The National Audubon Society (founded 1905) is about c̶o̶n̶v̶e̶r̶s̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ (accursed auto incorrect) conservation of birds. (thank you!)
John James Audubon (1785 - 1851) was a very different person. He was a naturalist, painter, and studied ornithology... and his ethics were from that age.
> Audubon developed his own methods for drawing birds. First, he killed them using fine shot. He then used wires to prop them into a natural position, unlike the common method of many ornithologists, who prepared and stuffed the specimens into a rigid pose. When working on a major specimen like an eagle, he would spend up to four 15-hour days, preparing, studying, and drawing it.
I recall a story with an eagle where he was trying to asphyxiate it with smoke (so that he wouldn't damage it) - the means and the time it took to do that would be considered by today's standards to be quite cruel.
Naturally the conversation turns to the Persian poem, The Conference of the Birds (or Speech of the Birds), where the birds of the world gather and travel in search of the legendary Simorgh, the sovereign of birds.
Old fashioned conservation (Teddy Roosevelt etc.) was often Human centered, We should see nice animals/places, general ecosystem health etc.
Roosevelt believed that the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Government was
too wasteful and inefficient
While Muir wanted nature preserved for its own sake, Roosevelt subscribed to
Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of
whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for
generation after generation of men and trees.
-Wikipedia conservation movement
I get the feeling that todays version is more "ethical" in nature, saving animals for their own sake etc.
> hunters drive quite a bit of conservation efforts
Hunters are generally exquisitely knowlegeable about the local flora and fauna. That sort of knowledge rarely accumulates without an element of respect. Some of the most effective conservation efforts in the world arose from environmentalists and hunters allying against developers and ranchers. (And by extension, some of the biggest conservation losses from the latter driving a wedge between the former.)
Whilst hunting might involve the killing & taking of an animal, it 100% relies on there being a healthy population to begin with.
Not to mention, hunting is actually very difficult (contrary to a lot of belief). You end up spending a phenomenal amount of time learning about animals, their habitat, and behavior. There ends up being deep admiration.
Not all hunters of course, some are dipshits. But such is true for any group of people.
| Not to mention, hunting is actually very difficult (contrary to a lot of belief).
This always bothered me. The attitude that you just walk up to some defenseless deer and shoot it and that's some unskilled cruel thing.
In reality it's hours or days in a row in a short amount of time a season is open sitting in miserable weather where hopefully the research you've done or the attempts to attract them might outweigh the fact that they can smell you from a mile away and are skittish at every sound in the world. Oh, and the practice and training you've had to do with whatever method you're using to hunt with.
Then there's the expense. Licenses, weapons, gear, time off work, you name it. I quit doing it simply because I don't have the time to invest in it as an adult.
I think the charter-type hunters are probably a statistic irrelevance in hunting in general, but unfortunately, money speaks, even when you don't want it to speak.
I'm mostly on board with you but what kind of "scouting" are you thinking of here? When I talk about scouting before a hunt, I'm talking about wandering around the countryside, looking for animals, looking for scat, etc.
There are some people that believe hunting should just be go to the woods, with your rifle or bow, and start walking around looking for deer. They are opposed to things like setting up feed piles of corn or apples, having cameras set up to find common paths for deer, etc. I suspect the latter where someone spend pre-season effort to find where they are is what's meant by scouting.
A personal note on that - I've done those things for years, seen big bucks on trail cams, bought bags of feed corn, watched them eating them on the trail cam, then gone to that spot and never seen deer in hunting season. :)
I’m curious too. Perhaps they mean getting others to do all the scouting to near guarantee a successful hunt?
I spend a ton of time in the woods reading sign and just generally being aware & learning. Ton of hours and boot leather burned, I don’t think that works for the “pay to win” crowd
One of my family members used to have a home out in a forested area, with access to a lake that had lots of fish in it. Not long after the fall of the soviet union, someone bought one of the nearby properties, and started fishing the lake with explosives. Within several years the lake had basically no fish left because of how indiscriminant the fishing method was. The family member and some of the other people who had access to the lake finally managed to drive out the dynamite-laden arsehole, but by then the damage was done. Even 20+ years later the fish population in the lake hasn't recovered.
In Audubon's time, the only way to accurately paint a bird in detail was to shoot it, examine it, then paint it. It's also why so many of his paintings are of birds in unnatural positions.
Even today, museums and universities sometimes pay for non-rare birds to be collected by shotgun. Collections are needed for certain types of comparative analysis when trying to sus out whether two birds are different species or just variety within a species.
