White Tailed Deer :licklips:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204846304578090753716856728.html
QuoteAmerica Gone Wild
The good news: Wildlife populations in the U.S. have experienced an astonishing resurgence. The bad news: All those animals are now our neighbors.
By JIM STERBA
This year, Princeton, N.J., has hired sharpshooters to cull 250 deer from the town's herd of 550 over the winter. The cost: $58,700. Columbia, S.C., is spending $1 million to rid its drainage systems of beavers and their dams. The 2009 "miracle on the Hudson," when US Airways LCC -0.16% flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing after its engines ingested Canada geese, saved 155 passengers and crew, but the $60 million A320 Airbus was a complete loss. In the U.S., the total cost of wildlife damage to crops, landscaping and infrastructure now exceeds $28 billion a year ($1.5 billion from deer-vehicle crashes alone), according to Michael Conover of Utah State University, who monitors conflicts between people and wildlife.
Those conflicts often pit neighbor against neighbor. After a small dog in Wheaton, Ill., was mauled by a coyote and had to be euthanized, officials hired a nuisance wildlife mitigation company. Its operator killed four coyotes and got voice-mail death threats. A brick was tossed through a city official's window, city-council members were peppered with threatening emails and letters, and the FBI was called in. After Princeton began culling deer 12 years ago, someone splattered the mayor's car with deer innards.
Welcome to the nature wars, in which Americans fight each other over too much of a good thing—expanding wildlife populations produced by our conservation and environmental successes. We now routinely encounter wild birds and animals that our parents and grandparents rarely saw. As their numbers have grown, wild creatures have spread far beyond their historic ranges into new habitats, including ours. It is very likely that in the eastern United States today more people live in closer proximity to more wildlife than anywhere on Earth at any time in history.
In a world full of eco-woes like species extinctions, this should be wonderful news—unless, perhaps, you are one of more than 4,000 drivers who will hit a deer today, or your child's soccer field is carpeted with goose droppings, or feral cats have turned your bird feeder into a fast-food outlet, or wild turkeys have eaten your newly planted seed corn, or beavers have flooded your driveway, or bears are looting your trash cans. And that's just the beginning.
In just a few decades we have turned a wildlife comeback miracle into a mess that's getting messier, and costlier. How did this happen? The simple answer: Forests grew back over the past two centuries, wildlife came back over the past century and people sprawled across the landscape over the past half-century.
Reforestation began in 19th-century New England, when farmers started abandoning marginal pastures and buying cheap feed grain from the rich, relatively flat lands on the other end of the newly opened Erie Canal. Later, petroleum-based fertilizers and gasoline-powered machinery made Midwestern farming more productive and draft animals obsolete, freeing up 70 million acres that were being used to feed them. Many farmers, meanwhile, opted for jobs in town. Trees took back much of their land and, after World War II, nonfarmers began moving onto it.
Today, the eastern third of the country has the largest forest in the contiguous U.S., as well as two-thirds of its people. Since the 19th century, forests have grown back to cover 60% of the land within this area. In New England, an astonishing 86.7% of the land that was forested in 1630 had been reforested by 2007, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Not since the collapse of Mayan civilization 1,200 years ago has reforestation on this scale happened in the Americas, says David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest, an ecology research unit of Harvard University. In 2007, forests covered 63.2% of Massachusetts and 58% of Connecticut, the third and fourth most densely populated states in the country, not counting forested suburban and exurban sprawl (though a lot of sprawl has enough trees to be called a real forest if people and their infrastructure weren't there).
Some 350 years of unbridled exploitation of wild birds and animals for feathers, furs, hides and food by commercial market-hunters and settlers escalated into a late 19th-century rampage that turned wild populations into remnants. It all started with a 50-pound rodent.
The "fur trade" is a feeble euphemism for the massacre of beavers, America's first commodity animal. By the late 19th century, a population once estimated at as many as 400 million was down to perhaps 100,000, mostly in the Canadian outback. By 1894, the largest forest left in the eastern U.S., the Adirondacks, was down to a single family of five beavers.
