Dear Editor,
I have been following Randi Brockman’s columns with passing interest, as I am also a vegetarian and an animal welfare activist. However, I felt that her argument against hunting did more harm than good.
Let me preface my interjections with the fact that I have never hunted, I never intend to hunt, and hell, I even belong to PETA, which I would support 100 percent were it not for the unfortunate fact that the organization advocates the euthanization of all feral cats, rather than humane trap-neuter-return programs (which have proven more effective in the long run).
Over the years, I have learned the hard way that people do not respond to judgmental attitudes. The quote “if you still think hunting is OK, congrats, I bet you’ll never be my friend” was a perfect example of this.
Are you writing about these issues to enlighten people about the horrible ways that animals are exploited – such as farms where female deer are constantly kept “in season” through hormone injections and kept in dank, cramped stalls with wire under their hooves and a trough beneath to collect their potent urine as a commodity for hunters – or are you using your printed word to preach to the choir, as it stands now?
From an environmentally sustainable standpoint, it is a far better choice for a family to hunt their annual moose, deer, turkey, etc., freeze that meat, and live off of their game for that year than it is for the same family to go to Conglomo-Mart and buy factory-farmed meat. In Alaska, beef is so expensive that most people do just that. I know of hunters that thank the animal’s spirit for the food it brought to their family.
Yes, disease and starvation are natural limiting factors in the number of species that can exist in a particular area, but there is nothing natural about the absence of viable predators, as evidenced by the starving deer all over the Midwest and the number of horrible wrecks they can cause.
My years spent living in rural Ohio and timidly driving home on a dark, icy nights can attest to this.
I do not support hunters that use dogs and walkie-talkies to tree bears, or sprinkle doe whiz to ambush bucks, and it’s seriously uncool to hunt out of season or over the limit.
However, I would still sit down and talk to the people who do those things, because nothing is ever going to change if we refuse to facilitate a venue for it.
You don’t have to agree. But the very fact that you are willing to calmly talk about something you feel passionately about gives people more pause than volatile exchanges.
Just a thought. Randi’s heart is in the right place, and I applaud her for that.
Megan Jewell Kerns

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