quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:
Among my 14 years overseas living and working in South America, Africa and Asia are travels extensively in 70 countries. lived in Vietnam for 5 years.

My company there in Vietnam established in 1931 - founded 1857. They teamed with the French Colonials and operated up to the 2nd world war. After the war the French resumed and tried to re-establish their Indochina Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam split North vs South. In 1959 our Americans bought out the French interest and I was sent to manage the company. The French began to pull out. I hunted with some French PH's for a brief period until they left. Also hunted with individual reidents privately.

Game was abundant. Plantation French hunted Gaur on the plantions. I was invited to visit the Montanard villages up in the mountains to hunt tigers. These were very primitive people semi nomadic. Tigers were raiding their villages.

Fast forward. After the war of independence up to present there has been a70% seventy percent decline in tigers.

In India where I also visited the tiger population is shrinking rapidly and only a token number remain compared to the old days. In the soviet Union the same is occurring.

Polal bear habit is in trouble. Global warming is melting the ice. Their future is dismal at best.

Same with the elephants, Shrinking steadily and inexorably.

Rhinos are in serious trouble and declining rapidly.

The Africans have proven pitifully inept at stopping the decimation.

Although I agree that the numbers of these species taken by legitimate hunters is small compared to the poachers, illegal hunters, natives that subsistence hunt to eat, none the less I personally no longer participate.

At my age I hung it up. I no longer hunt nor have any interest in same. I had my share and enjoyed it.

Back in my early days game was not in such critical, precarious danger of falling into the irreversible path to extinction.

Deplorably some of the overzealous pseudo experts were unmasked as flagrant prevaricators,liars, unconscionable frauds. That only made the matters more confusing and difficult.

Bottom line, the world is rapidly overpopulating, climate is changing, matters of wildlife are unequivocally declining at an accelerated pace.

I didn't say no one should shoot certain species. I said I will not any longer.

I'm also a very old timer on this website dating back to it's beginnings and I learned the hard way a long time ago to avoid provoking and exacerbation differences of opinion and arguments. It is counter productive and serves nothing beneficial.

In the coming decades your children, grand children and future hunters will have only a small fraction of the opportunities that you have today.

quote:

B. The polar ice melting is a myth.

quote:

Originally posted by Cazador humilde:

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:
Among my 14 years overseas living and working in South America, Africa and Asia are travels extensively in 70 countries. lived in Vietnam for 5 years.

My company there in Vietnam established in 1931 - founded 1857. They teamed with the French Colonials and operated up to the 2nd world war. After the war the French resumed and tried to re-establish their Indochina Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam split North vs South. In 1959 our Americans bought out the French interest and I was sent to manage the company. The French began to pull out. I hunted with some French PH's for a brief period until they left. Also hunted with individual reidents privately.

Game was abundant. Plantation French hunted Gaur on the plantions. I was invited to visit the Montanard villages up in the mountains to hunt tigers. These were very primitive people semi nomadic. Tigers were raiding their villages.

Fast forward. After the war of independence up to present there has been a70% seventy percent decline in tigers.

In India where I also visited the tiger population is shrinking rapidly and only a token number remain compared to the old days. In the soviet Union the same is occurring.

Polal bear habit is in trouble. Global warming is melting the ice. Their future is dismal at best.

Same with the elephants, Shrinking steadily and inexorably.

Rhinos are in serious trouble and declining rapidly.

The Africans have proven pitifully inept at stopping the decimation.

Although I agree that the numbers of these species taken by legitimate hunters is small compared to the poachers, illegal hunters, natives that subsistence hunt to eat, none the less I personally no longer participate.

At my age I hung it up. I no longer hunt nor have any interest in same. I had my share and enjoyed it.

Back in my early days game was not in such critical, precarious danger of falling into the irreversible path to extinction.

Deplorably some of the overzealous pseudo experts were unmasked as flagrant prevaricators,liars, unconscionable frauds. That only made the matters more confusing and difficult.

Bottom line, the world is rapidly overpopulating, climate is changing, matters of wildlife are unequivocally declining at an accelerated pace.

I didn't say no one should shoot certain species. I said I will not any longer.

I'm also a very old timer on this website dating back to it's beginnings and I learned the hard way a long time ago to avoid provoking and exacerbation differences of opinion and arguments. It is counter productive and serves nothing beneficial.