Beyond beavers, by 1890, a pre-Columbian whitetail deer population of perhaps 30 million had been reduced to an estimated 350,000. Ten million wild turkeys had been reduced to no more than 30,000 by 1920. Geese and ducks were migrating remnants. Bears, wolves and other "vermin" were all but gone. The passenger pigeon would soon be extinct. The feathered skins of hummingbirds, used to make women's bonnets, sold for two cents apiece.
With toothless laws and lax enforcement, the carnage was slow to end. But conservationists slowly gained strength. Elected governor of New York in 1898, Theodore Roosevelt was so incensed that plume-hunters were killing egrets, whooping cranes and other exotic shore birds for women's hats that he outlawed their sale in his state and went on, as president, to create the first federal wildlife refuges and national forests.
Restocking wildlife was a mixed bag. In 1907, 50 Michigan white-tailed deer were shipped to Pennsylvania. Eleven years later, foresters and truck farmers there were complaining about "too many deer"—a phrase uttered to this day. In many places, however, seeing a deer (or a goose) in the 1950s and '60s was still so rare it made the local newspaper.
Between 1901 and 1907, 34 beavers from Canada were released in the Adirondacks. With no predators and no trapping, they grew to 15,000 by 1915. Today they are almost everywhere that water flows and trees grow. Beavers are wonderful eco-engineers, a so-called keystone species building dams that create wetlands that benefit countless other species, filter pollutants, reduce erosion and control seasonal flooding. The trouble is, they share our taste in waterfront real estate but not in landscaping. We put in a driveway, they flood it. We plant expensive trees, they chew them down. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the cost of beaver damage may exceed that of any other wild species.
Bringing back ducks and geese was slow going. Commercial and sport hunters long kept live birds (in addition to wooden facsimiles) as decoys to lure migrating waterfowl. The use of these live flocks wasn't outlawed until 1935. They hadn't migrated in generations. The outlaw birds were used to stock newly created refuges in the hope that they would join migrating flocks and help them to grow. But they stayed put. Their descendants include the four million or so resident Canada geese that now occupy golf courses, parks, athletic fields, corporate lawns and airline flight paths.
The founders of the conservation movement would have been astonished to learn that by the 2000 Census, a majority of Americans lived not in cities or on working farms but in that vast doughnut of sprawl in between. They envisioned neither sprawl nor today's conflicts between people and wildlife. The assertion by animal protectionists that these conflicts are our fault because we encroached on wildlife habitat is only half the story. As our population multiplies and spreads, many wild creatures encroach right back—even species thought to be people-shy, such as wild turkeys and coyotes. (In Chicago alone, there are an estimated 2,000 coyotes.)
Why? Our habitat is better than theirs. We offer plenty of food, water, shelter and protection. We plant grass, trees, shrubs and gardens, put out birdseed, mulch and garbage.
Sprawl supports a lot more critters than a people-free forest does. For many species, sprawl's biological carrying capacity—the population limit the food and habitat can sustain—is far greater than a forest's. Its ecological carrying capacity (the point at which a species adversely affects the habitat and the other animals and plants in it) isn't necessarily greater. The rub for many species is what's called social carrying capacity, which is subjective. It means the point at which the damage a creature does outweighs its benefits in the public mind. And that's where many battles in today's wildlife wars start.
What to do? Learn to live with them? Move them? Fool them into going away? Sterilize them? Kill them? For every option and every creature there is a constituency. We have bird lovers against cat lovers; people who would save beavers from cruel traps and people who would save yards and roads from beaver flooding; Bambi saviors versus forest and garden protectors.
Wildlife biologists say that we should be managing our ecosystems for the good of all inhabitants, including people. Many people don't want to and don't know how. We have forsaken not only our ancestors' destructive ways but much of their hands-on nature know-how as well. Our knowledge of nature arrives on screens, where wild animals are often packaged to act like cuddly little people that our Earth Day instincts tell us to protect. Animal rights people say killing, culling, lethal management, "human-directed mortality" or whatever euphemism you choose is inhumane and simply creates a vacuum that more critters refill. By that logic, why pull garden weeds or trap basement rats?
