Thursday, July 22, 2004

WANTED: MORE HUNTERS

 

It's hard to believe, but as late as the early 1960s, Virginia was importing whitetail deer (whose species name is Virginianus).  Today we shoot 200,000 deer a year in this small state alone (37th in size out of 50), and the numbers keep climbing, as they do in much of the rest of the country.

Now even environmental organizations, like the National Audubon Society, are arguing that more hunters are needed if we are to preserve the understory for birds and other wildlife, and if we are to avoid the hundreds of thousands of car-deer impacts that occur every year -- 40,000 a year in Pennsylvania alone, most of them wrecking the car, and some killing or seriously wounding the driver or passenger as well

For more information, read Ted Williams's excellent article from Audubon magazine: Wanted: More Hunters



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