In the coming decades your children, grand children and future hunters will have only a small fraction of the opportunities that you have today.

A. Thanks for making me look like an optimist. 'Not easily done.

B. The polar ice melting is a myth.

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
It bothered me more that there was a FB page that I had zero knowledge of.

quote:

Originally posted by Cazador humilde:


B. The polar ice melting is a myth.

quote:

Originally posted by Demonical:

quote:

Originally posted by Cazador humilde:


B. The polar ice melting is a myth.

^ Wow... do you really believe that?

quote:

Originally posted by drj:
I refuse to get on Facebook for the same reason. My business (I am a veterinarian) has a page, but I do not. Shortly after the page was started we got a nasty post from a woman who obviously read my short bio (which states one of my hobbies is hunting) and made the worn out statement "he is a vet and he hunts?". Wetibbe, keep in mind the number one reason the bison were nearly wiped out was to take away the food supply from the Indians. No different, IMHO, from bombing the enemies' supply lines in one of our wars.

quote:

Originally posted by Demonical:

quote:

Originally posted by Cazador humilde:


B. The polar ice melting is a myth.

^ Wow... do you really believe that?

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by drj:
I refuse to get on Facebook for the same reason. My business (I am a veterinarian) has a page, but I do not. Shortly after the page was started we got a nasty post from a woman who obviously read my short bio (which states one of my hobbies is hunting) and made the worn out statement "he is a vet and he hunts?". Wetibbe, keep in mind the number one reason the bison were nearly wiped out was to take away the food supply from the Indians. No different, IMHO, from bombing the enemies' supply lines in one of our wars.

quote:

I had never read those assertions that you postulate.

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by drj:
I refuse to get on Facebook for the same reason. My business (I am a veterinarian) has a page, but I do not. Shortly after the page was started we got a nasty post from a woman who obviously read my short bio (which states one of my hobbies is hunting) and made the worn out statement "he is a vet and he hunts?". Wetibbe, keep in mind the number one reason the bison were nearly wiped out was to take away the food supply from the Indians. No different, IMHO, from bombing the enemies' supply lines in one of our wars.

While hunters did kill off the last remaining herds for the various reasons above...research has shown that hunters only killed about 10-25% of what once roamed the N A continent...tuberculosis and brucellosis is what wiped out the buffalo (N A bison)...NOT hunters. Hunters just shot out the remaining herds to starve the Indians onto reservations but also because the cattle ranchers wanted them gone.
_____________________________________

Thanks:

I'm a very ardent aficionado of early history, I have books stacked up to the ceiling. I had never read those assertions that you postulate.

The morality and propriety of our ancestors invading and decimating other habitat is NOT the agenda here. Save it for some other time.

However, I do wish to ask you to help me understand and reconcile the existence of 43 million bison, a great proliferation surviving the described maladies and the coincidental demise due to shooting.

Mind you I am not challenging in the least. I just don't understand.

I suppose a DVM is a Veterinarian. If such I can assume that you and I, as a student of Earth History, are affectionately interested in biology and the species as well as their status, past, present history and future.

Thanks for your interest. I always like to exchange ideas. Maybe I will learn something more that I didn't know.

quote:

Originally posted by bwana cecil:

quote:

B. The polar ice melting is a myth.

For what it's worth, I concur.

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:
Guys:

Two issues here:

#1. Bison.

While I'm not in a position to dispute any of the comments here let me say that this exchange has only served to confuse me even further.

I wasn't there during the shootings BUT - I have read that when the railroad tracks were laid, Bison would cross and the stream/herd was miles and hours long! Passengers would shoot from the windows for ???

I'm into the fields of geology and earth history so I have understood the past in hundreds of thousands/millions of years. 43 million bison. That's a lot ! Tuberculosis and brucellosis certainly didn't seem to put much of a dent in the population. *( Unless there were, at one time, 143 million !!! ). I think there is more to the story. Seems to me that the bison were doing just fine for many centuries before the buffalo hunters came along and put an end to it in just a couple of decades or so.

#2. The polar ice caps.

It's so sad that some of the scientists have been caught DELIBERATELY manufacturing false, misleading information about the melting of the ice and global warming.