People against killing usually advocate wildlife birth control. Practical and affordable contraception for deer was said to be just around the corner 30 years ago. It still is. You can dart female deer living in a confined area (behind a fence, on an island) with PZP (porcine zona pellucid) for $25 per dose plus hundreds of dollars per animal per year to set up and run the program. For free-ranging deer, forget it. You can feed OvoControl to Canada geese to stop their eggs from hatching for $12 per goose per season. Do the math.
For feral cats, the panacea is called trap-neuter-return: The cats are trapped (not easy), sterilized and then returned to where they were caught. Voilà, no more feral kittens! Even the American Veterinary Medical Association calls this a mirage because "an insignificant percentage" of 60 to 90 million ferals out there at any one time have been neutered to reduce their overall population. And "returning" these nonnative predators to the landscape drives bird protection groups up the wall.
Some people advocate bringing back natural predators, as if they really want wolves and cougars roaming the sprawl. But they overlook a deer predator that is already there: us. Indeed, research suggests that since the last ice age the top predator of deer has been man. But by blanketing sprawl with firearms restrictions and hunting prohibitions in the name of safety we have taken ourselves out of the predation business in just a few decades. Suddenly, for the first time in 11,000 years, we have put hundreds of thousands of square miles in the heart of the white-tailed deer's historic range off-limits to its biggest predator.
In Massachusetts, it is illegal to discharge a firearm within 150 feet of a hard-surfaced road or within 500 feet of an occupied dwelling without the owner's written permission. These restrictions alone put about 60% of the state off-limits to hunting with guns. And nearly half of its 351 municipalities impose more restrictions, including on bow hunters. Many states and towns have similar restrictions.
Local governments are increasingly hiring sharpshooters to cull deer, and homeowners retain nuisance wildlife controllers (trappers) to kill beavers, geese, coyotes and whatever is in the attic. Bryon Shissler, president of Natural Resources Consultants in Fort Hill, Pa., who consults on deer problems with towns, corporations and property owners, sometimes recommends hiring sharpshooters to cull herds. He also thinks towns could train local hunters (typically cops and firefighters) to sharp shoot and then recoup town costs by selling the venison at local farm markets. It is illegal, however, to sell any truly wild game in America today. But that could change.
After decades of decline, the number of hunters in the U.S. grew 9% from 2006 to 2011, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey. But they remain outcasts in many of the places where they are needed most because they are thought to be unsafe. Even that, however, may be changing. Some towns are becoming more tolerant of hunters than of deer, noting that while guns kill 31,000 Americans a year, hunters kill only about 100, mostly each other. Deer, on the other hand, kill upward of 250 people a year—drivers and passengers—and hospitalize 30,000 more. Some communities screen hunters, allowing them to use only bows and arrows and shotguns that have limited ranges.
One encouraging example is Weston, Mass., in suburban Boston, a town with a serious deer problem. Brian Donahue, associate professor of environmental studies at Brandeis University, serves on the town's conservation commission, which decided to try controlled bow hunting this fall. He sees some of his liberal suburban neighbors coming to believe that "hunting is good—one of the best, most responsible forms of stewardship of nature," he says.
"Maybe I'm dreaming," he adds, "but hunters are the new suburban heroes."
You can take your deer and shove it through your car window when those fuckers try to cross the road.
It is every citizen's duty to blast those motherfuckers to hell.
I would say that on any given day, I pass an average of 5-10 roadkill deer on my way to work. They're everywhere around here, including in my yard all the time. My dog enjoys barking his head off at them. :)
Not many deer around here, but there are quite a few feral cats.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 05, 2012, 06:09:02 AM
Not many deer around here, but there are quite a few feral cats.
We have those too. In fact, we have so damn many feral cats there was a HuffPo article about my town and its cats a few years back. :bleeding:
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 06:19:28 AM
:bleeding:
Is the Huffington Post really that bad? :hmm:
seems people in Massachussets need to take up deerhunting with bow and arrow... or their bare hands.
Might be a good show in it too
Massholes need to choke on a bag of dicks.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 05, 2012, 06:21:00 AM
Is the Huffington Post really that bad? :hmm:
No, the bleeding eyes smilie was more in relation to all of the goddamn feral cats.
