Value of the game you hunt?
- Thread starter IAMAWILDPARTY
- Start date
Unless you have moose living in your backyard, moose hunting costs tons. Way cheaper to buy a beef if you're comparing such things in dollar values. My fly-in costs alone each year are over $600. Throw in food,gas, ammo and gear and there is no economic value in harvesting wild meat. The therapeutic value of a hunting trip however,is priceless!!!!
Who ever wrote this has no clue what he is talking about. Mad cow disease came from feeding sheep parts from sheep that had scapie to cows. Hogs and chickens can not carry the disease period. To enrich eggs with omega 3 they feed flax seed not fish as it would make the eggs taste like fish. We can no longer feed animal proteins to hogs as the people buying the hogs will not allow it. Hoof and mouth in England came from sausage imported from Asia.
Polar Man
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
A whole lot of confusion in this thread. "My moose aren't fed steroids!"
"Guns aren't priceless, they cost money"
Huh?
Anyway, A lot more goes into the price of a hunting trip then your rig, even down to the ammo for sighting it in and gas to get there.
It can be expensive, but it's also a hobby, and the best hobbies cost money.
"Guns aren't priceless, they cost money"
Huh?
Anyway, A lot more goes into the price of a hunting trip then your rig, even down to the ammo for sighting it in and gas to get there.
It can be expensive, but it's also a hobby, and the best hobbies cost money.
The thread was about whether some people can justify their hunt in purely economic terms.
Obviously some of us can, some of us can't, and some get cranky when you ask them about it.
Your suggestion that it's like reducing marriage to prostitution doesn't sit well with me, I know there have been many people who have hunted (From Canada's early history to today) because of the value of what they harvested, independant of other reasons. The value could be in a pelt, or food for a family(Which has economic value in that it saves meat from having to be bought).
I'm not suggesting that there isn't more to hunting/fishing than meat on the table, and I thought I made that clear(Obviously not), but I don't see why it's wrong to consider the various ways we benefit from hunting.
My venison works out to about 25 to 40 a pound well worth it in my opinion I personally can't put a price cap on something I love to do .... Hunting means something different to each individual some have to shoot an animal to feel satisfied some just love the time spent with family and friends I haven't missed a season in 22 yrs and I will not miss one till I'm gone whatever the cost !!!! 9 days until bow season good luck everybody
I have no idea what it costs. Sometimes it's expensive (just got back from an elk hunt on the other side of the province that cost a couple of hundred dollars in gas alone and got me NO meat at all), some of it is cheap (I have shot most of my deer in the last 30 years less than 15 km from home).
I think it is ridiculous to try to put a cost on the meat. It's not about the meat, it's about hunting. Hunting costs quite a bit of money. The meat is just a by-product that we really enjoy, and it's healthier to eat than farm grown meat.
It is a profound mistake to try to do accurate cost accounting for the things in life you enjoy. If you doubt that, try to calculate the cost for all the ### in your life to find out if you would be better off hiring a hooker, or marrying a wife. The calculation would have to ignore all the REAL reasons for getting married. Trying to do it for the cost of moose meat cannot, in any way, include all the truly valuable reasons I go moose hunting.
I think it is ridiculous to try to put a cost on the meat. It's not about the meat, it's about hunting. Hunting costs quite a bit of money. The meat is just a by-product that we really enjoy, and it's healthier to eat than farm grown meat.
It is a profound mistake to try to do accurate cost accounting for the things in life you enjoy. If you doubt that, try to calculate the cost for all the ### in your life to find out if you would be better off hiring a hooker, or marrying a wife. The calculation would have to ignore all the REAL reasons for getting married. Trying to do it for the cost of moose meat cannot, in any way, include all the truly valuable reasons I go moose hunting.
Some people here seem to insist that no one hunts primarily for the food it brings. That definitely was not true in the past, here and in other places, and likely isn't for every single hunter now.
For those who hunt/hunted primarily for the support of themselves or their families, they had to decide what was the most worthwhile use of their time. Those people are not doing wrong simply because they made an economic choice.
-Most people here probably can't justify their hunt in purely economic terms, I expected this but I was curious about it.
-A lot of people don't like being asked whether they can justify their hunt in economic terms, and get offended when you ask.
For those who hunt/hunted primarily for the support of themselves or their families, they had to decide what was the most worthwhile use of their time. Those people are not doing wrong simply because they made an economic choice.
-Most people here probably can't justify their hunt in purely economic terms, I expected this but I was curious about it.
-A lot of people don't like being asked whether they can justify their hunt in economic terms, and get offended when you ask.
Pudelpointer
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Lethbridge, Alberta
I will try and give an expanded justification.
Taking my lovely wife out to dinner one night I started thinking about this. We had chateau briand and it cost us about $75 for the two of us, likely about 1.5-2.0lbs of well aged beef. Friends brought some dry aged beef steaks over one night; $39 for three 10 oz. steaks.
If you think you can buy similar meat products for 50 cents (or even $2) a pound, you are obviously not buying anything but high fat burger meat and shoulder steaks.
Meat that I have hunted may cost me a couple bucks a pound (pun inteded), but it is worth much more than that to me.
Taking my lovely wife out to dinner one night I started thinking about this. We had chateau briand and it cost us about $75 for the two of us, likely about 1.5-2.0lbs of well aged beef. Friends brought some dry aged beef steaks over one night; $39 for three 10 oz. steaks.
If you think you can buy similar meat products for 50 cents (or even $2) a pound, you are obviously not buying anything but high fat burger meat and shoulder steaks.
Meat that I have hunted may cost me a couple bucks a pound (pun inteded), but it is worth much more than that to me.
I hunt big game primarily for the the food it brings. I like eating moose, deer, elk and bear and my game significantly lowers the grocery costs for our home and provides meat that is of higher quality than that I can purchase. If it didn't pay, I would stick to hunting birds in November since that is what I enjoy most.
