I think I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. I’m no city girl. I was born and lived most of my life in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A place, for any of you who haven’t ever been there, that is arguably one of the more rural corners of the country.
That meant that I ate strips of venison meat fried in a cast iron pan on an open flame outside of an ice shanty (though we call them “shacks” up there) in the dead of night in the middle of winter. It meant that I went through hunter safety as part of my sixth grade curriculum, learned how to pluck and dress geese and clean a rifle before I hit puberty (not that I could do either anymore). It meant that I went to “camp” (nearly everyone there has one — short for “deer hunting camp”) with my dad, learned to shoot beer cans off of fence posts, and sat frozen-fingered and -toed in a deer blind, watching my breath in the early November mornings waiting for the sight of a deer. It meant that in our district, the first day of hunting season was — and still is — considered a holiday, celebrated by school being canceled that day. (yes, really.) Most of my uncles hunt, as does one of my aunts and a smattering of friends, both male and female.
I’ve made no secret that I have a heart for animals, and that I’ve even struggled with my meat-eating of late. But that’s neither here nor there, because that’s simply my own thing. I have a strong sense for the purpose of hunting, having been raised to understand that everything in nature has its place and its role. In the UP, that meant that a lack of natural predators in the area equaled an overgrowth of deer…and that deer population, left unchecked by hunting, meant a landscape that couldn’t support all those deer during the winter…and that meant deer starving to death. So I respect those who hunt, who spare the deer that horrible fate of slowly freezing or dying of starvation. Just because I chose not to hunt doesn’t mean I think it’s wrong.
But this? This is.
I like to think of myself as an open-minded person. Even if I don’t subscribe to them myself, I like hearing about and discussing views different from my own. I don’t often (ever?) think that my way of thinking is the only way to go. I shy away from deeming things “right” or “wrong” as a matter of course.
But aerial hunting of wolves? Someone please explain to me how or why or in what logical universe this would be not only necessary, but accepted.
I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that some in Alaska feel the need to run down wolves from low-flying airplanes either until the animals collapse from exhaustion, only to be shot at point-blank range, or until the shooter gets a clean line of sight from the air. Where is the sport in this? What is the need?
It’s akin to baiting deer — a practice that many states have outlawed — because it gives the hunter such a ridiculous advantage over the hunted. It takes the “sport” element out, and replaces it with straight-up barbarianism.
Can wolves be problematic? You’re darn right they can. Especially here in Wisconsin where their habitat butts right up against the myriad of farms that dot this state. I also used to work for the state natural resources agency, and I watched as bear hunters filed into a meeting, empty dog leashes with empty dog collars draped around their necks for the loyal companions they lost to wolves. I saw the photographs of shredded cattle, family dogs with their backs torn open to the spine from wolf packs. And these are not easy things to look at by any means. But in that job capacity, I sat through meeting after meeting on wolves as they were being de-listed. I listened to biologists and wolf specialists talk about the benefits of a healthy wolf population, and ways to control them.
Does Wisconsin have the market cornered on effective wolf population control? Maybe not yet. But I’m proud to say that in this state, they’re working on it, every day — they’re working to figure out what’s best for the wolves and all of us who share the land with them. And hunting wolves with automatic weapons from airplanes is no where on the horizon.
So it’s hard to imagine why a state like Alaska, with its massive land mass and teeny-tiny per-square-mile population…with a whole lot less farms sharing the land with wolves…and with a lot of its economy built around the natural beauty and wildlife one can see there…would feel the need to make something like this legal.
It just blows my mind.