:licklips: Means I find them delicious. I don't want to eat roadkill, so obviously I want some of them shot.
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 05, 2012, 05:36:09 AM
You can take your deer and shove it through your car window when those fuckers try to cross the road.
It is every citizen's duty to blast those motherfuckers to hell.
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 06:29:49 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 05, 2012, 06:21:00 AM
Is the Huffington Post really that bad? :hmm:
No, the bleeding eyes smilie was more in relation to all of the goddamn feral cats.
Cats are awesome. :contract:
Deer have become pretty insane even in my lifetime. They're very brazen these days, I've ran deer out of my yard that I almost had to physically drive away. I remember a time when seeing deer was a lot less common, and the moment they saw/heard/smell you they bolted like lightning. Not so anymore.
QuoteSome people advocate bringing back natural predators, as if they really want wolves and cougars roaming the sprawl. But they overlook a deer predator that is already there: us. Indeed, research suggests that since the last ice age the top predator of deer has been man. But by blanketing sprawl with firearms restrictions and hunting prohibitions in the name of safety we have taken ourselves out of the predation business in just a few decades. Suddenly, for the first time in 11,000 years, we have put hundreds of thousands of square miles in the heart of the white-tailed deer's historic range off-limits to its biggest predator.
In Massachusetts, it is illegal to discharge a firearm within 150 feet of a hard-surfaced road or within 500 feet of an occupied dwelling without the owner's written permission. These restrictions alone put about 60% of the state off-limits to hunting with guns. And nearly half of its 351 municipalities impose more restrictions, including on bow hunters. Many states and towns have similar restrictions.
Local governments are increasingly hiring sharpshooters to cull deer, and homeowners retain nuisance wildlife controllers (trappers) to kill beavers, geese, coyotes and whatever is in the attic. Bryon Shissler, president of Natural Resources Consultants in Fort Hill, Pa., who consults on deer problems with towns, corporations and property owners, sometimes recommends hiring sharpshooters to cull herds. He also thinks towns could train local hunters (typically cops and firefighters) to sharp shoot and then recoup town costs by selling the venison at local farm markets. It is illegal, however, to sell any truly wild game in America today. But that could change.
It's all well and good that hunters cull the deer population, but it doesn't do the deer population or the ecosystem any favors.
Man is the only hunter that hunts contrary to the basics of the natural predator/prey dynamic: natural predators sustain not only themselves with hunting the weak, the sickly and the young, they sustain the genetic strength of the prey by culling the undesirable and unfortunate members of their prey, as the stronger members of the species survive and continue to populate from a genetic position of strength.
Man, on the other hand, doesn't hunt the young (no antlers, man!), won't kill an obviously infirm or diseased deer (bad eatin', man!), but instead go after the strongest, healthiest and best specimens of the species--the biggest does, the healthiest bucks--in turn, perpetuating the weaknesses of the species. Deer, just like any other species, has genetic weaknesses that are perpetuated by whacking the healthy ones and allowing the poorer, weaker ones to splash around the gene pool.
Man may be able to do something temporarily with the deer numbers, but it's not solving problems for either the ecosystem or the deer species. Man is a shitty fucking steward of nature.
QuoteEven that, however, may be changing. Some towns are becoming more tolerant of hunters than of deer, noting that while guns kill 31,000 Americans a year, hunters kill only about 100, mostly each other.
Then again, maybe man does cull the stupidest of the species sometimes. :lol:
Very interesting... never thought about it that way. :hmm:
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 05, 2012, 07:14:48 AM
Then again, maybe man does cull the stupidest of the species sometimes. :lol:
A hard argument to make while Spellus and Timmay yet live.
He said sometimes.
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 07:38:35 AM
Very interesting... never thought about it that way. :hmm:
antler size, on average, is statistically smaller in hunting areas then in the wide open north. At least in Canada, eh.
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 07:38:35 AM
Very interesting... never thought about it that way. :hmm:
:rolleyes:
I have several problems on that topic:
-predators catch the weak because they can't catch the strong. It is against their interests to make the herbivores stronger, but they have no choice
-only fucking reason predators don't massacre herbivore populations and grow two tons like your average American is that they are not capable of doing so. It is not some special human nature. If you ever had a dog, you saw how he/she basically ate as much as you gave him/her
-humans are part of the fucking enviroment. If you are a deer living in an enclave sourrounded by humans, it is apparently evolutionary benefical to have smaller antlers. Considering nature as something not including humans is ridiculous
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 09:20:10 AM
-only fucking reason predators don't massacre herbivore populations and grow two tons like your average American is that they are not capable of doing so.
:lmfao:
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 06:05:39 AM
I would say that on any given day, I pass an average of 5-10 roadkill deer on my way to work. They're everywhere around here, including in my yard all the time. My dog enjoys barking his head off at them. :)
When I was in Karratha I was averaging about roadkill 40 Red Kangaroos passed per week on my 15 minute commute to work. These fuckers are 6ft tall. The local council had a roving carrion patrol and picked the corpses up every day. Oil patch driving safety coaches us never to brake for kangaroos, just drive through them, that's what bumper guards are for.
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 09:20:10 AM
-predators catch the weak because they can't catch the strong. It is against their interests to make the herbivores stronger, but they have no choice
-only fucking reason predators don't massacre herbivore populations and grow two tons like your average American is that they are not capable of doing so. It is not some special human nature. If you ever had a dog, you saw how he/she basically ate as much as you gave him/her
-humans are part of the fucking enviroment. If you are a deer living in an enclave sourrounded by humans, it is apparently evolutionary benefical to have smaller antlers. Considering nature as something not including humans is ridiculous
While this is true, the issue is one of balance. Evolutionary processes are slow. Over Millennia, areas converge to a more or less stable ecosystem. We, on the other hand, have gone from fearing wolves to massacring them in a mere 500 years, as an example. The natural course for such an organism is for us to destroy the systems that support us and then crash. Most of us do not want that to happen, so it behooves us to use the same abilities that allow us to advance so fast to manage ourselves in such a way that we don't destroy everything we touch.
If you live downtown in Austin it is infested with raccoons and possums. When I lived downtown and drove around at night I would see them all scurry into the sewers when I drove by and they saw my headlights. I used to have a giant Possum that would hang outside my apartment. I would not be shocked at all if there were more of them than people downtown.
In the burbs you not only have the raccoons and possums but also wild pigs, deer, and armadillos. And of course you have birds and stray dogs and cats and squirrels everywhere. Squirrels are chewing the hell out of my house, and break in from time to time, I have no idea how to stop them but keep plugging holes and repairing damage.
Wolves are still pretty scary, that's why people don't like to visit Canada without their guns. :ph34r:
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 05, 2012, 11:52:48 AM
Wolves are still pretty scary, that's why people don't like to visit Canada without their guns. :ph34r:
Yeah you don't want to F with wolves. Even Coyotes are pretty unnerving with their incessant howling all night.
Coyotes are pansies. And other wolves are extremely rare in even lightly populated areas due to aforementioned massacres.
Quote from: Maximus on November 05, 2012, 12:03:55 PM
Coyotes are pansies.
Yeah and that is why they are still around.
Yep, but no more scary than your average dog. Less so in many cases because they'd rather run than fight.
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 09:20:10 AM
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 07:38:35 AM
Very interesting... never thought about it that way. :hmm:
:rolleyes:
I have several problems on that topic:
-predators catch the weak because they can't catch the strong. It is against their interests to make the herbivores stronger, but they have no choice
-only fucking reason predators don't massacre herbivore populations and grow two tons like your average American is that they are not capable of doing so. It is not some special human nature. If you ever had a dog, you saw how he/she basically ate as much as you gave him/her
Predators catch the easiest meal. It is in their interests to do so, as hunger is the one singular constant in nature, even more so than procreation. Been doing it since countless millennia. Whether it's a solitary hunter like some species of big cats or pack hunters like wolves, predators do not, never have, or ever will worry about whether or not they're making their prey stronger. :lol: There will always be easy kills like the young, the elderly and the infirm regardless of how "strong" they get.
Quote-humans are part of the fucking enviroment. If you are a deer living in an enclave sourrounded by humans, it is apparently evolutionary benefical to have smaller antlers. Considering nature as something not including humans is ridiculous
Problem is, the "evolutionary process" of deer in populated human areas is being shortcut tremendously by human hunting habits; as some enclaves cannot successfully wander past their established boundaries, they're left to continue procreating among a poorer genetic population, as the healthy 10 point bucks wind up on garage trophy walls over the beer fridge, and healthy, mature females with successful birth rates end up in the freezer. Hence the problems of perpetual genetic defects, infectious diseases and other maladies among populations of "suburban deer".
I know biology's a bit of new concept over there in Adidas Tracksuitistan, didn't think it was that bad.
Quote from: Maximus on November 05, 2012, 12:06:59 PM
Yep, but no more scary than your average dog. Less so in many cases because they'd rather run than fight.
until they cross breed with wolves.
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
No, evolution is too slow to handle intelligent design.
Evolution is stochastic. Human advancement is anything but.
I don't think we should consider ourselves separate from the ecosystem, but what do I know.
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 05:01:10 PM
I don't think we should consider ourselves separate from the ecosystem, but what do I know.
:frusty: You're clearly not reading anything I say. Wanna go weigh in in the VG thread?
I blame this...
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdakiniland.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F01%2F2001-a-space-odyssey-ape-monolith.jpg&hash=b2243ea5ef4cf76ba549107f73e3a73f299ea4ab)
Evolution was too slow to handle meteor impacts in the past. And rapid-onset ice ages. Probably particularly virulent diseases.
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
Humans are an extraordinary species in Earth's evolution. Our evolution all of a sudden became "critical" when a bit more brainpower made us the dominant species on Earth, by far the most "fit for survival". The following explosive growth of our capabilities and adaptability can't be matched by any other species because our growing capabilities aren't a biological process anymore, but rather a technological and cultural process. So even if we are part of the biosystem, we are a total exception and thus upset the balance that is the basis for normal biological evolutionary processes as we were the game changers that brought new non-biological concepts into consideration.
For sure. I am just at loss at what we are supposed to do about it. Not killing whales for Asian fetish shit, that's reasonable. Letting deer run amok so we make super sure some will get mighty antlers seems iffy.
I guess my point is that we are game changers yes, but if we try to run things as if nature and our seven billion population were two separate things, we will do more harm than good.
The antler thing is a bit of a stupid example but still: pre-human civilisation, the bigger antler a deer had, the better odds he had. Now, not so much. Now it is the less glamorous male going around making babies, since Mr. Big Antler is busy dodging bullets. So the next generations will not be mass-murdered for esthetic reasons. There, adoption to a changed circumstance :p
I think Seedy's point was that Humans are the only hunters who go after the trophy, and have for a long time. The megafauna die-off, the buffalo jumps, the shooting of animals for just one tasty bit...all are far different from what the "natural" hunter-prey interaction is.
On a related note, I will be voting on the following ballot measure tomorrow:
Measure Text
Are you in favor of amending the Kentucky constitution to state that the citizens of Kentucky have the personal right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife, subject to laws and regulations that promote conservation and preserve the future of hunting and fishing, and to state that public hunting and fishing shall be a preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife?
__YES
__NO
Quote from: PDH on November 05, 2012, 08:13:07 PM
I think Seedy's point was that Humans are the only hunters who go after the trophy, and have for a long time. The megafauna die-off, the buffalo jumps, the shooting of animals for just one tasty bit...all are far different from what the "natural" hunter-prey interaction is.
Orca's have killed Fin whales just to eat the tongue IIRC.
On the other hand, they're probably as smart as an Ape, so it's not usual behavior for a predator.
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 09:35:53 PM
On a related note, I will be voting on the following ballot measure tomorrow:
Measure Text
Are you in favor of amending the Kentucky constitution to state that the citizens of Kentucky have the personal right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife, subject to laws and regulations that promote conservation and preserve the future of hunting and fishing, and to state that public hunting and fishing shall be a preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife?
__YES
__NO
Wait what does the Constitution say now? What makes this amendment necessary?
I dunno. I'm guessing hunting isn't mentioned at all.
Lulz, wanna get on some watch lists?
