Congress does it again???

[skeet]

Originally Posted by fabsroman

GOB,

I'm not going to disagree with you, but I'm not going to agree with you either. Things always seem so black and white. Kind of like how we used to have tons and tons of Bison. What happened there? Market hunters almost made them extinct. There used to be an over abundance of waterfowl too, until market hunters brought some of them to the brink of extinction. With waterfowl, we still have years where the entire season on them is closed (e.g., Canvasback, Pintail, the Atlantic canada goose).

With the feral hogs and the seaweed, I would say no problem because they both seem like pests. However, what happens to the price of pork once market hunters enter the scenario? Will the price of pork go up or down as the supply steadily increases? I can tell you the answer to that. The price will go down. So, what happens to the pig farmers? They will get less and less money for their pigs, and will do the same thing. Up and quit and let the pigs run free. Now, what happens after the market hunters wipe out the pigs and there are no more pig farmers around? I guess we can hope that more pig farmers will get back into the business. I'm willing to bet that these smart people are being tugged by the pig farmers and the current feed regarding the pig hunting and seaweed harvesting respectively.

In today's world, nothing is very simple, and very few things are black and white.

Well Fabs..as far as the wild critters in this country you should know better than what you said. As was pointed out with the Buffalo that was a governmental decision that brought the natives in this country to their knees along with other measures. As far as the ducks and geese..Fabs market hunting has been outlawed nearly 100 yrs. That isn't what is affecting waterfowl numbers...and you do know it. Breeding areas have been lost in large measure to urban sprawl and modern farming practices. Wintering areas too. Got any resident geese in your area?? Yep..I know so.. I also remember when there were no geese in Md..probably less in the winter than live in Prince Georges county now. Then farming practices changed and geese faired well. Then they took a turn for the worse with bad nesting years. Yep..we kept shooting them..but with a bit of luck they will come back.

As far as feral pigs..or grizzlies or wolves....only when man makes ridiculous laws do we have real problems. Feral pigs are a big problem in more areas than Texas..but especially bad there. Wolves in Wyoming are turning into a real problem.. The Elk herds are being affected tremendously by the wolves and grizzlies. With the new crop of calves at a survival rate of 3% or less..guess what will happen? And the grizzlies are not afraid of people. We just had another grizz attack..and a mountain lion attack etc etc. Hate to say it Fabs but there are many black and white solutions to many black and white problems..Seems like too many gray areas are created by politicians. And must I say... too many politicians are ...Lawyers

[fabsroman]

Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to a few hundred by the mid-1880s. They were hunted for their skins, with the rest of the animal left behind to decay on the ground.[16] After the animals rotted, their bones were collected and shipped back east in large quantities.[16]

The US Army sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds.[17] The US Federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, to allow ranchers to range their cattle without competition from other bovines, and primarily to weaken the North American Indian population by removing their main food source and to pressure them onto the reservations.[18] Without the bison, native people of the plains were forced to leave the land or starve to death.

According to historian Pekka Hämäläinen, Native Americans also contributed to the collapse of the bison.[19] By the 1830s the Comanche and their allies on the southern plains were killing about 280,000 bison a year, which was near the limit of sustainability for that region. Firearms and horses, along with a growing export market for buffalo robes and bison meat had resulted in larger and larger numbers of bison killed each year. A long and intense drought hit the southern plains in 1845, lasting into the 1860s, which caused a widespread collapse of the bison herds.[19] In the 1860s, the rains returned and the bison herds recovered to a degree.

The railroad industry also wanted bison herds culled or eliminated. Herds of bison on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time. Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding though hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. As a result, bison herds could delay a train for days.
This map based on William Temple Hornaday's late-nineteenth-century research.
A pile of bison skulls in the 1870s.

The main reason for the bison's near-demise, much like the actual demise of the Passenger Pigeon, was commercial hunting.

Bison skins were used for industrial machine belts, clothing such as robes, and rugs. There was a huge export trade to Europe of bison hides. Old West bison hunting was very often a big commercial enterprise, involving organized teams of one or two professional hunters, backed by a team of skinners, gun cleaners, cartridge reloaders, cooks, wranglers, blacksmiths, security guards, teamsters, and numerous horses and wagons. Men were even employed to recover and recast lead bullets taken from the carcasses. Many of these professional hunters, such as Buffalo Bill Cody, killed over a hundred animals at a single stand and many thousands in their career. One professional hunter killed over 20,000 by his own count. A good hide could bring $3 in Dodge City, Kansas, and a very good one (the heavy winter coat) could sell for $50 in an era when a laborer would be lucky to make a dollar a day.

