How interesting that Audubon, so often associated with conservation and protection of birds, was such a voracious bird consumer! Wild!
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#Art_and_met...
> 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.
over a delectable meal of birds, no doubt.
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.
I get the feeling that todays version is more "ethical" in nature, saving animals for their own sake etc.
I'm obviously painting in very broad strokes
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.)
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.
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.
Only in some parts of country... further west you're frequently hiking miles and miles (in miserable weather) instead.
You've got hunters whose goal is the challenge and experience.
And then you've got the assholes only interested in "How much do I have to spend to guarantee I kill a ____?"
The latter leads to baiting, driving, scouting, and all the other activities that turn "hunting" into a single trigger pull.
Unsurprisingly, those people tend to have a lot less respect for land, environment, and animal populations. No effort, no respect.
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
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. :)
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.