Some of our newer readers may be surprised to find that sustainable hunting is a topic on WellPreserved. It is a topic I continue to struggle to write about and something I typically reserve for the fall when the hunt occurs.
If the topic makes you squeamish, I understand. If you’re curious to see more about my perspective on the topic (and how I’ve struggled with the decision to consume meat and hunt and preserve part of our diet), a good intro to my struggles and process around deciding to hunt follows (there are NO pictures of deceased animals):
- An introduction to hunting in Ontario (Moose Deer and Birds); confessions of a one-time “vegetarian” (2009)
It has also become a fall tradition that I share my complete journal entries from 9-10 days in the woods for the moose hunt. Again you’ll find no pictures of dead animals but I have tried to share an intimate perspective on a way of life that spans 100′s of years (if not longer) in my family. Each of these series is 8,000-12,000 words (over multiple posts) and they were a labor of love to write – and to read (the easiest way to navigate is through a link at the top of the page or you can find the complete index here – just read from bottom to top):
The choice to eat what we eat is deeply personal and emotionally complex. I encourage questions, comments and opposing views – as long as we all remain considerate of each other. I was trained to not talk about hunting for most of my life as it can raise a lot of emotion with others. In this age of factory farming, genetic modification and irreversible changes to our environment I believe it is essential to discuss such things.
Wild game is, by most definitions and in most environments it is naturally found in is free-range, ethically raised and hormone-free. The selective harvest of the species allows for surveying the population (we have to submit a report on how many we see in our area every year), the health of the population (the jaw is examined by the Ministry for Health in many cases), and helps ensure that the population is not over-harvested or under-harvested.
According to Car-Accidents.com (who attribute the following to the National Highway Traffic Safety Act) there are:
- 1.5 million car accidents per year involving deer in the US.
- 150 human fatalities
- 10,000 personal injuries
- potentially much higher numbers as there are inconsistencies on how different states report deer accidents
This doesn’t include agriculture and other losses.
I should be clear that I don’t think deer are vermin and part of the problem is how we are encroaching on their wild habitat. I’m simply trying to demonstrate that, in some cases, there appears to be a very real conflict and competition between the number of deer and the number of people in our world. The solution is not to mass exterminate.
Dramatic shifts in populations of a single species can throw an entire ecosystem out of balance. Beyond the ‘inconvenience’ to humans, large populations of deer populations provide more food for wolves. A significant boon of deer is generally cycled a few years later by a boon of wolves who feast until the population falls significantly enough that the wolf population begins to starve off. Uncontrolled pendulum shifts can throw the entire system into vast chaos (whether humans are capable of managing such populations is an entirely up to debate and one that I haven’t even resolved for myself let alone others 
).
The State of Maryland has become the first state to approve a chemical contraceptive for deer (source article from the CTPost). According to the state’s director of wildlife, the intention is to use it sparingly.
The current process to apply to contraceptive is as follows:
- Tranquillize the deer
- Inject it with the chemical
- Tag the animal with a notice that it’s been injected and that it should not be consumed by humans.
And the fine print:
- It costs $1,000 a deer
- It is 80% effective in the first year
- 50% of the animals injected will become pregnant the following year if the process is not repeated then (note that the tags do not allow tracking of the animals so this is a ‘hit and miss’ exercise)
This raises so many questions to me:
- What will happen to the wolf that eats it?
- What will happen as these animals do produce offspring and how will they be genetically effected?
- If a hunter harvests one of these animals – do they leave it for waste (I would become physically ill to kill for the sake of killing)?
- How will this potentially balloon the harvest? For example, Ontario allows most hunters to harvest a single animal. Since you can’t consume a drugged deer, does this mean that killing one gives you a ‘second chance’ to kill another? This would lead to more harvested than planned.
- Who is paying for this process and who is making money off it?
- Can we not control it through increasing the harvest and teaching people the ways of the past?
- Are we slowly evolving the philosophies of factory farming and applying them to our wild resources?
There are so many more questions that I just can’t find the words for.
I understand the emotional, physical and spiritual ramifications of hunting animals for food are very complex and impossible to accept for many. I hope we can look at all ways to maximize the sustainability of our forests and the world around us and I’ll try to keep an open mind at all techniques. I’m just going to have to work extra hard at understanding this one…
This is the result of our screwed up disconnect with meat. Funny you should write of this today – I’ve just been thinking recently about a park in my area who rounded up a ton of Canadian geese and gassed them.
This was a source of much protesting in our community and I’ve had similar ambivalence about the amazing and conflicted logic used by people to argue their opinions about this event.
Animal rights activists often show such ignorance of nature and tunnel vision in fighting for causes it actually makes me a bit nervous.
If the animals weren’t going to die anyway, the argument would be more valid. Believe me a quick, unexpected death is much more humane than most of the alternatives offered up by Mother Nature.
The birth control thing is just nutty. That stuff is TOXIC for people to handle, the application makes it unlikely to be successful and 1,000 per deer is a ridiculous use of funds – no wonder our US budget is such a mess!
And, if it’s just to be used sparingly, what’s the point anyway? I think my blood pressure just went up!
I have all of the questions that you have about this. This doesn’t make any sense to me.
I don’t understand why they don’t send in a team of trained hunters to humanely reduce the number of deer in Maryland. The venison could be distributed to needy families. Am I nuts?
I suppose it’s the fear of public outcry … people will go to the grocery store and buy pork loin cut from animals that had a less than pleasant experience (to put it mildly) under flourescent (how the heck do you spell that???) lighting their entire lives, but are angry when others choose to hunt healthy animals who have lived natural outdoor lives in order to achieve a similar end … to get meat for the larder.
It’s muddle-headed thinking.
