Like most folks here, I do not hunt, but don’t condemn (most) hunters. I say most because I suspect here in Manitoba there is a black market for moose (whose populations have declined) and elk. There is also a lot of night-lighting from trucks, which for some reason is legal for First Nations hunters. So it is unsustainable hunting.
I have vast appreciation for DU. I spent a month or so working with them in Ontario, and have seen what they do. They were set up by duck hunters with the foresight to see that if conservation was not undertaken, they would be unable to hunt in the future. Creating and maintaining wetlands establishes and provides habit for waterfowl, and a huge number of non bird species. I saw them make a small ‘pairing pond’ at a school on Six Nations land. It was in an area that was damp but mowed, therefore useless as a habitat. Within a year it was populated by a large number of organisms, and was a place where the kids could learn about Nature.
Birds are not stupid, either. I worked, a long time ago with a guy that hunted geese. He said they would set up just outside Oak Hammock Marsh, a huge DU refuge in Manitoba. The birds would come in too high to shoot, and then drop when they passed the road that marked the protected area.
My first summer job was to maintain a pheromone trapline for moths!
Since that article is from 2016, I did some looking, and it looks like biodegradable wad for steel shot has since become available…kind of. Market share appears to be a BIG economic hurdle.
This site lists some options: http://dogwilling.ca/pointing-dog-blog/leadfreeplasticfree, but further clicking revealed GreenOps has ceased operations, the Kent Cartridge web site no longer shows any Bio-wad products (at least that I could find). Eley and Gamebore sites DID feature products, so at least in the UK biodegradable wads appear to be available. (As far as I can tell, Kent owns Gamebore, so it’s telling that they own the tech, but don’t appear to sell it in the US.)
I also found this https://www.wideopenspaces.com/first-biodegradable-wad-for-shotshells-in-the-u-s-to-be-released/ Further clicking found several sites that were sold out, and the site that did stock the Rio ECO shells selling them for a 53% markup compared to conventional shells.
I wouldn’t put this one in the “problem solved” category quite yet, but the tech exists, so maybe legislation or incentives could drive adoption.
A more important question that has a far greater impact on wildlife is “What are people’s thoughts on reproducing?” Is it ethical to produce more humans given the huge detrimental impact that continued population growth is having on non-human species? Which has the biggest negative impact, shooting a duck or having a kid? How many animals will my kid kill driving down the highway over his lifetime? Compared to the number of ducks a hunter will shoot? I once had someone tell me that they would be unwilling to collect an insect specimen for me. But they didn’t think twice about driving to the park to photograph them–killing hundreds of insects with his car on the way. We are irrational beings.
That is an interesting question and perhaps worthy of its own discussion thread in order to keep this one on topic?
Raising a good person who can change things for better does defenitely worth it, though surely postindustroal trend of having less children is a good thing overall.
It’s interesting that you distinguish the hunting community from the conservation community. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the history of conservation and environmental movements in the US. Aldo Leopold’s writing is often credited as foundational to the modern conservation movement, and he was certainly an avid hunter.
I’m speculating here, but I think a lot of the divisiveness between non-hunting conservation minded people and hunters today come from echoes of the timber wars in the Pacific northwest in the 80s and 90s. In the 70s, there was popular consensus around environmentalism, with both the Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts passing unanimously in the senate under a Republican president. In the following decades though, lines of class, politics, and ideology were drawn during the conflict over spotted owls and old growth forest.
Hunters are largely rural and working-class, and saw themselves represented by the politicians (perhaps shortsightedly) prioritizing the (extractive) rural economy. Ducks Unlimited is just as involved in avian conservation as Audubon, but Audubon takes the side of the spotted owl. The two organizations have different constituencies now, which trend towards conservative and rural working class for DU, and highly educated and liberal for Audubon. It’s a shame that it’s common to refer to the former as hunters and only the later as conservationists.
I hope we can return to an era of broad consensus on addressing environmental crises. That might start with reimagining the stories we tell of how we relate to the environment and to each other.
Although it’s an old thread, I did find this to be an interesting read. https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=191761 (the name of the topic should give you a feel for what you’re in for).
Thoreau, in Walden: “We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it.” As @sedgequeen stated, the basic concept behind hunting is that we manage populations, not individuals.
“Hunting” does not represent a single, monolithic pursuit, nor does it represent a single, monolithic issue. As a result, i think it would be difficult for people who use information to inform their beliefs to say that they fully support all hunting, or that they fully oppose all hunting.
oops - meant this to reply to the thread, not to @michaelpirrello specifically - sorry Michael!
I find it interesting (depressing?) that the main claim in defence of hunting is that (at least within the U.S., apparently), it’s ‘good’ for conservation because if we’re not invested in killing things we have no reason to preserve them.
I would say - and many of my relatives and countrymen in SADC would disagree with me - that both from what I’ve seen in land conserved for hunting here and the decline of waterbirds presumably sharing the habitats of hunted waterfowl in the US, as much as hunting can benefit populations of target species through getting hunting communities engaged with the conservation of those species, it doesn’t lend itself to ecosystem preservation. In the UK, for example, grouse benefit from the protection they’re given as a gamebird, but hen-harriers haven’t. Here, people burn grass to control ticks to protect antelope from tick-borne diseases - so invertebrates and herps suffer (and if anyone cites wikipedia to tell me that fire in the miombo is natural - don’t), which reduces food for birds and small mammals, but even in acheiving its aim - reducing diseases in antelope - it reduces the availability of food to scavengers and predators, and tends to encourage whichever antelope is the most competitively generalist gradually excluding all the more specialist species.
And that’s without mentioning how even in a well preserved habitat, shooting at one specific species is going to disrupt a lot of others; we all know (I assume) that fireworks are stressful for wildlife, so unless you’re hunting with a silencer there’s that…
While the above sounds like I think hunting is awful, I generally think livestock husbandry around the world is getting inhumane, and I do not disagree with the point that animals don’t exactly die a pleasant death when they are preyed upon by other animals. I just think that defending hunting as a conservation tool when its effectiveness there is really just a reflection on our failures to conserve for reasons other than wanting to see a turkey explode at the end of a shotgun, and as a result of its relative effectiveness its value in system-wide conservation is often grievously overstated.
Conservation for hunting
isn’t actually about conservation, it is about maintaining stock for hunters,
benefits to conservation are incidental not deliberately intended?
I was scrolling, looking for the first Leopold reference. The debate between consumption and conservation will go on forever, and there is room for both to live together, but Aldo said that the only truly inexhaustible resource is perception.
That line is why I’m on iNaturalist today.
The thing is, no matter what continent, people are going to hunt, whether we like it or not. Doing it in a sustainable manner at least preserves populations and habitats.
And, unfortunately, in most cultures, money (of some sort) rules. A small patch of bush in a city is seen as a place for development, not conservation. There is no money to be made in conservation. I don’t like it, and have not really come to terms with it, but it is how societies tend to function. If it’s not for development, then it’s for farming, grazing etc. I wish it were otherwise. And yes, it is depressing.
To add a specific example to these great figures at the top, Ducks Unlimited is a non-profit conservation organization which raises funds to buy, conserve, restore, and improve waterfowl habitat, including wetlands and breeding grasslands, and studying waterfowl recovery.
The organization started as a hunting group, and over 80 years has put >15 million acres of wetland and grassland into conservation, including ~2.2 million acres in 2020!
This map for the North America region shows their conservation areas of focus: https://www.ducks.org/Conservation/Where-Ducks-Unlimited-Works/DU-Conservation-Priority-Areas 
As @muir showed, the species of waterfowl could be due in large part to such conservation efforts.
Since hunting is actually on a downward trend, this could mean less money for organizations like DU that perform a lot of vital conservation activities (see previous link for a story on this). The article also points out something I’d forgotten:
Money generated from license fees and excise taxes on guns, ammunition and angling equipment provide about 60 percent of the funding for state wildlife agencies, which manage most of the wildlife in the U.S.
So overall, as a lot of people in this thread have mentioned, I am neutral on hunting species as an activity (assuming it is done in an ecologically-informed fashion), but definitely positive about some of the benefits associated with conservation activities and organizations centered around hunting.
One last note, there are many species which benefit from the conservation activities associated with waterfowl hunting as I understand it, including increasing and preserving habitat for rare species like the Giant Garter Snake which depends on flooded habitats and careful management of agriculture such as rice fields in the Central Valley of California.
These management activities incidentally, include actions like stakeholder education (farmers, water managers, etc), as well as conservation easements to keep fields flooded and reducing harvest or other field management during critical periods (such as waterfowl breeding).
