As some of you may have noticed I posted a picture of my first yote I have ever shot on the Hunt Commander thread. To be honest after I shot him I felt some remorse and started thinking why did I shoot this animal knowing that I would not be eating him.
Can some of you fellow hunters explain to me your views on why we shoot these animals and what you do with them after they have been killed.
Just to be clear I do not want this thread to start an agruement between hunters on ethics! I just want to read several different opinions on the matter.
Thanks guys,
Sean
Shoot them all, which you will never do...they reduce your fawn stock, eat all the birds on your lease and are a general predator...I shoot them any time I can, if the pelt is a good one i give it away to someone that wants it or sell it.
If you enjoy hunting quail, rabbits,deer, and turkeys...kill everyone you see. And have no remorse about it
if I am on a farmer or ranchers land and he requests them shot I will, and have here and out west, but if I come across one on a wma I'm not gonna shoot it and spook the game I came there for. as for leaving it, the pigs or other critters will eat it. don't lose any sleep over it. if I could afford it one with a prime pelt would make a cool mount, or have the hide/fur tanned and make something out of it. how much to have one tanned with the fur on, anyone?
I too am of the mind-set of, if I aint going to eat it why should I shoot it. To be honest I don't know anyone who would eat yote meat, perhaps something to feed other animals??? naw I think they carry to many illnesses and diseases to feed to anything I value. As for the wanton waste of killing the animal just to kill it, I still want to err on the side of if I aint gonna use the animal why shoot it. Some folks say that some yotes you can get a decent pelt off of? Make a good stuffed animal mount? In my eyes these are not wasteful uses of the animal.
Sure most folks would automatically assume that the only use for killing an animal is for food, and that might have been true many many years ago. Today we just don’t have the food problems our ancestors had. So that begs the question if the meat of the animal is not useful to us, would using the animal in another way be wasteful? Certainly not. There are many parts of our hunted animals that we do not use, but are useful in some way. Take sinew for instance, just because we throw a deer carcass away after we take the meat off of it, we are still wasteful buy throwing away the pieces of the animal that could be used.
I for one would be very interested in gathering some long and medium strips of sinew from deer to use in my Bow making projects. But I haven’t killed a deer yet. The bones of an animal can be made into useful tools and other items. And of course the skin of a deer can also be useful as well as the brain. Can u say brain-tanned deer hide?
So you see that while killing an animal and not using the meat may seem like waste to some folks, by using the other parts of the animal for other purposes an animal can be useful again.
As Hunters we are stewards of the forest, we now hunt game for sport, we don’t need to hunt to survive. Yeah sure we eat the meat from a nice deer or hog. But we also harvest game for a more important reason in my eyes. We hunt to manage the numbers of the animals we have in our forests. Too many deer can wipe out herds of deer or other animals, as we know too many Hogs can destroy crops and other things. Coyotes, and other nuisance animals cause other kinds of damages. So by killing them we are preserving our forests, and the natural cycle of things. Some animals must die so that they don’t kill themselves off or other species too. We as hunters are helping to controlling the natural cycle of our forests here in Florida. Other states have other reasons for harvesting animals and they need to control their animal populations differently but control them they must.
So harvest the Yotes if you want, a trophy for you? perhaps a skin for a friend? or sinew for another friend? Or just some meat for the carrion the fly around and clean up the place. Even if when you get to the animal you realize that it can be of no use to anyone or anything, because of mange, or disease, just leave it for the carrions, You may well end up with the thrill of the hunt or just a memory, or quite possibly the knowledge/satisfaction that you prevent the spread of disease, like rabies or something or worse, by destroying the critter. You are protecting the life cycle of nature around you by dispatching the animal that to most of us is just a nuisance animal.
