Animal-rights and anti-trapping activists love to portray the time-honored tradition of trapping as indiscriminate and cruel , painting visions of wildlife left to suffer for days or chewing limbs off to escape a trap . A favored tactic when pushing antitrapping legislation includes attaching the name of a pet dog caught and killed in a trap , which was almost always illegally set , to the bill and inflating the perceived danger ; the infinitesimal number of times pets are caught in legal traps , and even then , released unharmed , is ignored for the gruesome agenda pushing .
What the animal-rights zealots leave out , and nary a member of the general public understands ( including many sportsmen ), is that , in addition to being a highly regulated endeavor that has undergone decades of technological advances and testing , trapping was , and still is , the foundation for many conservation success stories .
The next time someone trots out the tired , old diatribes about trapping , pass along some of the following irrefutable gems of honesty .
CONTROLLING THE BAD The lowest hanging fruit , of course , is to cite the work of trappers in controlling populations of furbearers that contribute to nuisance issues , disease and infrastructure damage . Even urban and suburban homeowners can grasp the seriousness of an overpopulation of mice and rats , raccoons tearing up their yard or dumping their trash cans , beavers flooding their homes and wiping out roads and bridges , or rabies-infected skunks posing a danger to their pets and children .
Perhaps the largest issues sportsmen face when pushing back against the animal-rights movement is relatability and consequences of poor wildlife management . Animal extremists use imagery of wolf pups , lion kittens and bear cubs to elicit emotional connections to family and offspring to sway suburban citizens who will never have to deal with the effects of their mismanagement . Using examples of furbearers or vermin that they could have issues with turns this dynamic upside down and puts their safety and pocketbooks on the line .
In the near future , the Sportsmen ’ s Alliance Foundation will update and produce a report that brings the impacts of losing hunting and trapping home by calculating the financial and health costs associated with ending the management of different species — see page 8 . In the meantime , use the 2005 study for facts and figures by Googling “ Potential Costs of Losing Hunting and Trapping as Wildlife Management Methods .”
WOLVES : THE ACTIVISTS ’ POSTERCHILD No other animal evokes a response , positive or negative , like the wolf . Animal activists revere the canine and anoint it as the mythical and spiritual embodiment of the wilderness and Mother Earth herself . Never mind 99 percent of them wouldn ’ t know a wolf from a coyote and will never see one , much less ever be in a position to lose life or property to one . No , they gush on about pack dynamics and repeat the fatigued , false trope about only killing the old , sick and weak , thereby strengthening herds of deer and elk , or singlehandedly spurring trophic cascade changes that benefit the entire ecosystem , another proven falsehood .
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