Click on this one:
http://www.constitution.org/mil/ky/mil_usky.htm
:lol:
Those are all hick counties. None of the civilized counties have representatives, it seems. :sleep:
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 10:00:33 PM
Those are all hick counties. None of the civilized counties have representatives, it seems. :sleep:
I would have clicked through if Pike County had a link. If you're gonna do it, go all the way. :lol:
I've never been to Pike County so I can't say for sure, but I think there are counties to the west of Pike that are worse.
Much worse. For example, Clay County:
QuoteThe median income for a household in the county was $16,271, and the median income for a family was $18,925. Males had a median income of $24,164 versus $17,816 for females. The per capita income for the county was $9,716. About 35.40% of families and 39.70% of the population were below the poverty line, including 47.60% of those under age 18 and 31.30% of those age 65 or over. The county's per-capita income and median household income make it one of the poorest counties in the United States. Among counties whose population contains a non-Hispanic white majority, it is the poorest by per-capita income and second to another county in the same Kentucky region, Owsley County, by median household income.
Beautiful country there. Boring, but beautiful.
Closest I've been to there is London (Laurel County). The downtown is nothing but courthouses, courthouse annexes, and law offices. :hmm:
How do both males and females make more than households?
Quote from: Caliga on November 05, 2012, 10:20:41 PM
Closest I've been to there is London (Laurel County). The downtown is nothing but courthouses, courthouse annexes, and law offices. :hmm:
Many of the Kentucky towns have lost most of their character. Add bail bonds in Harlan.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 05, 2012, 10:22:16 PM
How do both males and females make more than households?
Parasite children and grandma bringing the averages down.
A fair few deer around this parts.
But coming back through the fringes of the forest on Thursday evening a white hart crossed in front of me. :)
That's the third one I've seen in 25+ years in these parts, I think they're supposed to bring good luck, or was it they're an omen ? :unsure:
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
Jesus. Download a book.
Quote from: Ideologue on November 05, 2012, 10:48:55 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
Jesus. Download a book.
Use BeetPDF.
Quote from: mongers on November 05, 2012, 10:48:43 PM
But coming back through the fringes of the forest on Thursday evening a white hart crossed in front of me. :)
That's the third one I've seen in 25+ years in these parts, I think they're supposed to bring good luck, or was it they're an omen ? :unsure:
Careful; you start pedaling after it, your ass is going to wind up back at Professor Kirke's house.
Quote from: Zanza on November 05, 2012, 05:40:55 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
Humans are an extraordinary species in Earth's evolution. Our evolution all of a sudden became "critical" when a bit more brainpower made us the dominant species on Earth, by far the most "fit for survival". The following explosive growth of our capabilities and adaptability can't be matched by any other species because our growing capabilities aren't a biological process anymore, but rather a technological and cultural process. So even if we are part of the biosystem, we are a total exception and thus upset the balance that is the basis for normal biological evolutionary processes as we were the game changers that brought new non-biological concepts into consideration.
Well, we're still no cyanobacteria.
***
Anyway, speaking as a lover of animals and a vegetarian--true stewardship, in its most meaningful sense, would involve expunging all life from Earth. Nature is ninety-nine percent suffering. Once it is no longer necessary for the survival of joy-capable life such as humans, or more realistically, humanity's descendants, we can nuke the planet from orbit, leave it to underground bacteria, and get on with trying to balance out 600 million years of negative utility.
I mean, have you ever seen a nature documentary? Africa loves the darned things. They're horrid.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 05, 2012, 10:51:39 PM
Quote from: mongers on November 05, 2012, 10:48:43 PM
But coming back through the fringes of the forest on Thursday evening a white hart crossed in front of me. :)
That's the third one I've seen in 25+ years in these parts, I think they're supposed to bring good luck, or was it they're an omen ? :unsure:
Careful; you start pedaling after it, your ass is going to wind up back at Professor Kirke's house.
I don't know it looked quite startled, we're not talking red deer here, though it did make a loud noise when it plunged into the nearby swollen stream.
There's a story here that Henry VII caught a white hart in the forest and led it back on a chain to town and named the local pub, the White Hart, supposedly it being the first so named, it the only one in England called The Original White Hart'.
