Not to derail this thread, but this is something I see as inevitable. I don't want to sound like an alarmist or some eco nut, but the human population is squeezing out the animal and plant populations. New "human habitat components" are being constructed every day at the expense of other types of habitat components. I see it very much where I live. Subdivisions are going in at an alarming rate. People who want to live in the country keep building and pushing the "country" further and further away. I don't have a solution, but it does scare me as to what our future looks like.
I don't think that will be the case. It will clearly change the character and, perhaps, the types of hunting. Many game animals, especially deer, are very adaptable. I grew up in PA were we hunted big tracks of mostly timber on state forest land and state game lands. There were so many hunters you were allowed to shoot one deer a year, and it was shameful to shot a doe. We had a short gun season, and with so many hunters, hunting escape routes was the best option. I never had a shot opportunity during bow season.
I though my hunting days were over when I was transferred to DC. No apparent places to hunt within hours it seemed. Then I found some military bases that had controlled hunting. The managed for wildlife and controlled the number of hunters per acre. I soon found that deer abounded in the suburbs but there was no place to hunt them. Stream valley parks were off limits and there were very few if any tracks larger than 10 acres and they had houses on them. Lots of deer/auto accidents. Deer were eating landscaping in folks back yards. I ended up being one of the founders of Suburban Whitetail Management of Northern Virginia. As that organization too off we were killing hundreds of deer each year in the suburbs on tracts as small as 5 acres.
This is just one example, but, as I see it, the forms of hunting will change as ownership of land changes. Urban sprawl clearly makes it hard to find a large contiguous tract of land. When I was growing up in PA, you just knocked on a farmers door and asked for permission to hunt. I had better than a 50% success rate. Those days are dwindling if not gone. Many farms are owned by industry and are farmed edge to edge. As I see it, man will always need to coexist with wildlife. There comes a point where large predators come into conflict with man. Man wins. As those large predators are reduced in the eco system, someone has to take their role in controlling prey species. That is hunters. Where we hunt, how we hunt, and even why we hunt, may change but hunting will always be needed.
One thing I learned with suburban whitetail management is that non-hunters can be influenced by the anti-hunting crowd quite a bit. Bambi stories with large eyes and arguments from the anti-hunters have influence...UNTIL... reality hits them in the pocketbook. Replacing landscaping annually, hitting deer with a car, little Billy getting Lyme disease, and so can turn non-hunters into allies pretty quickly as long as they see us as a responsible group in society.
Thanks,
Jack
