Happy Earth Day, I hope you can get out and shoot a turkey, do some fishing or just take a hike in the woods and revel in God’s great outdoors. You deserve it, because you are one of America’s top environmentalists and conservationists.
By paying excise taxes on guns, ammo and bows, we hunters have generated $6.8 billion for wildlife conservation since 1937. For more than 80 years, sportsmen have paid more than $13.7 billion for habitat projects in every state to protect the environment and our fish and wildlife.
If you see a greenie-weenie environmentalist strutting around and preening on this Earth Day, tell them to stick that in their pipe and smoke it.
And tell them to read this excerpt from an article by two of America’s top deer biologists, Drs. Larry Marchinton and Karl Miller:
In the United States roughly 3 million white-tailed deer are harvested each year from a still-growing population of approximately 19 million. This translates to about 150 million pounds of meat. Add to this the amount of elk, turkey, squirrel, rabbit and other game as well as wild fruits, nuts, and vegetables that is consumed. To produce this amount of beef, chicken, or vegetable crops in addition to that which is already produced would be ecologically devastating. Acres and acres of wild places would have to be destroyed to accommodate this increased agricultural production. More wildlife habitat would have to be plowed under. More pesticides would be applied. More soil erosion would occur. More waterways would become lifeless drainage ditches. Isn’t it better that some of us reap a sustained harvest from natural systems, rather than destroy these systems?
Yes, and so we shall go on hunting, shooting animals and eating them, our environment is better for it.
Mike I recently had an anti saying how sick and disgusting it is that hunters shoot animals in Africa. I tried to explain that hunters are the number one group on conservationist in the world and that we literally pay for 90% of the state lands and the upkeep on them with hunting tax dollars and donations. When I stated that hunters do more for conservation than all other groups combined his response was that’s like saying “Hitler did more for the jews than all other people cominded” which I told him was a horrible analogy to try and make which made no sense. This person said that it’s ridiculous that hunters would shoot an animal like a lion or giraffe and that hunters are the same as poachers. I get really heated and try to keep my cool by just stating facts and letting that be my only tool to fight with since facts are all that matter in science. What do you do when you are attacked by anti’s, or in a heated debate with someone who isn’t open minded enough to truly look at the plain facts of hunters being the world’s largest conservation group and protectors of wildlife?
Thank you Dr. Marchinton- my major prof. back in the 60’s!