For many years’ hunters, target shooters, people who just want to defend their homes in case of a home invasion, and other responsible gun owners have had to live with the stigma placed on them by liberals, pacifists, democrats, and animal rights groups. During his failed presidency, Barack Obama called gun owners (and Bible readers) ‘Bitter clingers.’
There is a stereotype that hunters are brutal, thoughtless, and bloodthirsty killers who leave the carcasses of the animals they kill to rot. Of course, we understand that the stigma against gun ownership is deeply faulty, just as the statistics used by anti-gun ideologues are faulty. But what might not be so obvious is the fact that hunters contribute more to environmental conservation, wilderness preservation, and animal rights than animal rights groups.
Over the last 77 years, hunters all across this nation have contributed more than $6.5 billion dollars to wildlife conservation projects. Since 1939, in Georgia alone, hunters have given over $136 million to support wildlife conservation in that state.
In 2010, the Game Management assistant chief for the Wildlife Resources Division said, “The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program is the most successful wildlife conservation program in the world and serves as a financial cornerstone to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. It benefits all wildlife species, conserves and restores habitat and helps enhance wildlife conservation through research. Through this program, America’s hunters continue to provide the most substantial source of funding for wildlife conservation and management in the United States.”
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation was established via the authority provided by the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937. Since then, hunters and state wildlife management professionals have worked together to maintain both predator and prey animals in such a way that all existing animal populations enjoy maximum prosperity.
Whenever invasive species enter an area, or when an apex predator becomes too great in number, hunters are allowed to come in and restore optimal population levels. In so doing, hunters prevent whole populations of prey animals from being devastated by predators, and keep dangerous animals from expending their territories into human residential areas.
Certainly, there are more and less humane ways to kill game animals when hunting. But the vast majority of hunters do their best to kill in a single clean shot, to prevent the animal from suffering. There is also a widely agreed upon standard in hunting, that the oldest animals are the ones which should be killed whenever possible. These older animals have lived the majority of their lives, have already had offspring and would face a long and drawn out death, or be killed by predators in a way that is far worse than being shot.
The fees paid by hunters to hunt on these public lands has been a massive boon to state-run conservation efforts- a boon that has outstripped anything even hinted at by anti-gun advocates and animal rights activists. The Sierra Club, for example, makes more contributions to its political allies than it does to any real conservation efforts. Of course, the word ‘conservation’ probably sounds a little too much like ‘conservative’ for their comfort.
It’s also interesting to note that the meat that comes from game animals is far cleaner, free from fear hormones and unnatural growth agents and is vastly richer in nutrients than the meat that comes from factory farms. Animals that are killed and eaten by hunters represents an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical spewing industrial meat mills that torture and isolate animals for years before killing them in brutal ways. There is no animal more “free range” than the deer who lives 90% of his natural life free to roam the wilderness and is killed in a way that is much kinder than the death nature has in store.
We think it’s time hunters stop living under the stigma imposed on them by an ignorant, virtue signaling leftist agenda. It’s time for hunters to be proud of their important contribution to the conservation of wilderness and wild animals, to the agencies that regulate these efforts, and for the healthy- non-industrial meat they provide to their families.
~ American Gun News
