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Comment by TheAdamAndChe | Hacker News Reader

It's also a good excuse to learn to hunt. Every single experienced hunter had their first hunt at some time.

My family has hunted for generations and I have hunted for nearly a decade now. You are right, there is an elevated risk of accidents. But the experience of hunting is nothing like raising chickens. Staying out in the woods for days, becoming more and more tuned to the animals and environment around you. Feeling the adrenaline when you hear a huge animal tromping through the woods, just to look over and see a couple squirrels playing. There's nothing like it.

If this pandemic draws more people out to try hunting, and in so doing, they have similar experiences to those I've had, then I'm fine with it.

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I agree! But these aren't people who are going to spend days in the woods. They are people who work in offices, who are nervous about toilet paper shortages and are unprepared for the possibility of food shortages. Good for them for trying to be prepared and I hope many more people do take some steps towards self-sufficiency. Safely. Maybe with an experienced hunter friend.

To echo this: Hunting is good for the animals.

I know, I know, that seems like an oxymoron, like jumbo-shrimp or old-news. But in the US at least, a lot of national parks are funded via hunting permits [0]. The same is true in many parts of Africa. Those photos you see of some rich person with an elephant or a 5 point buck? The permit to kill that animal cost a lot of money and the parks are very grateful to have the cash [0].

NPR had a good story on how conservation in part depends on hunters: https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-...

Yes, the issue of hunters/poachers is a very complicated one. But what the sportsmen take, generally, is less than what they give back.

[0] The funding of parks is very complex, but permits do play a large part, generally. Each park is unique though.

In our state the conservation efforts, the DNR, everything comes from hunting and fishing licenses. So-called environmentalists who criticize hunting (at least here) are ironically doing little or nothing while the hunters are supporting the cause.

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