To me this obviously demonstrates that there need not be an either/or or zero-sum game between conservation and hunting, or even conservation and economic activities like farming. In fact, these alliances are becoming more critical as climate change will eclipse any other causes of mortality and displacement for all species (including waterfowl and other birds), not to mention ourselves!
I made the distinction here based on the original question asked, which made it clear that the asker considered them separate communities. The idea that they are separate is, unfortunately, really common as from both sides there is is often a sense of frustration with the other side.
Conservationists (generally not professionals in the field, I mean more the average person who is interested in the idea of conservation) often make vocal statements about how “terrible” hunting is, which is exacerbated by incidents of trophy hunting.
Hunters (and this is often based more on the “liberal/conservative” polarization in the US) often get frustrated with those non-professional conservation folks attacking them, as well as rules and regulations put in place, but again, the latter tends to be more of a liberal/conservative thing that comes to the forefront in this particular issue.
The whole point of my comment was to take issue with the idea that the hunting and conservation communities are separate and to remind people that often they are actually interested in and working on the same issues with similar over-all goals.
Bridging this gap and was actually one of my conservation jobs in New England, so I got to see up close both the divide and mutual animosity, as well as numerous instances where there was a really good partnership working to meet shared goals.
I’m a conservation professional and about as politically and socially liberal as you can get, but I grew up hunting and still do so when the opportunity arises.
Like others on here, I am very socially liberal and I hunt (though not ducks specifically - my personal preference leans towards cheaper rifle ammo and not picking pellets out of my food, but all power to those who do). I am ‘fortunate’ to be surrounded by invasive vertebrate pests that frustrate me as an iNatter but pose little obstacle to peoples’ conscience when killed, and am also in favor of sustainable, ethical harvest of native species.
But I want to add to points already made - that on an almost spiritual level, hunting is a natural part of the human psyche that withers when not exercised on some level. Some people let it loose in video games, bargain shopping or iNatting that obscenely hard to find critter for their lifelist, but the drive to hunt is so innate that even a toddler will grab insects and frogs and show them to a parent, hoping to impress. Hunting and foraging is also the way our species was exposed to allergens, before the advent of farming and the modern luxury of keeping pets - rural living is inversely associated with allergies.
Truth be told, I used to laugh and look down a little at very cloistered, urban dwellers who break out in a rash upon touching grass, become nauseous on feeling a particle of gristle in a sausage, freak out over touching a dead fish but will eat a boneless fillet, will literally die if exposed to nuts or eggs, or run screaming when a moth flies into their room. Now, I just feel a twinge of pity. It may not be their fault, but severing that connection to obtaining our own food has left us poorer survivors in the event of a crisis.
No idea what I missed - but let us stay with iNat’s - be kind.
We do not know what each of us is dealing with.
Kindness first to you.
for those of us not in the US
was the ‘Fish and Wildlife Service’ not originally set up to maintain stock for hunting and fishing?
Was conservation as such a founding principle? What service TO fish and wildlife? (And why is the fish more important?)
I say leave the ducks be. I understand that there are incentives and wetland restoration programs funded by hunting, but that does not make killing wild native birds acceptable in my opinion. We should restore wetlands for the sake of the ecosystem itself and the services wetlands provide. People often claim they hunt for food but in the case of ducks I disagree. You’d have to kill hundreds of ducks to get the same amount of meat as 1 deer which are overpopulated and will often get killed in roadways anyway especially with populations as dense as they are. The fact is, hunting ducks is just killing beautiful birds for fun in many cases which to me is disgusting. When I’m out photographing beautiful diving ducks in the river and watching their extraordinary swimming capabilities and behaviors and I hear gunshots nearby it makes me sick. I will not change my mind.
well this is an interesting subject sadly in the usa the reccords for wiping out some incredibly abundant populations like :passenger pigeon once the most abundant bird in the world , the carolina parrot, the labrador duck, the ivory bill woodpecker, the esquimo curlew and quite a few others once very abundant birdsI don’t know if lessons have been taken but a good hunter is one who knows what is doing , he knows his game, he knows when to shoot at them , with what ,and where it isn’t free bonanza, so hunting is fine as long as preserving and conserving is done in equal terms and for that knowledge is the rule of the game.