The hunter would customarily locate the herd in the early morning, and station himself about 100 meters (100 yd) from it, shooting the animals broadside through the lungs. Head shots were not preferred as the soft lead bullets would often flatten and fail to penetrate the skull, especially if mud was matted on the head of the animal. The bison would drop until either the herd sensed danger and stampeded or perhaps a wounded animal attacked another, causing the herd to disperse. If done properly a large number of bison would be felled at one time. Following up were the skinners, who would drive a spike through the nose of each dead animal with a sledgehammer, hook up a horse team, and pull the hide from the carcass. The hides were dressed, prepared, and stacked on the wagons by other members of the organization.
A bull bison, illustrated in The Extermination of the American Bison. Used on the obverse of the 1901 American Bison $10 bill.

For a decade from 1873 on there were several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, such commercial hide hunting outfits harvesting bison at any one time, vastly exceeding the take by American Indians or individual meat hunters. The commercial take arguably was anywhere from 2,000 to 100,000 animals per day depending on the season, though there are no statistics available. It was said that the Big .50s were fired so much that hunters needed at least two rifles to let the barrels cool off; The Fireside Book of Guns reports they were sometimes quenched in the winter snow. Dodge City saw railroad cars sent East filled with stacked hides.

As the great herds began to wane, proposals to protect the bison were discussed. Cody, among others, spoke in favor of protecting the bison because he saw that the pressure on the species was too great. Yet these proposals were discouraged since it was recognized that the Plains Indians, often at war with the United States, depended on bison for their way of life. In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant "pocket vetoed" a Federal bill to protect the dwindling bison herds, and in 1875 General Philip Sheridan pleaded to a joint session of Congress to slaughter the herds, to deprive the Indians of their source of food.[20] By 1884, the American Bison was close to extinction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bison

That Wiki article even provides footnotes for the source of the information.

If you guys need more links, please let me know.

Google is a wonderful thing. You guys should try it sometime, especially if you want to take specific positions on something. Again, it was commercial hunting that did in the Bison.

Now Skeet, why don't you explain to Bulletpusher how there was a moratorium on hunting the Atlantic canada goose population for several years, and even now I believe the daily bag limit is one or two birds.

[fabsroman]

And here we have another little bit about market hunting:

As the states became populated, market hunting developed into both a major business and a respected profession. With the development of the country, needs for specialized skills developed in the society. Shopkeepers, blacksmiths, doctors, wagon makers, and other craftsmen concentrated on their trades. While they may have enjoyed hunting as a personal activity, they could not afford to hunt for subsistence. One of the developing trades became market hunting. Market hunters provided a supply of wild game meat to the growing towns. These professional hunters specialized in their trade as well, making a living by hunting, trapping or otherwise providing meat.



Skilled specialists, market hunters were not restricted by bag limits or seasons in most states. As a result, their unrestricted harvests were able to deplete game populations significantly. Those impacts were enhanced by habitat loss. One state that was nearly completely forested in colonial times had only 16 percent of its forests by 1850. With the loss of that forested habitat came the loss of most forest and forest edge wildlife.



Although today we know that market hunting led to over-exploitation of many species, market hunters provided a necessary service. Immense game herds and flocks seemed limitless, but as demand for meat and market hunting efficiency increased, populations began to suffer. Obvious declines or even extirpations of deer, bison, antelope and elk took place. Waterfowl and upland birds, including the passenger pigeon, declined under continuous demand for game meat by the growing American population.



As these losses became obvious to sport hunters (non-commercial hunters), they developed a concern for the future of wildlife and began to work for change and improvement. As the end of the 19th century approached, sportsmen conservationists who recognized something was wrong began to call for controls on the harvest of game. They demanded that action be taken to conserve wildlife populations. In 1888, a group of sport hunters started the Boone and Crockett Club, which led a crusade to protect the nation's troubled game herds. Their actions led to the development of national parks and wildlife refuges as well as regulation of harvest. By 1900, twenty-three states enacted laws that limited harvest.


Their efforts started a trend of caring for wildlife that continued into the 20th century as more game protection programs were implemented. In 1900, the Lacey Act prohibited interstate shipment of illegally killed wildlife. This provided some federal help under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to control market hunting. A forester at the University of Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold, wrote the first wildlife management text in North America in 1933 and helped formalize the emerging art and science of wildlife management. The Duck Stamp Act of 1934, lobbied for by waterfowlers, provided funds from federal stamps to aid in waterfowl management and to permit purchase of lands for federal waterfowl refuges. Sportsmen lobbied for an additional excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition to provide aid to states for resident wildlife management. In 1937, the Pittman-Robertson Act was passed taxing long guns and ammunition for this dedicated purpose. This legislation has perhaps had the greatest impact on wildlife research and management of any legislation ever passed.

http://www.gunmuse.com/Blog/Dr%20Jim%20Knight/218