I suspect there's not documentary proof for any of this.
Quote from: Ideologue on November 05, 2012, 10:48:55 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
Jesus. Download a book.
Okay, vegetarian. Lulz
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 05, 2012, 10:49:29 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on November 05, 2012, 10:48:55 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
Jesus. Download a book.
Use BeetPDF.
This does get tiring at times you know
Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2012, 01:57:42 AM
This does get tiring at times you know
Beets for dinner every night? I'd imagine so.
Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2012, 01:57:42 AM
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 05, 2012, 10:49:29 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on November 05, 2012, 10:48:55 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
Jesus. Download a book.
Use BeetPDF.
This does get tiring at times you know
I know. I'm a spent force lately.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 05, 2012, 05:26:27 PM
Evolution was too slow to handle meteor impacts in the past. And rapid-onset ice ages. Probably particularly virulent diseases.
How so?
Evolution doesnt handle anything. It is merely the process by which species adapt or not.
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
The problem is that humans didn't evolve their way to the top of the pecking order, they gained know-how. Evolution may yet take care of that problem, but not in the way we like. It will probably involve humans destroying themselves by destroying their habitat.
Quote from: DGuller on November 06, 2012, 12:58:26 PM
The problem is that humans didn't evolve their way to the top of the pecking order, they gained know-how. Evolution may yet take care of that problem, but not in the way we like. It will probably involve humans destroying themselves by destroying their habitat.
Which is exactly what I said and he didn't read.
Quote from: Barrister on November 06, 2012, 01:01:30 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 06, 2012, 02:29:34 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2012, 01:57:42 AM
This does get tiring at times you know
Beets for dinner every night? I'd imagine so.
Beets are delicious.
Agreed. Beet haters are subhuman rejects that evolution is in the process of purging.
Don't think I've ever actually eaten a beet. :hmm:
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 06, 2012, 01:12:18 PM
Don't think I've ever actually eaten a beet. :hmm:
You don't know what you're missing.
A word to the wise though - beets used to be used to make red dye. If you eat a lot of beets, your next trip to the bathroom will be very colourful. :ph34r:
I like that Russian soup made with beets and sour cream (borsht?)
Quote from: Caliga on November 06, 2012, 01:17:34 PM
I like that Russian soup made with beets and sour cream (borsht?)
:yes: :mmm:
Quote from: Caliga on November 06, 2012, 01:17:34 PM
I like that Russian soup made with beets and sour cream (borsht?)
:BB: Its Ukranian soup! :BB:
Ukrainians are like junior Russians, so it's cool. :bowler:
Quote from: DGuller on November 06, 2012, 12:58:26 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 05, 2012, 04:52:31 PM
So do I get it right that the arguments is:
-our evolution was so quick that we went from fearing animals of the wild to massacring them
-evolution is too slow to react to evolution
The problem is that humans didn't evolve their way to the top of the pecking order, they gained know-how. Evolution may yet take care of that problem, but not in the way we like. It will probably involve humans destroying themselves by destroying their habitat.
What are the signs of that?
I know we have a lot chaos and causalities predicted due to coastal areas flooded and stuff, but the remaining number of humans would still be quite more numerous than a million, or two thousand, years ago, and that we are able to feed more and more people seem to indicate that we can cope with our general habitat.
Quote from: Caliga on November 06, 2012, 01:51:33 PM
Ukrainians are like junior Russians, so it's cool. :bowler:
Quote from: Caliga on November 06, 2012, 01:51:33 PM
Ukrainians are like junior Russians, so it's cool. :bowler:
:ultra:
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 06, 2012, 01:35:57 PM
Quote from: Caliga on November 06, 2012, 01:17:34 PM
I like that Russian soup made with beets and sour cream (borsht?)
:BB: Its Ukranian soup! :BB:
Both Russians and Ukrainians make borscht (which isn't a soup at all - it is simply borscht).
The Urkainian version is naturally superior, of course. :cool: Russians insist on putting cabbage in theirs.
Sounds like cole slaw.
It was interesting then it went in a "WOO! GUNS RULE!" direction.