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Hunting Is A Staple Of American Tradition

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Hunting has become a staple of American traditions since the beginning of the first hunter/gatherers, to the Native Americans who have lived in the U.S for millennia, even all the way until present day. Much of today’s society looks at hunting as a cruel activity when in reality it has more of a positive effect on the environment than it does harm. There are an abundance of benefits that come from hunting. Some of the benefits of hunting are: it is the biggest contribution to conserving wildlife, the meat is healthier than commercially produced meat, many jobs are being supported out of hunting, and every hunter wants “to bag” the trophy animal; however, there are a few cons to this, which include poaching and interference by the activist …show more content…

In Arizona, because of the lesser population of animals, one may only harvest one antlered deer, one elk, and two javelina per person per year. Additionally, the hunter must be drawn in a “lottery-style process for allocating the limited number of Arizona big game and other limited species hunt permit-tags to applicants” (AZ Game & Fish). Not every applicant who applies for a tag gets drawn, this is part of the system of controlling the population of wildlife to ensure no animal is over hunted. However, in other states, there might be other regulations based on the population of the animal. For example, in Kentucky, one may be able to harvest four deer per year including one antlered deer (Kentucky Game and Fish). A famous example of overgrazing is the Kaibab plateau in northern Arizona in the early 1900’s. In summary, cattle was introduced to the plateau and thus created the problem of overgrazing the land. Then in 1906 Theodore Roosevelt declared the area the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve. The regulators of the area officially banned hunting of deer in 1907, in addition, the extermination of predators of deer was put into effect. By 1920 the deer population had risen out of control from these laws and hunting was reopened. This overpopulation of deer caused overgrazing to happen once again and 60,000 deer starved within the next two winters. The image above shows the population of deer from 1905

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