Internet Hunting Banned in California

TheSync writes "California has banned Internet hunting. Emergency regulations will be put in place by the California Fish and Game Commission, and legislation (SB 1028) is in the works. West Virginia is considering legislation against it as well. Hunters consider hunting by robot and mouse click 'a digrace to the sport,' whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine."

Comments

Re:Wait... Logic Check...

[kaiser423]

In hunting, the challenge is what you make it.

Yes, there are a lot of road hunters and people who just sit by camp and hit things way off in the distance (sniping does require some form of skill though).

But then there are those who like the challenge. Some of my friends hunt with hand-made spears. Some of the crazy ones go out with a pack, and make the spear themselves in the forest, then hunt. I consider them real, true hunters.

I bow hunt elk mainly, and I'd say there's a slightly greater than 50% chance I'll bag one in a season. We go out into true wilderness, walking and do it. I don't shoot unless I'm closer than 30 yards, which is generally pretty hard in the area we hunt. Then I pack it out 10 miles on my own back. My father loses 20 pounds every hunt we go on.


But let's get realistic for a second. Since when was nearly any hunt that man did fair? We're smarter, and we had the mental capabilities to easily slaughter huge numbers of animals for 10,000+ years. Complaining about hunting "no longer" being a challenge is a bit disingenuous. It hasn't been a challenge for thousands of years. We used to light fires to drive animals towards the hunters, or drive whole herds of animals off of cliffs. Baiting and partially domesticating wild animals with offers of food, then slaughtering them. I'd say that things are a lot fairer now than they were thousands of years ago, but not quite as fair as they were maybe 200 years ago. Largely due to it being more of a sport now than sustenance. Back in the day, it didn't matter if you killed a whole herd of 200 animals to get one, because you'd die if you didn't get that one. Today, we just go out and get that one. If we don't, then we hit the supermarket.

Re:Hunting on foot much safer

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The main reason everyone is so upset/scared over internet hunting are the safety concerns.

Not really. The internet hunting takes place on private grounds nowhere near populated areas, so it's safe. The concern is really the morality of it.

Also hunting on foot is a lot more noble and is a tradition that has been carried out for thousands of years.

Indeed.

And I might add this: most countries where hunting has been a tradition for centuries couldn't afford not having hunters. What I mean is, the hunter is part of the ecological balance of whatever area they hunt in. Take them out of the picture, and suddenly certain species of game, previously hunted, see their numbers soar, destabilizing the ecological niches of numerous other species, and introducing diseases and malformations in their numbers, due to overpopulation.

In many countries, hunters regularly conduct what they call "cynegetic management", or "sanitary shootings", which is essentially the removing of weak and diseased surplus animals. Those sanitary kills can also preserve endangered species, by lightening the burden on their food sources and the predatory pressure on them. This game management is healthy for the environment, which is what most green anti-hunting folks fail to understand.

Hunting

[Mark_MF-WN]

Interesting side note: American forests have been experiencing a major decline in their biodiversity over the last few decades. The cause? Deer. Because of strict limits on the hunting of deer, deer populations in the US (and no doubt Canada as well) are now so large that they are decimating forests.

There wouldn't be a problem, except that the predators that would normally keep deer in check are largely absent. No one wants cougars or packs of wolves living near their town. But without these top predators, deer populations have nothing to keep their numbers down -- except hunting.

Therefore, interestingly enough, conservation demands that we hunt more deer.

It's not unlike the paradox of the principal-of-least-harm. In order to minimize the number of animals that die on account of your diet, it's best to eat nothing but large free-range ruminants. A vegetarian diet results in enormous numbers of rodents and insects being killed by threshers and harvesting machinery.

I guess I'm a little off-topic now...

Hunters

[Mark_MF-WN]

I used to dislike hunters. Then I met one -- hell of a guy. He gave my family an assload of venison steaks and moose sausage. Damn good stuff. Later, when I took biology in University, I learned about how much of a problem the unchecked growth of American deer populations causes for forest ecosystems, all because of overly strict hunting limits.

As a sidenote, dickwads with anything are a problem. Is there really any tool you would trust a dickwad with? Guns are just a particularly extreme example.

Re:Snide remark

[Solandri]

Obviously you've never been hunting if you think it's just a matter of aiming at an animal and pulling the trigger. I hunt, with a camera, and oh how I wish it were as easy as just pushing an "I Win" button. There's a great deal of tracking, prediction, guesswork, and luck before you even get to the point of sighting the animal. That's the sporting element that's missing in a hunt-over-the-web setup. Without that element it's, as the aphorism goes, like shooting fish in a barrel.