To the Editor:
Regarding Chuck Reiners' Sunday letter regarding the five photos of triumphant hunters hovering over dead deer:
I actually am impressed by the photos, regardless of the implement used to harvest them. Hunting is an essential skill that humans have developed and passed down for hundreds of generations. In its purest form, it is a means to acquire sustenance to survive.
Humans have changed the landscape and the ecosystem, through technological advances, and have created an environment that allows for the white-tailed deer population growth to exceed the ecological carrying capacity. Unless you are proposing that humans initiate the transition of the Earth back to the pre-human state (which we both know will never happen), there must be harvest. Call it ''malarkey'' if you choose, but starvation is not a pleasant way to go.
I do agree with you in that technological advances have made the skill of hunting much simpler, but this is also true in all walks of life. I ask you, do you question whether it is ethical to eat a piece of broccoli if a tractor was used to plow the earth where it was planted? Do you eat beans if they were cut from the vine by a pair of scissors?
Better still, I would ask the anti-hunter if he or she would rather eat only food where tools were not used for harvest or face their own ''painful starvation death''? Did you ask the broccoli if it wanted to be brutality sliced off its stem or take its chances at being eaten by the overpopulated deer herd?
Hunting essential skill used for human survival
To the Editor: