Your thoughts on hunting ethics.......
- Thread starter Ahsan Ahmed
- Start date
- Location
- Saskatchewan
Regarding the post from the Yukon about gophers (ground squirrels) they are NOT "game" animals in Saskatchewan, and DO cause very considerable damage to field and forage crops. In the area around Mankota, SK, some Agriculture Canada researchers this year counted densities as high as 4000 gopher holes per acre of land. If the south american doves are similarily that out of balance with the land, I say shoot 'em like gophers. But don't exterminate them or thin them down too much if it would make other species like predators that depend on them suffer. Eating agricultural pests is optional, and not required IMO. Shooting is better than poison, the other alternative.
x2
there is a reason some avid argentine dove hunters have thier shotgun barrels cryogenically freeze treated.
Those numbers dont sound to far out of wack.
I would rather bust a thousand or 2 and then shoot clays. But thats just me.
I've talked to guys that have been there. One guy told me it is not unusual to use as many as 6 shotguns a day because they got so hot. Even over/unders got so hot they could not open them. By the way he said the Benelli was the most durable. The birds are picked up, cleaned and eaten. It takes like 20 to make a meal for a person.
Hell what do you get off a dove? 4 oz of meat?
That works out to 9500 lbs or 12 - 15 moose. I'll bet they could eat those up pretty quick if the village was big enough.
That said, I'm betting that cleaning them would take longer than the meat can keep.
As said, some of you guys need to get out a little more
These dove shoots do indeed burn up the shells!!
The quesiton here is only "Is this resource sustainable?"
If it is, then fill your boots.
The amount of birds may seem staggering, but how much dove meat does it take to equal the weight of meat from a moose?
These dove shoots do indeed burn up the shells!!
The quesiton here is only "Is this resource sustainable?"
If it is, then fill your boots.
The amount of birds may seem staggering, but how much dove meat does it take to equal the weight of meat from a moose?
If all those birds wre not shot in one day, they must be keepin in the freezer.
I simply assumed the birds he had there were shot in the one day, as the article claimed 36,000 over 3 days. Seems pretty logical to think that they were all in shot in one day
They may end up like the Atlantic Penguins....
or worse, the Harp seal
I think you forgot the smiley on that last Harp seal statement. As for "Atlantic Penguins," I'm assuming you're talking about the Great Auk??? They were treated like the Passenger Pigeon on the mainland. A large, awkward (pardon the pun) flightless bird, they were easy prey for wooden sailing vessels making the trans-Atlantic voyage. Ships stopping to top up their fresh water barrels, would also kill hundreds of Auks, some were eaten immediately as fresh meat, others were immediately salted or pickeled in large barrels to keep while in transit. They were harvested moreso than hunted.
As for South American Dove Hunts...there is an overabundance of the birds & they are having dramatic negative impacts on agriculture in the region. Tourist hunting offers a win-win solution to this problem, while in no way endangering the species as a whole. If it weren't for the tourist shooters, farmers would be instituting widespread & indiscriminate poison baiting programs which would result in many secondary & tertiary deaths of possibly endangered predator/scavenger animals.
The South American Morning Dove is an extremely small bird. You mostly eat just the breast meat. They're even smaller that a Bull Bird IIRC (which should be familiar to other native Newfoundlanders.) So, it isn't out of line to say, as another poster did, that you'd need 20-30 birds per man to fill 'em up. They make for great soup!
No matter what species being hunted; as long as it is done in a sustainable & humane manner, I've got no problems with it. For instance, while I'm not too fussy over the fact that I now have to purchase a Migratory Game Bird hunting license to legally hunt Turrs (Murres) I am glad that bag limits are being enforced in order to protect the species. I saw too many instances of guys shooting so many turrs that the gunnels of their boats were just inches above the water. While many were shared with friends and family, you just know other birds were sold. That I disagree with.
