As we enter election season, it's worth remembering what the REAL threat to hunting is in America, and it's not a loss of guns. As Tom Reed put it back in 2004, writing in High Country News:
Not everyone is losing their hunting lands to oil rigs.
Some of the land I have hunted on in the past has been lost to church construction, subdivision, and cattle grazing.
One thing is for sure: God is not making more hunting lands. This is a resource we only lose, and once lost, it is lost forever.
A ranch where I once killed a dandy mule deer buck in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin was roaded and tapped for coalbed methane two years ago. It will not recover in my lifetime.
When Bill Clinton was elected to the White House, the pro-gun folks said the government was coming to our doors to take away our rifles, shotguns and pistols. No agent showed up at my place.
But I have seen the place where I used to hunt for pronghorn. There’s a pump jack there now. And there’s a sign that warns me of possible poison gas. And there’s not a pronghorn in sight.
Not everyone is losing their hunting lands to oil rigs.
Some of the land I have hunted on in the past has been lost to church construction, subdivision, and cattle grazing.
One thing is for sure: God is not making more hunting lands. This is a resource we only lose, and once lost, it is lost forever.
- Related Posts:
** The Real Threat to Hunting in America
** Crying Wolf in Dog and Hunting Debates
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2 comments:
Really? No pronghorn where there are pumpjacks? If you, or the Mr. Reed would like, I will go tomorrow morning and take pictures of pronghorn all around pumpjacks in the Big Muddy Oilfield - one of the oldest oilfields in the Powder River Basin.
There are more of them (pronghorn) than there are of us - and according to the state of Wyoming there hasn't been a decline in their population of several years - although there is a boom in oil and gas.
I work in the oil industry, but I also hunt, and I also see the destruction that oil & gas rigs can cause. Sage grouse and Western Meadowlarks? Yes - they are in decline. Pronghorn? NO. Definately NOT!
The effect on pronghorn and mule deer appears to be related to how recent the roads and drilling are. If a well and a road are old, the deer and pronghorn tend to normalize it. The same is true for pipes and rigs in Alaska. The first 3-4 years after the invasion, there is a big drop, and then it infills in the next 3-4 ysars as the next generation of critters moves in without evern remembering it any other way.
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