Truth and Beauty Bombs

I definitely considered puffins for the big list, but they're a little out there for a list of American animals. And I have at least two books on my Kindle right now that deal entirely or in part with bear hunting.

Really? Is it for sport?

I can easily imagine regrettable bear hunting, but I tend to think if someone is going to assume a room has a hunting theme, they mean a theme around sport hunting.

"Big game hunting".

One of the books is specifically about sport hunting with longbows. It includes two chapters on bears and one on mountain lions. The other book is by Teddy Roosevelt, who never did anything that wasn't for sport.

hahahaha t-roose owns

feel like it is bad that me and brshly idolize the same figures (teddy roosevelt, ron swanson)

but are polar opposites in personality

Yo, have you seen Ron Swanson's instructional videos on how to build canoes from scratch? Well, not Ron Swanson but the actor who plays him. kfunque told me about them and they are awesome.

um i saw the pictures of him in his underwear and i think he was woodworking in them but i don't recall

Oh okay, so these aren't modern books...

All I'm getting at is that I want to make sure my bro's assumption was not a sensible one to make.

People still hunt bears, Cheston. They make bear stew and bear rugs and act like it is a manly man thing to do. I am pretty sure people still hunt tigers and elephants too. They are throwback manly men who are awful. I mean is that what you are wondering? That is, right? Whether or not modern people would ever stoop to hunting bear for sport?

What makes hunting these animals bad? I am just wondering. I don't have any particular desire to shoot animals, but I am not sure I understand what is wrong with it.

Obviously, with tigers, it is wrong to hunt them for sport because there are so few that there is a danger that they will become extinct. Same with elephants. I think the only hunting with those two that continues is poaching, right? Your average sport hunter can't just go get some panda tags and set off into the bamboo.

I assume that bears are not in danger of becoming extinct due to hunting. If they are, I can see one objection I'd agree with, but if they aren't, what is another argument against allowing it? It is simply distastefully atavistic? Do you read into it some kind of compensation type deal, where an innocent animal dies? I have heard some decent arguments in favor of deer hunting that relate to controlling population size, conservation being a priority to hunters, etc, so I wonder if these pros outweigh some cons that aren't occurring to me.

Black bears and brown bears are in no danger whatsoever of going extinct, although they may be endangered/extinct in certain parts of North America. Like, organized hunting of the small, isolated population of grizzlies in Yellowstone could very possibly extirpate them from that range.

Anyway, cabbie I agree with you generally, but your examples of tigers and elephants are kind of strange. Tigers are probably mostly killed because they are either perceived as a threat to humans and/or livestock, or for commercial reasons. Elephants are, of course, mostly killed for commercial reasons. I mean until very recently the U.S. government had a bounty on wolves that was in no way motivated by a desire to encourage sport hunting -- the intent was to eliminate an animal regarded as a pernicious pest from populated/farmed parts of the country. (FYI it succeeded. Gray wolves as a species are in no way endangered thanks to the vast wilderness areas of Canada, but they are practically unheard of in the lower forty-eight.)

Habitat destruction, pest extirpation, and commercial hunting/poaching are probably the biggest threats to species. Most of the progressive conservationists of the late 19th and 20th centuries were also sport hunters (except for John Muir, I believe) since the preservation of wild animals and wilderness fit nicely with the needs of sport hunters. Even today, sport hunters have helped reintroduce animals like elk into ranges they no longer inhabit. (Less helpfully, they've also introduced exotic animal species to ranges where they never existed.)

Anyway, it's always a good idea to regulate hunting, but sport hunting alone isn't likely to decimate animal populations like commercial exploitation or pest control programs can.

It would be really interesting to do a survey of animals and what effect humans have had on their populations and distribution imo. Coyotes and foxes have benefited enormously from the elimination of apex predators like wolves and mountain lions. I kind of wonder if the same is true of black bears.

IMO Hunting lions and tigers and things like that is bad because of the endangered status of them all. They have a hard enough time as it is with all of the other things that are keeping them down.

Actually, I generally don't like the idea of trophy hunting, I guess. Like, where rich guys go to a farm that raises rare animals just so they can get shot and turned into a rug or a head on a board. It doesn't seem very sporting unless it is a lot more dangerous than it sounds. It just seems like a jerk thing to do, like those people into that are pretty jerky people probably. But I guess that's better than there being a crazy underground poaching circuit where rich guys, for a lot of money, can get thrills from sneaking around with poachers and getting gorillas and snow leopards and things.

I am not a fan of hunting in general, but making meals out of what you get seems understandable and like it is a good skill to have JUST IN CASE. Killing things just to keep their heads or teeth or whatever seems wasteful and assholish.

