What is happening to the hunting community? I have never seen so much turmoil within it and yet nothing is changing in a positive way. Why? As outdoors men and women you would think the recent anti-hunting attacks, and in our case here in BC-an outright hunting ban on Grizzly bears, would be pulling hunters together to fight for our love, our passion....
That's not what I am seeing at all. I've been sitting fairly quiet, watching what is unfolding on social media. To be honest it scares me.
The only way I can describe it is like a circus....these anti-hunting groups are the ring masters and the hunting community are the monkeys...scared, confused and lashing out at each other instead of doing anything productive. And it just keeps playing in this deadly circle, while those that wish to see an end to hunting smile and rub their hands together, ready for their next move.
The hunting community in BC has been in havoc since the government banned the grizzly bear hunt, some hunters were actually FOR this ban....not thinking about what it means to animal rights organizations and the little bit of hold and power it gave them. They will take it and run with it. In Alberta, they are after cougar hunting. I'm sure many of you have seen Steve Ecklund and his beautiful cougar plastered and blasted all over social media...and not by hunters. News media will run with these stories (whether they have all the facts and permission to use photos...or not) because it gains them more exposure but it gives ARAs a platform to stand on and an agenda to push. Emotion will trump science, especially when your government has no backbone- it did for BC and our government proudly stated it.
But things started in BC before the grizzly ban...our animal populations are plummeting and they have been on a steady decline for decades. What has been everyone's answer for fixing the decline all these years? Change the regulations! Put more restrictions on! And yet, here we sit...everyone panicking because it has gotten SO bad. And what does a good majority want to do to fix things? The same thing that has been done for decades....change the regulations and now everyone is ripping each other apart because no one can agree on anything. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting new results. Everything needs to change, we need to start using our biologists for what they are meant for! Things need to be science based...without research and boots on the ground the whole program is running blind. For that they need money from the government, kind of hard when they keep cutting their funding. All of the revenue from license and tags should be going back into wildlife...that includes our biologists. Maybe we should be looking at the states and some of their programs like the Pittman-Robertson Act, something that is similar so all user groups are chipping in to our wildlife and spaces. I see all these people attacking other hunters...attacking our wildlife biologists (yes I had a guy-a hunter apparently- say that there needed to be an open season on biologists today!), none of this is the biologists fault, they work with what they are given and try to get more. The government is at fault here- for not giving a rats ass about our wildlife and wild places or the people that are employed to look over them.
Please, if you want your children and grand-children to be able to hunt you need to stop picking fights with each other. Take the fight where it needs to go....our government whom is so easily swayed by emotion instead of following science. And don't just do the usual "we want the regulations changed" because it won't fix this mess, demand real change from them. We are teetering on a very slippery slope and its not looking promising.
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