Why would you want to hunt a wolf? Whats the point

[Samm]

@toreyj01

@Samm

@toreyj01

@Samm

@toreyj01

@WuWei

@Scratch

Deer…

What do you think wolves do to the deer population if left unchecked?

Why would you hunt deer? You can buy venison on the internet.

Wolves tend to do a better job with the deer than hunters do, they pick off the sick ones, not the biggest and healthiest ones.

Wrong. That’s a myth. They pick the ones that are easiest to kill … the young. Sure, every now and then they come across a lame or elderly animal as will kill it, but the predominant victims are the newborn and juveniles.

But hunters often seek the biggest bucks with the largest racks, and those are the ones who would survive the winter and breed stronger progeny. Reverse darwinism, so to speak. Wolves aren’t going to tackle some beast of a deer, they are going after the smaller ones, the babies and the ill ones. Darwinism in a nutshell, the strong survive.

That’s the theory, but prey animals have been hunted in such a manner for more than a hundred fifty years without having a measurable effect on the herds. There is also a theory that taking the largest, strongest males improves the genetic diversity of the herds because it allows for more males to breed.

Sort of counters the whole argument I hear from hunters, and I know quite a few of them being from Michigan. We have lots of deer here. They argue they are culling the herd so they can survive the winter, but culling should entail winnowing out the weak ones, not the strong ones. Natural selection is billions of years in the making, while hunting with rifles and bait is fairly recent.

It doesn’t make sense to kill the strongest deer if we truly care about keeping the herd healthy, it just doesn’t.

Are you suggesting that all hunters in Michigan are trophy hunting? In my experience, most hunters seek a younger, smaller, more tender animal because they make a better meal.

Winter die-offs have little to do with what animals are taken by hunters. It has more to do with the health of the habitat. An over browsed habitat can kill the strongest of animals over the course of the winter. It cab be particularly hard on the big dominant bulls who burn tons of fat reserves defending their right to breed.