AN ANSWER FOR LUDIT OF POLAND

[billrquimby]

(NOTE: I am posting this here because -- for some reason -- I've been having problems responding to posts and when I do get it done it is impossible for me to edit it. It took more than 30 minutes to post this. This has been getting worse since this site's last "update." I have no problems with other websites. BQ)

 

Ludit:

 

As a non-hunter, you asked a reasonable question and you deserve an answer.

 

Hunting has a rich and long history in your country and ours. I don't know if bears, and wolves still are hunted in Poland, but I would suspect that your country and its wildlife managers and gamekeepers have programs that use hunting to manage your wild carnivores.

 

I do know that Poland's red stag, roebuck, fallow deer, wild boar, mouflon and a limited number of wisent (European bison) are hunted regularly by hunters from across Europe and around the world. In your country, as in ours, there would be a lot fewer truly wild animals without hunting for food and sport. There is no irony in this. The wisent would be extinct or limited to just a very few zoos today if sportsmen were not willing to pay to cultivate and translocate them so that they could be hunted.

 

Strictly regulated hunting since the 1950s resulted in the offspring of just 50 wisents from zoos being returned to Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, the Western Caucasus, Moldova, Spain and Denmark, and soon Germany.

 

As for the differences between hunting and photography, photography sometimes can be easier and less challenging than hunting. There are no closed seasons for photographing animals, and parks and reserves where wild animals have grown accustomed to being photographed provide willing models for common species.

 

Because some professional photographers have been known to rent semi-tame live mountain lions, wolves and bears and sell photos of them as wild animals, I am suspicious whenever I see photos of these animals.

 

We have no shortage of mountain lions in Arizona, but these large cats are nocturnal, wary of humans, and rarely allow themselves to be seen. If you carefully read the post that prompted your question you will see that the young hunter who reported killing his first mountain lion worked very hard to do so. He earned the right to be proud of his accomplishment.

 

However, as you also did, I shuddered when reading some of the comments that followed his report. Yes, mountain lions kill our deer. But so do we. In my view the mountain lion is America's greatest game animal and deserves better.

 

I cannot tell you why some of us hunt while others find it repugnant. I can only speak for myself. I hunt because I must, and I will hunt until I can't.

 

Bill Quimby