- Location
- Saskatchewan
It is very dangerous to reduce the true value of wildlife to dollars and cents because our economic and political system is unable to cope with the equation.
Perhaps some background information would be beneficial. In my experience, EVERY time that governments and policy makers consider the "economic value" of wild land and the wildlife in it, the wilderness and wildlife loses. When measured this way, it is always more economically rewarding to cut down the last old growth tree and turn it into lumber, to rip up the last bit of native prairie and seed it to something else, to catch the last codfish in the sea instead of letting it breed.
Measuring the value of wild creatures and wilderness only in economic terms leads to losses that cannot be measured. Two cases in point:
1) Damming of trout streams:
For many years I made annual trips to the foothills of Alberta to flyfish for trout in the Crowsnest pass area. The confluence of the Castle, Oldman, and Crowsnest rivers were a scenic wonder, and a fly fishers paradise. The few people generating cash in the region were some ranchers and loggers, and a modest tourist industry. The Alberta government decided that they needed to "develop" the area. All three rivers were dammed ( damned!) a wonderful and soul satisfying fishery was destroyed, a couple hundred years of careful land stewardship by ranch families was thrown away, and river bottoms are now in the process of being torn up for subsidized irrigated agriculture.
The summer the dams were given the green light, I went to fish the rivers one last time in the sections to be flooded. A nice young woman came along with a clipboard and a survey to find out how much money I spent on my trip and said this information would be used to analyse the economic impact vs. the waterskiing and jet boat and beach resort recreation generated by the impoundment. She wanted to know how much I had spent on my gear and travel. Yes, I was "cranky" and I refused to answer her questions, just as I refused to answer yours. In the simplest terms, I spent less on my fly rod than someone else did for their jet ski. Jet ski wins!
There is no measurable economic argument in favour of keeping a pristine trout stream in ranch country compared with the short term jobs from dam construction, motorized recreation, artificial beach and resort development, and political payoff of promoters and supporters. But the dam is only going to serve agriculture and boaters for a hundred years at most. The river bottoms have been destroyed for many hundreds of years. The short term economic analysis would have us believe that this was a "good deal" but even that economic return is far from clear. Part of the soul of the country died during the three rivers dam development, and all the money in the world can't buy it back. I won't ever return to mourn what was and what can never be again.
2. Game "ranching"
A few years ago in Saskatchewan, our legislators had a look at the reputation that we have for world class deer hunting, our sparse rural population, and perceived a need to stimulate higher economic activity from deer. Hunters objected to privatizing access to wild deer hunting, so private deer and elk ranches were promoted by the SK Government as a way around that objection. Our wildlife biologists raised serious concerns of about the risk of introducing disease to wild populations by creating pockets of intensive production, increasing the risk of incubation and transmission of diseases. Hunters raised the same objections. Since the disease risk could not be measured, the policy makers avoided the hard question by simply changing the jurisdiction of deer farms from the ministry of the Environment to the ministry of Agriculture.
A few people got wealthy importing elk as breeding stock and selling them in a pyramid scheme to producers. Unfortunately, no viable meat processing industry was ever developed. So people started selling velvet antlers the the oriental market. - sawing growing antlers off of live animals without anaesthetic! To supplement that "industry" the government allowed the importation of breeding stock from the USA, fully aware of Chronic Wasting Disease was endemic there. The rest is history. The veterinarians monitoring importations dropped the ball, and CWD was introduced with elk breeding stock. The biologists' original recommendation that game ranches have double fences to prevent fence line contact between wild and fenced animals was ignored by the policy makers, and the stage was set for an epidemic in slow motion. CWD spread from the original few sites where it was introduced, and spread quickly in Saskatchewan mule deer and whitetail deer populations. Eradication efforts failed to control the disease, despite the destruction of 80% of the deer in affected areas. Economic "compensation" paid by tax payers to producers to eradicate infected herds during the first ten years of the "industry" generated more income for producers than all the meat and velvet sold to the market.
So now the disease has established itself in many areas of the province, and threatens Alberta and Manitoba. The economic impact of destroying the quality of our deer hunting has never been measured, and probably cannot be measured, but it is severe and the damage cannot be undone.
All this because someone tried to put a dollar figure on the value of hunting and compared that to some other dollar figure - and hunters, wildlife, thoughtful stewards of the land, and common sense all lost!
That's just two examples of why I get "cranky" when people continue to ask inappropriate economic questions related to the value of wildlife.
I like a quote attributed to Stan Shadick, Ecology professor at the University of Saskatchewan:
"anybody who thinks that economics is more important than their environment should try holding their breath while they count their money"
I get really fed up reading this crap here. Some people are just as bad as Wendy C in believing and promoting this garbage based on heresay and highly biased media presentations used to promote someone's "anti" point of view.
Relax guys, I think the OP was just asking out of curiosity, like a thought experiment.
Obviously the experience is worth more than the money you put into it, it's just interesting to compare the two. No need to get all up in arms over it.
Obviously the experience is worth more than the money you put into it, it's just interesting to compare the two. No need to get all up in arms over it.
Just like there are still a sizeable number of people who believe that MSG in food causes health problems when every scientific study ever done on the subject demonstrates zero linkage between MSG and the supposed symptoms.
People believe what THEY tell them but never really examine the research for themselves or find out who THEY are.
Alar in apples, BPA in canned goods, mercury in fish, BSE, cancer in settlements downstream of the oil sands --- all examples of the media hyper-exaggerating the science in order to generate fear and story lines.
Pudelpointer
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Lethbridge, Alberta
Excellent post Longwalker. Best in a long time.
Thanks for taking the time to write it out.
Thanks for taking the time to write it out.