I think it's naive to expect human-animal interactions to be entirely free from violence, especially where animals that might be actively trying to stalk and kill us are concerned. Most of us can go for a walk in the park today without needing to carry a gun because generations of hunters before us have wiped out the animals that might threaten us -- in other words, we don't live anywhere near a real wilderness.

Conservation of wild animals and wilderness spaces means, in some ways, giving up control of land. The more we conserve close to where we live, the less control we have over animal populations near our homes, which leads inevitably to more opportunities for violent human-animal interactions. I don't think conservation is especially useful if it's only done in places where humans don't want to live, so I'm okay with this.

Ohio today is more or less a giant outdoor zoo. We've decided which animals are okay to have around, and which ones we don't want. We've decided where it's okay to have trees, and wetlands, and prairies, and so on. In such a controlled environment, hunting does seem kind of jerky because humans have taken on this condescending stewardship type role where we are "allowing" other creatures to live in the places we designate for them.

Mountain lions and wolves and bears used to live in Ohio, but they don't anymore because we've already killed them all. Our attitudes about hunting them would, I suspect, be somewhat different if they weren't rare animals that lived far away from us, but were rather common animals that could be in our backyards. The less control humans have over their environment, the more justified hunting is in my opinon.

Matt, I mentioned tigers and elephants specifically because those two (plus bears) are the animals Amanda mentioned. I think the big pressure on both was a pest control issue, since they eat us or completely destroy farms, irrespective of the ivory or powdered tiger penis markets. I contend that they are different from bears, so I wanted to seperate them on the grounds that they are endangered and protected by law, while bear hunting is merely regulated.

Amanda, I guess I agree as far as trophy hunting goes, in the sense that I think animal trophies are usually really tacky as decor.

Matt, I think you are very probably correct about the propensity for violence, or at least comfort with it, when animals and people live in the same place.

When I first moved to Colorado, I thought it was pretty great having this porous boundary between animal territory and people territory, because I got to see foxes and bears and deer and elk and raccoons and skunk and all kinds of stuff. But when you cannot ever let a pet cat outside (it will get eaten, re: I am near water) and you give your dog a couple baths after skunk encounters every winter, the romance w/ animals sort of diminishes.

I cannot kill all the foxes, I cannot even trap and relocate a skunk, so when one moves in under my neighbor's porch, we all have to sort of just accept it.

you know, one time i saved an armadillo

I heard that armadillos have r strong abs, and that they sleep on the roads, re: the road is warm from the evening sun. In the early morning, as cars start using the road, they wake up in a panic and pull into a ball w/ explosive force, popping up to 6' in the air as they close into an armored ball. This can decapitate commuters as they drive.

so I guess, confirm/ deny

only times I have see an armadillo irl have been dead on the road

was

was there a human head nearby?

and a crashed ca with a circular hole in the windshield?

just love the image of these animals as landmines

yo eveybody

the R on my keyboard is pretty eluctant to work

really gotta mash the hell out of it

this armadillo seemed p. chill to me

popping up like landmines seems more like something an armadillo would do in a video game

cabbie I would like to divide your question in four parts:

1. Would a road surface at night really be warmer than the traditional burrow of the armadillo?

2. Is there anything in the musculature of the animal that would allow it to propel a mass of 8 - 17 pounds six feet straight up into the air from a resting position?

3. Would the animal's reflexes be fast enough to wake up from a dead sleep at the approach of a car, curl into a ball, and travel six feet in the air before the approaching car ran it over?

4. Would a spherical object weighing 8 - 17 pounds and with no appreciable vertical velocity (via being at the apex of the parabola) be able to penetrate the windshield of a car traveling 60 mph with enough force to decapitate a person inside? (Note: the weight of an armadillo is approximately the same as the weight of a human head.)

I vote "no" on all counts, though the density of the animal would be useful to know regarding question 4.

(Amanda if you paint a spider for Boorishly, I will make him hide it whenever I visit/forever if we are someday living in the same place)

I am changing my mind to ALL SPIDERS. AN ENDLESS STREAM OF SPIDERS A NEW ONE EVERY WEEK.

FINE

ALL GOATS AND KITTENS SNUGGLING WITH EACH OTHER

NO JUST ANYTHING BUT SPIDERS

if you really want a manly animal

life sized painting of a tardigrade imo

I really only mentioned bears because Cheston was talking about bear hunting. I can't remember why I went from bears to tigers and elephants. Maybe because they are all big things? But so are moose. Anyway I feel like the only place I am supposed to naturally occur is indoors, so whenever I step foot outside I think I am moving in on the wilderness and I shouldn't. This fact has nothing to do with hunting. Sorry that I can't paint spiders for you, Boorishly. But not actually sorry at all, actually. Thanks, kfunque!