[fabsroman]

Alright, we have about 8 million different subjects in this post.

Atlantic population of canada geese. My point was that regulation is necessary sometimes. That was my point. Plain and simple. My point wasn't that hunting brought about that matter, but that continued hunting would not have helped it. Sometimes, heck most of the time, government regulation is a good thing. Then, there are the times when government goes too far.

On to the horses. I have no idea what the current laws are regarding horses, and I have no inclination to do any research on them tonight, tomorrow, or this entire week for that matter. I had a PM discussion last year with a rancher on here that owns a 20,000 acre ranch. He wasn't a regular, but it was a good PM discussion. I believe it had to do with elk eating all the food he put out for his cattle. I cannot remember the entire debate, but we had a good time debating it. Anyway, sometimes some laws benefit the many and hurt a few. That kind of stuff needs to be taken into account too. On another board I just finished debating mandatory gun locks, gun safes, and extremely harsh penalties for those that did not use them because some guy wants to prevent accidental deaths to children. Well, I looked up the statistics and all of 1,000 kids from 0 to 18 years of age die each year from accidental gun shots, and not all of those occur in the home where the locks and safes would be worth anything. So, is preventing the majority of these deaths by requiring the mandatory use of locks and safes, and imposing harsh penalties worth the burden to society (i.e., are the few that are harmed worth the cost as a whole).

Would wiping out the horses be worth it? How was it that wolves were pretty much wiped out from the continental US? That couldn't have been all from bears now could it?

Ultimately, if the horses are out of control, I do think they should be controlled. If shooting them and making dog food out of them would work, so be it. However, that puts a market element to it and it could cause some issues. How much would a dog food company be willing to pay for 100 pounds of horse meat? How much profit could the hunter turn? Could these horses be rounded up and just slaughtered in a pen? Would the market hunter be able to make a fortune doing that?

Here is a novel idea. How about letting the USFWS do the killing and selling. The US government can sell this resource to the dog food companies and the American people can receive the benefit with these funds being put back towards additional habitat or the USFWS.