Extra month to hunt is nothing to celebrate

To the Editor;

Giving hunters an additional month to impale deer with their arrows is no reason to celebrate.

A member of the Maine BowHunters Alliance found that for every deer killed outright by a bowhunter, one more was only wounded and escaped to suffer and die slowly of his or her injuries. A study by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department mirrored those findings: The agency determined that the “wound rate” for bowhunting exceeds 50%. An article in Bowhunter Magazine further confirmed that fact. An article titled, “Bow Wounding Losses THE BIG MYTH,” concluded that, “It is disquieting to know that we probably wound one deer for every animal harvested.”

And the favorite old hunters’ tale about “conservation” doesn’t hold water. When they lay waste to a high number of deer, it creates a spike in food supply and habitat availability. That encourages deer to move into the area and reproduce at a faster rate, causing the population to increase. Wildlife agencies that subsist on hunter dollars frequently kill off natural predators, including wolves, bears and coyotes, so that hunters have more deer to kill.

Hunters wound and kill animals for “fun” and that is never a reason to cheer.

Michelle Kretzer

The PETA Foundation

Norfolk, Virginia