There are two sad truths:

1. I think the scientific community doesn't actually have enough information, or history, to make accurate long term predictions.

2. I read and hear lots of very compelling physical facts about the results of the changing weather patterns. Reality is everywhere.

In the Northern reaches of Canada the ice is melting up in the ocean where the old timers tried to navigate back in the 1,800's. The permafrost is melting. Glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate. The boreal forests are changing as well as the insects proliferating. The polar bears are finding it increasingly difficult to find ice. Around Churchill they are starving more. Birds are returning from migration earlier. Mt. Kilimanjaro's snow is melting and will be gone in another 20 years. In Italy Venice's water level is rising and the city will be lost some time in the coming decades.

A huge chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf broke off recently and it is breaking up.

All of the factors affecting our earth are extremely complex. The orbits, movements of the sun, moon, planets have all been meticulously plotted and they run in cycles from thousands of years to millions. There is nodding, or nutation, precession, rotation. Orbits are elliptical and change routinely over long periods of time.

Bottom line - all of the hard facts and reality are there. What I haven't been able to understand is why some of the scientists persist in cloaking the truth.

It takes all kinds. Some actually believe in Sasquatch even though there has NEVER been one single bone, body, grave, dwelling, cave, hut, bed, fossil, tool, garment found. But the remains of other ancestors are found regularly all over the world. Incidentally including the old, original natives that crossed the Asian land bridge 15,000 years ago in the Pacific Northwest.!!

quote:

Originally posted by Markschu:
Makes you wonder: if all the hunting was banned and the animals all poached and destroyed, who would the greenies blame?

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:


If we go way back in history to the time of the mastadons and wooly mammoths, 25,000 years, their demise is attributed to hunting too.

quote:

Originally posted by Todd Williams:

From recent comments on this forum, I'm starting to think Greenpeace and PETA are getting through to some of you guys!

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Originally posted by MJines:

quote:

Originally posted by Todd Williams:

From recent comments on this forum, I'm starting to think Greenpeace and PETA are getting through to some of you guys!

So are you saying Todd that turkeys do not have rights and people should not be charged with murder at Thanksgiving? I am so confused.

quote:

Originally posted by Todd Williams:

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:


If we go way back in history to the time of the mastodons and wooly mammoths, 25,000 years, their demise is attributed to hunting too.

Considering the human population on the planet at the time, do you really believe that primitive man, using primitive weapons such as spears, actually caused the wolly mammoths to become extinct instead of a natural consequence of NON MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE?

I've heard this theory floated around lately as well. Seems to me to be nothing more than another BS story postulated by the anti hunting crowd.


From recent comments on this forum, I'm starting to think Greenpeace and PETA are getting through to some of you guys!

Then again, here is PROOF of man contributing to the extinction of dinosaurs!

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:

While I cannot truthfully say that I completely believe that our ancestor early Homo Sapiens, allied and predecessor Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon actually slaughtered the mammoth and mastodons into extinction, I am at the same time a believer in multiple circumstances.

However, I have little if any doubt that they were completely capable of hunting and taking down those prehistoric forefather of the elephants with great expertise and success.

quote:

Originally posted by Todd Williams:

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:

While I cannot truthfully say that I completely believe that our ancestor early Homo Sapiens, allied and predecessor Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon actually slaughtered the mammoth and mastodons into extinction, I am at the same time a believer in multiple circumstances.

However, I have little if any doubt that they were completely capable of hunting and taking down those prehistoric forefather of the elephants with great expertise and success.

Agreed but I have other concerns with this narrative. Yes, we live in the "information age" today but at the same time, I have to say we are now living in the "disinformation age" with the advent of social media and the radical polarization of left / right viewpoints.

The best information on the demise of the Mammoths points to a significant decline in their numbers due to shrinking habitat due to natural climate change. Then as their numbers were reduced to two small populations on isolated islands, as late as 3500BC or so, hunting contributed to eliminating those remaining individuals. IMO, that's a theory a critical thinker can find validity in.

BUT ... that's NOT what is typically put forth today. What we hear is that human hunters brought the Wooly Mammoth to extinction ... period. A statement completely out of context, used to "prove" to the masses how the evil hunters are the enemy of the planet.

On that, I call BS!!