The hunting season for deer in Missouri is nothing short of wholesale slaughter. Shooting deer is “easy killing” when all you have to do is pull a trigger or bowstring. None of the natural predators of deer, including wolves and cougars, were ever as bad as the human kind of hunters who come with camouflage and deadly weapons. What chance of survival do deer have against these modern savages? The intense killing goes on all during the hunting season.
When the massacre is over, the deer that are left somehow find the strength and resolve to mate and reproduce more of their kind, which inevitably will be facing the same kind of slaughter. It is a vicious cycle being repeated over and over where animals are allowed to reproduce only to be killed by hunters. These hunters are basically killing for the sport of killing.
The slaughter continues to go on in spite of many protests by people who are appalled and outraged by these crimes against nature. The corrupted sports industry is promoting this cultivated systematical slaughter of wild animals. It’s as though the conservation department is acting like some kind of “deer farmer,” collecting a lot of revenue from deer licenses and keeping the herd intact for the increasing number of deer hunters. Stores that sell hunting gear like Bass Pro, are cashing in on the “killing windfall.”
Every year more hunters are flocking into the woods trying to kill the deer. It’s gotten to be like shooting fish in a barrel, and it’s all cut and dried. These hunters just hide behind a blind and kill deer with high-powered weapons. It is a lot of unnecessary killing; they don’t need the meat. People have beef cattle, chickens and other kinds of domestic animals to provide food.
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In the 19th Century, the early settlers of Missouri killed off the wolves and cougars; they also nearly wiped out the whitetail deer population. In 1925 only about 400 deer were in Missouri; later more deer were shipped in from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1937 the Conservation Commission was formed, and efforts were made to increase the number of deer. From 1938 to 1943, the deer season was closed. By 1944 the deer season was reopened when there were an estimated 15,000 deer in Missouri.
All of the effort of restoring deer populations in Missouri was not for the deer but only for “hunters.” The conservation agency was working to increase the number of deer when there were no natural predators of deer in Missouri. It was a fanatical one-sided plan that evolved into turning thousands of acres into “killing fields” where deer were being produced just for hunters to kill.
To rectify the mistakes that the Conservation Department has made and is making in the management of wildlife, refuges should be established in Missouri where both predator and prey animals can reside in a “fenced-in” region where no human kind of hunters are allowed and where there are no roads to cause roadkill. A well-balanced ecosystem could be maintained naturally. The deer in Missouri should be rounded up and placed in these protected preserves.
There will be no justice for wild animals until the unnecessary killing of wild animals is outlawed. Deer and other animals are a lot more interesting and inspiring when they are alive and breathing than when they are corpses riddled with bullets and arrows. Wildlife should be preserved and never be allowed to be needlessly exterminated by blood thirsty, kill crazed hunters!
--Marlin O. Wallace |
