Let's go shoot a lion in Africa! What fun???

What other nation in the world has a day to celebrate hunting?

Our calendars are getting a bit crowded. Every morning we wake up seems to be of some significance, declared as days during which we need to be aware of HIV/AIDS, the environment, holocaust remembrance, mothers, fathers, administrative professionals, secretaries, memorials, the labour movement, the UN, and very many more. Among all those days to be celebrated, the USA has a National Hunting and Fishing Day, celebrated on the fourth Saturday of every September.

The mind boggles. What other nation in the world has a day to celebrate hunting?

It gets better. National Hunting and Fishing day is celebrated in recognition of the contributions of hunters and anglers to conservation. Yes indeed, the hunters and anglers have been at the forefront of the conservation movement as we all know. How did they get there? Well, when we bad Europeans first settled in America, we practically killed every animal in sight. And the slaughter continued after independence. Once magnificent American bison herds were reduced to a mere handful. Coyotes, pumas, and wolves were killed by bounty hunters to protect livestock. Birds like the Passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet were blasted to extinction. Fur-bearing animals were trapped ruthlessly for their skins, and beavers almost went extinct. Moose, deer, and Bighorn sheep similarly teetered on the edge, as did Canada geese.

HUNTER-CONSERVATIONISTS TO THE RESCUE

Who should rise up in protest but the hunters? According to their spin, they were instrumental in pushing for the enactment of game laws and regulations to protect wildlife. So first you shoot it all, and then you complain to the government that not enough is done to protect the wildlife? An interesting line of reasoning. Prime mention is made of Teddy Roosevelt, who supposedly did much to influence the hunter-conservationist movement. That same Teddy organized a magnificent safari to Africa in 1909 after his term as President. With 250 porters and guides, he hunted across Kenya and Tanzania, into the Belgian Congo, and ended up in Khartoum. He and his son Kermit “collected” 1,100 “specimens” and his “collections” now reside in the Smithsonian Institution. Teddy obviously took his role as a hunter-conservationist seriously, and good thing he had to travel to Norway to collect his Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Russo-Japanese war, otherwise his “collection” might have been even more impressive.

HUNTERS HAVE SAVED WILDLIFE

Today, the hunter-conservationists also like to remind us of the magnificent financial contributions they have made to conservation programmes. For example, through the purchase of hunting and fishing licenses since 1939, hunters and anglers have supposedly donated $5.6 billion to conservation of habitats. Highly optimistic. Even if that was the amount spent on licenses, you can bet that much of that ended up as salaries, offices, cars, equipment, retirement benefits, health insurance, etc for those who check hunters have not exceeded their quotas and those who ensure that hunters actually bothered to purchase a licence. Hundreds of hunter-conservationists are prosecuted and fined per year for hunting illegally, and probably ten times that number get away with it. Dozens of hunter-conservationists lose their lives during the hunting season as they are killed by wayward bullets from fellow hunter-conservationists. Dozens of cows are killed as they are mistaken for deer.

The hunter-conservationist movement has established seven tenets. These are as follows:
1. wildlife is held in the public trust,
2. commerce in dead animals is illegal
3. wildlife use is allocated through law
4. hunting is an opportunity for all
5. wildlife may only be killed for legitimate reasons
6. wildlife is an international resource and
7. science is the basis for wildlife protection.
Isn’t that wonderful? I hesitate to poke holes in those grand tenets, but only for a millisecond. Hunting is an opportunity for all? Come on kids, it is National Hunting and Fishing day, so let’s shoot us a deer. Wildlife is an international resource? Great, let’s go shoot a lion in Africa despite the fact they are declining at an alarming rate. Science is the basis for wildlife protection? Good, let’s pay a few scientists and conservation organizations to say that rhino hunting is good for the species.
As with all spins, the supporters of National Hunting and Fishing Day invoke the sacred cow of the American family. It puts food on their table and brings families together over generations! What a bunch of nonsense.
TIME FOR COMMON SENSE
But let’s say that maybe, possibly, hopefully the hunter-conservationists have saved America’s wildlife. However, like the football hooligans that travel abroad, they surely spread destruction in foreign countries. The USA is the biggest importer of wild and canned lion trophies in the world. The USA is the biggest destination of illegal wildlife products in the world. The USA for years insisted that global warming was a figment of fuzzy imaginations. The USA needs a wake-up call.
President Nixon put his signature in 1972 to the initiation of the National Hunting and Fishing Day. President Obama supports it. It can only be hoped that in the future we will not need to wake up to this particular day, as it should get cancelled along with National Offshore Drilling Day. 

Picture reference: wikipedia/commons/f/f8/bison_skull_pile,_ca1870.png

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