certain point of view. In today’s world, people don’t look at the reality of where our meat comes from. The protesters find people hunting non-endangered species during hunting seasons to be “violent criminals” even though they go to the supermarket to buy their meat. We pay someone to butcher cows, chicken, pigs so we don’t have to. But no, hunters apparently are the bad guys. In November of 2016, I actually interacted with a anti-hunter. It was a student who went to the same school as I did. They came up to me saying I was a “murderer” and a “animal abuser”. Are you kidding me? I asked the student if they eat meat, they replied to me saying yes. I asked them where did they get their meat? They replied with the grocery store. I was like “You know, billions of farm animals are slaughtered every year, billions! And you are giving me a hard time because I shot an animal that for one, has a strong and steady population. And two, is not endangered and is extremely hard to hunt”. The student looked at me, smiled, and walked away. Not one comment from them. It goes to show that anti-hunters don’t look at the big picture and focus on only a small view of hunting.
I read a passage from a short story “Why the Beaver should Thank the Wolf,” by Mary Ellen Hannibal which depicted how so many animals are connected to one another. It explained how wolves thrive on elk species and without them, Wolf populations would die off. Elks thrive on vegetation and without it, they too would die off. And that’s where beavers come in. Beaver dams help increase the amount of water in lakes or streams each year allowing vegetation to thrive and have less worry of droughts. So without the wolves, overpopulation would wipe out elks and food-borne illnesses would be much more common. Predators are needed to keep a healthy environment and who is there when the predator species are no more? Hunters. Hunters are the last to stand to help protect wildlife.
Think about a life without hunting. Would it be worth it? Without hunting, you would be forced to eat meat with additives and from environments that aren’t clean and full of animals being slaughtered even though you didn't want to because there would be no other options. And if there was no more hunting, people would probably start getting rid of rifles. After all, if you can't hunt, then what do you need a rifle for? Wildlife foundation wouldn’t be getting any more financial help from the billions made from hunters licenses and tags. Without the income support. The environments would be ruined and populations would go extinct. Think about it, is it worth it to get rid of hunting?