I agree with most of what you say but come to a slightly different conclusion.

Any thing that increases wetlands and bird habitat is good. That doesn’t mean that they necessarily have good intentions. My issue is not that duck hunters don’t do good work, but that their motives are questionable. Fowler didn’t argue that Ducks Unlimited was good but that he was an enviro because he is a member. Again increasing wetlands to kill their inhabitants is in my mind not a good motive, even if the outcome is good for the environment. As long as he doesn’t use his membership to cloak himself as an environmental hero, I’m fine with him killing ducks.

People killing ducks is not a bad thing. People killing deer is a good thing. People wanting more deer is a bad thing.

As far as deer hunting goes you are completely right that deer hunters want an unnaturally high number of deer despite the tremendous amount of damage they do. My property is surrounded by state game land. Hunting is the number 1 religion in the area, despite my attempts to introduce biking. All of my property has a browse line (the trees have no leaves below 5’) and my woods are completely devoid of normal spring flowers. I haven’t seen a Trillium, Blood Root, Jack-in-the-pulpit, ever on the place. The understory is free of oaks but filled with black locust. I have over a hundred fruit trees and I need to put deer guards around each one. The people who want more deer are those who don’t own land. They feel it is their right to get a buck with in the first hour of open season, even if they’re too drunk to do much more than fire randomly. So they insist on regulations that insure that we land owners will always have damaged property. Oh, and despite careful driving I have hit 4 deer, so having too many deer is not as benign as many make it out.

gillian, that’s showing love of the first order, and leaves any material presents in its dust. Closest parallel in my life would be when I told my parents I would go to jail or to Canada before I would accept induction during the Viet Nam War (”My country, may she always be right, but right or wrong, my country”) and found out they backed me completely in refusing to participate in that criminal misuse of American troops. I came to realize that what my mother meant was that she always wanted America to be right, but that America could also be terribly wrong, and that she and my father stood behind my refusal to participate in such a terrible wrong.

Parents can at times be so wonderful in such surprising (to children) ways, and when one least expects it.

The shear amount of habitat that has been protected by duck hunters over the past century is huge, and that habitat is there for all of the species who need it, not just the duck. (Refuges are great birding areas.) If the goal was just to have plenty of duck meat, it would be easier and cheaper to convert the refuges into farms (and turn the rest of the land into subdivisions) which doesn’t help the other species.

Deer hunters lobby for unnaturally high numbers of deer, who destroy habitat as they overgraze (overbrowse?). Some gamebird hunters put aside land, but not on the scale of duck hunters (and I’ve never heard of a canned duck hunt). Duck hunters eat what they take; they’re not just looking for something on to put on the wall. Waterfowl are plentiful, so they’re not hunting endangered species. Numbers have remained healthy for ducks even as many bird species have declined. It would be great if everyone just preserved the habitat on general principle, but…

Waterfowler is my polar opposite on just about any other issue, but I’ve got no problem with duck hunters.

However, ‘fowler, you really need to reconsider the anti-Gore crap. All of those refuges won’t be enough to save the ducks. Climate change will hit waterfowl hard when it ruins their breeding grounds up north. Don’t let dislike of Dems blind you.

Fowler, You will have to forgive my reaction to your claiming,”I’m more of an environmentalist than that puke ever thought or tried to be”.

Anyone’s idea of being an environmentalist to better kill birds leaves me a bit on the cold side.

Also, what in the bejesus are you talking about?

Finally, KSM has admitted to Y2K. He really thought that would work.