WOW!!! Birth control for deer is ok but universal healthcare is not an option. I know that is such a crazy statement. But it just goes to show you the messed up priorities of our neighbours to the south. Joel, I admire the struggle you have to share your hunt experiences. I loved the postings everyday. To me it was all about the relationships you had with the bush and the group of men that participate. Hunting may not be for everyone, but when it is done in a responsible way, I don’t see the issues. And on a side note, most hunters are very sensitive to the animals they hunt. It is a respect thing. I am sure birth control for deers is not a respect thing.
Joel,
Truly, I find this appalling. And while I love the deer (even the ones who eat my garden every year), this is not coming from a deer-hugging hippie: this is coming from a pragmatist, someone who develops drugs for a living and has killed more animals in the name of science than you would kill in 100 years of hunting.
First, let me try to answer some of your questions. I did a bit of reading at the NWFS site, and looked over some of their papers. The contraceptive in question, GonaCon, is a vaccine: this means that it is not a chemical entity, but a protein. Hence, like other proteins, it should break down in the stomach of any animal (including, presumably humans) that eats the meat of a vaccinated deer. This also means that it is not a toxin per se; proteins do not persist outside of a host animal, so there should be no buildup in ground water, waste stream, etc. Protein drugs are also not readily absorbed orally or through the skin (which is why the animals need to be injected) so the risk for accidental vaccination of a human is low (although not impossible given an accidental stick while administering to a deer).
As for any offspring of vaccinated deer; antibodies can, and generally do, pass through mother’s milk to a nursing infant (one of the big benefits of breastfeeding). It sounds like, in their research, that you have to have a very high titer for the vaccine to be effective at contraception, so it seems unlikely that there would be any effects on conception in offspring. Antibodies can be tenacious, however, and can survive for generations: any impact on long-term deer populations from evenly mildly suppressed sex hormones is completely unknown.
The appalling part, outside even of the ethics of forced contraception in a wild animal population, is how this vaccine works. The vaccine creates an antibody to gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which is produced by the hypothalamus in both male and female animals and is responsible for the synthesis and regulation of sex hormones: estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone. Essentially what this vaccine does is convince your body that your own GnRH is a foreign substance; antibodies are produced to bind and inactivate GnRH, thereby significantly reducing the production of sex hormones.
Unlike oral contraceptives in humans, which essentially ‘trick’ a woman’s body into believing she is pregnant for 3 weeks of every month (hence no egg is released from the ovary), this vaccine creates a virtual androgen. The hormonal system in mammals is incredibly complex; we don’t even begin to understand all of the ways that estrogen, progesterone and testosterone levels affect the body. Physical activity level, mood, sleep patterns, cancer: all are affected by sex hormone levels (think of the problems experienced by so many post-menopausal women; well, you’ll have a whole forest full of post-menopausal deer, male & female). Think of male deer with extremely low levels of testosterone: how long will they last in the wild? And wouldn’t it simply be more human to kill them quickly, mercifully?
What really infuriates me is the unmitigated gall, the sheer hypocrisy: the deer are ruining my rose bushes, but they are cute & furry, so I don’t want to kill them. So let’s just sterilize them, so we’ll always have some around, but they won’t become a nuisance. Grow up. If you think they are a pest – kill them. We don’t have any problems killing rats, mice, cockroaches. It would (and does) make me sad (they allow deer hunting in the state park across from my house: I always hope they hide out in my yard in the mornings) but I understand it. But you can’t have it both ways: you don’t get to look at 2 or 3 cute and fuzzy deer in the park, but not have them eat your garden or run out into the road. For a deer, or any wild animal, the entire purpose in life is to reproduce: take that from them, and what is the point? Because they are cute and fuzzy, and we like to look at them as long as they are not annoying us?
And it is not just deer. They mention the “benefits” of removing “unwanted behaviors” in cats, dogs, horses and other pets due to hormone-fueled sex drive, estrous, mating behaviors. Check out this paper on testing the same vaccine in prairie dogs: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/nwrc/publications/11pubs/yoder111.pdf
“In 1991, prairie dog populations in Fort Collins, Colorado occupied 836 ha, 82% of which occurred in natural areas [20]. A survey of Fort Collins residents in 1993 showed residents that experienced no prairie dog related damage supported relocation over lethal control. Residents experiencing conflicts with prairie dogs were
more likely to support lethal control measures [17]. Both groups of stakeholders were willing to support a combination of control and preservation, rating protection of property and the presence of raptors as important outcomes of management. Because of the diverse attitudes related to prairie dog management, nonlethal methods that allow the existence of prairie dogs but help minimize damage
related to population growth need to be developed.”
So, we want SOME prairie dogs, because the raptors eat them, and we like raptors. They are pretty. And they don’t dig up the yard. And of course, the National Wildlife Research Center is in Colorado, the same state that pushed heavily to de-list wolves from the Endangered Species Act.
http://thebroadside.freedomblogging.com/2011/04/21/wolves-are-not-an-endangered-species/
There are so many things wrong with this plan, scientifically, ethically, morally, that I can’t even list them all. As I said – I like deer. They wander through my yard most every day, and yes, they do inflict some “property damage.” I don’t care: I figure we can share. After all, they were here first. But far better for the deer to be shot, quickly & cleanly, than to suffer this misguided attempt at “wildlife management.” The very phrase is an oxymoron.
all of these comments are amazing – but Kaela you constantly blow me out of the water as friend, academic and all-around thinker on food and our environment. I don’t know if I’m more blown away by your ability to understand the science so readily – or your ability to share what it means in such plain English.
I think you found the words that were lost in my heart and guts .:)
[...] will ever be kinder than a vegetarian lifestyle but compared to some practices mass agriculture, birth control for deer or the lack of sustainable fishing practices I am hoping to discuss alternatives. [...]