Brendan Talbert | MWF 9:00-9:50 a.m.

| Essay 2 Final Draft Audience: Arkansans who arent sure whether or not people should be allowed to hunt. At any time in your life, have you ever gone on a walk, hike, or camping trip in the woods? If so, you have probably experienced the wonder and fascination that goes along with that experience. I myself have on many occasions, and I believe them to be some of the most enlightening and wondrous experiences of my life on each occasion. If you have not, then I highly recommend it. You may find these experiences enjoyable. As a hunter who frequents the woods, I get to experience this feeling more often than most. Not everybody hunts though, or wants to for that matter. I realize that the majority of people in the U.S. dont hunt. I also understand some of their reasons. They may be vegetarians. They may not have the chance to. For many though, they dont want to be the one to shoot Bambi. I understand this feeling: killing is a horrible thing. For some people it is a horrible thing to see one of Gods creatures die. Hunters know that death is a part of life though, and there are quite a few of them in Arkansas. There have always been hunters in Arkansas. The Indians and first settlers were and there are still hunters today. Many that dont hunt feel that there is no need to hunt anymore, so hunters shouldnt be allowed to hunt. Hunters dont want their ability to hunt taken away because of these people. Hunters arent a bunch of bloodthirsty loons that go out anytime they want to and blast little animals. They have to go through an educational course on safety, regulations, and methods on hunting. They must then pass a test to show their knowledge on the subject to get their hunters education certification. Once they have that they can get a licence. A licence lasts one year and has a set of tags. The tags are what hunters use to mark the animal as legally harvested.

They only get a certain numbers of tags per year and they must follow all harvesting regulations for the animal they hunt. The majority of hunters are in fact, responsible and mature with their weapons. Hunting can build an appreciation for nature and the cycles of life: birth, survival and death. As a person who has hunted from childhood, I can tell you this is true. My family and I hunt. My father first showed me the wonders of the woods when I was a boy. He showed me the different plants and animals, and I was hooked for life. Another thing he taught me was how to hunt, a very useful skill if youre lost and hungry or need a food supplement when youre poor. He taught me that the animals are born, they live life and they die. When they die is the only uncertain thing. When a person hunts them, they may or may not be there at that time and so they have an equal chance for life or death. I love nature and all its creatures in their infinite variety and wonder. Its an amazing thing I have experienced through the opportunity I had by hunting with my family. Hunting is a tradition here in Arkansas. Its part of our heritage and history. Hunters and trappers were among the first to settle here.The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has exhibits on this at their various nature centers. Whitetail deer, which are abundant in Arkansas, were an important resource to early European settlers for food and clothing (agfc.com). It is a tradition in my family and in many other families. It can be a way to keep families together and give them common ground. This is true of the Kendrick family with whom my family hunts. They meet every year, if only for modern gun season, to hunt together. It is an experience that keeps their family together.

Hunting is important to control the population of the wildlife. According to the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA) 2012 report, the number of deer harvested in Arkansas from 2008 to 2010 was between 170,000 and 190,000 each year. These are big numbers, I know, but the deer population is stable and even growing; the estimated herd numbers being close to one million (AGFC.com History of the White-Tailed Deer). At one time, there were large predators such as mountain lions and panthers here in Arkansas, but they are almost completely gone from here now and humans are the only predator able to keep the herd at a manageable amount, which they must. If the population is not kept at a manageable amount, the herd would overpopulate and die of starvation from food shortage and diseases such as rabies. This is not an outcome we want. The diseases would affect humans as well as deer. The food shortage would cause major problems with farmers and raise prices on the food we buy. Hunting maintains this balance without the side effects listed above.

I was given a system to estimate the approximate number of deer in Arkansas by Cory Grey; deer program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. For this model he said: Assume that all females are bred and will produce an average of one point six fetuses per doe. Take this number and assume around sixty percent fawn survival. This number represents fawn recruitment into the population at a fifty fifty sex ratio. This number should be added to your original adult population that you started with. Apply hunting that will remove your desired number of animals, i.e ten percent; then run the model again. With this model, I took the average number of deer harvested above, about one hundred eighty thousand deer, and used it as the ten percent taken by hunting, which makes the number of deer for those years an average of one million, eight hundred thousand deer. If I took that number and used a fifty-fifty sex ratio, that gives me nine hundred thousand does. They would then produce one million four hundred

forty thousand fauns, eight hundred sixty four thousand of which would survive. That puts the total number in the herd at a whopping two million, six hundred and sixty four thousand deer. Of course there would be other factors to keep the herd in check, like car collisions, but none as effective as human hunting.

Hunting not only kills animals, but helps to protect and conserve them as well. Sounds strange, right? Well, anytime someone buys anything hunting related, they pay an excise tax on the item they bought of eleven percent. That excise tax is protected by the Pittman-Robertson Conservation Act of 1937, meaning that it can only be used for conservation purposes (fws.gov Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act). It is used by the Game and Fish Commission to protect the animals and their habitats. This tax money gives them an ability they didnt have before: the ability to restore and protect the vast majority of the state. This means that hunters, by hunting, are protecting the animals and the habitats of the animals they hunt.

What I really want for you to think about is this: even though not everybody hunts or wants to, those that do should, with proper training, be able to. I know that no matter what there will always be people that dont (or wont) hunt, but just because they dont doesnt mean that nobody else should either. Conversely, I realize that just because there are people who do hunt, not everybody should. What I propose is that everybody should leave each to their own and get along with each other anyway. This shouldnt be hard. We live in a time of acceptance and diversity. Hunters are just another minority culture who want to do their thing. Let us, and if you want, give it a try.

Works Cited

Adams, Kip, Joe Hamilton, and Matt Ross. "QDMA's Whitetail Report 2012." qdma.com. Quality Deer Management Association, n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. <www.qdma.com/uploads/pdf/WR2012.pdf>. "AGFC | History of the White-Tailed Deer." Arkansas Game and Fish Commision Official Website. AGFC, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.agfc.com/hunting/Pages/HuntingDeerHistory.aspx>. "Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration act." Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration act. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.fws.gov/laws/lawsdigest/FAWILD.HTML>. Grey, Cory. "Deer Data Request." Message to the author. 14 Oct. 2013. E-mail.