"Also at that time coyote bounties were plentiful, and thus began a decade of over-population of jackrabbits. Our car tires would hit them as easily as a windshield would hit a moth."
I'm not sure what point he was trying to make...It sounded like he was arguing in favor of sports hunting, but this point actually illustrates why sports hunting is bad. Overhunting of coyotes for bounties paid on them is what resulted in the jackrabbit overpopulation. And since people don't eat coyotes, and since only rarely do coyotes actually cause problems for people, coyote hunting is by definition a sport hunt. But, having overhunted the coyote population, resulting in a populations surge in jackrabbits, does not justify hunting jackrabbits
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our relatively recent developements of meat farming and slaughterhouses have removed us largely from the foodchain, creating a hugely unnatural hole. However, sport hunting does not fill that hole, it merely creates new holes elsewhere in the bag.
Absolutely agreed. I think the biggest note against slaughterhouses is that they have encouraged people to eat far more meat than they would if they had to hunt for their dinners. (This is why I make so much vegetarian food, in spite of wholeheartedly believing that humans are built to be omnivorous - we simply don't need all the meat we take in, and we wouldn't eat so much if it wasn't so readily available in the aisles of the supermarket.)
*I should also ammend that the "we eat more meat than we need to" thing is largely cultural, and a distinct American problem. I'm sure it's an issue elsewhere as well, but there are many cultures that I obviously can't judge for that. But Americans consume far more meat than is necessary for survival (and often more than is even healthy for us).
Yep, actually it's the only nutrient that Americans get enough of, and of it we get too much. As a culture, we have a seriously unbalanced way of eating.
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I'm not sure what point he was trying to make...It sounded like he was arguing in favor of sports hunting, but this point actually illustrates why sports hunting is bad. Overhunting of coyotes for bounties paid on them is what resulted in the jackrabbit overpopulation. And since people don't eat coyotes, and since only rarely do coyotes actually cause problems for people, coyote hunting is by definition a sport hunt. But, having overhunted the coyote population, resulting in a populations surge in jackrabbits, does not justify hunting jackrabbits ( ... )
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Absolutely agreed. I think the biggest note against slaughterhouses is that they have encouraged people to eat far more meat than they would if they had to hunt for their dinners. (This is why I make so much vegetarian food, in spite of wholeheartedly believing that humans are built to be omnivorous - we simply don't need all the meat we take in, and we wouldn't eat so much if it wasn't so readily available in the aisles of the supermarket.)
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