. Since then, Pennsylvania and Texas have been very different…and more boring.
I’m still not a fan of hunting in any capacity.
I’ve always loved your photos
Best of the holidaze – Happy festivus
What’s stopping buddy from eating the tongueless cow moose? (unless he didn’t find it until it was bad, which seems unlikely if he’s depending upon wild game to feed his family)….sounds like that would have been an ‘easy kill.’
I do agree, half-breed tree hugger that I am, that animal rights groups’ energies would best be spent in the direction of those who are exploiting animals for profit or ‘just because’ and not playing with things that they apparently know nothing about, such as actually hunting animals to eat.
Even growing up in the Canadian prairies, life and groceries would have been that much more grim without the annual deer or one shared between buddies that supplemented our family’s meat requirements for the year.
That said, I totally disagree with the mass killing of the wolves. If they got to the moose first, well…….hmmm….
tell greyfox that i’ve had my last two dogs neutered…one to keep from passing along severe allergies to future generations and the latest to keep him from bringing more “unexpected litters” (from which he came) into the world. oh and i’ve been spayed.
i agree with you on the wiping out of animals. there is a difference between control and wholesale slaughter. like down here at my parents, the deer population has to be controlled (ehhhhh…not that they’re big predators or anything)…but they do get thick. another part of me though thinks…hey…they were here first, this is there land, these are their woods…let ‘em be. it’s a balance i guess…i just don’t like hunting for ”the sake of”.