Dec 4
Hounds
Every time you go walking outside here you can hear dogs yapping and howling incessantly. Hunting is popular in Sweden but around here it’s holy, so many people have elk and bear dogs and most of them are kept outside, where they naturally have to mark their territory by yapping as soon as you get within sight or hearing distance from their house. Jolly good I don’t have any of these dogs as a neighbour or I’d go crazy, just can’t understand how the people can put up with the constant barking.I guess it’s a bit ironic that I have ended up in a place filled with hunt worshippers. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have anything against hunting as such. I’m a meat eater for sure so it would only be double standards to accept killing in a slaughterhouse but not in the forest. My problem with hunting stems from the insanely stupid arguments for defending the blood sport. It seems like there is not enough game for the human hunters and their animal counterparts – mainly wolves. As long as the hunters are concerned, the fewer the wolves, the better. Now that they can’t argue that wolves decimate the elk numbers (there was a recent article on the increase in elk), they argue that the wolves eat up their hunting dogs.
Personally, I think that is as good an argument for having more wolves as any! *
One thing I fail to understand no matter how many time it’s repeated to me, is that hunting is needed to keep the elk numbers in check. I’m sorry, but wasn’t that the job of the wolves? The wolves are guaranteed to be much better hunters than humans anyway. Wolves only kill the weakest animals, allowing the species as a whole to stay strong. Humans on the other hand, the bigger the bull, the better. Think about the lions in some parts of Africa. You won’t see a male lion with a big mane anymore… because the males with big manes were killed off first. So human activity forced survival of the fittest, that being a male lion with a small mane. But whatever, with the current predator numbers, hunting is genuinely needed in order to prevent the elk numbers to get too big. Since we have driven off the natural enemies of the elk, it is now left to us to hold the unnatural balance in nature. But then again, man stopped being part of the nature the moment he built his first city.
Instead of fighting over the number of wolves and bears we should have, why not try to concentrate the energy on finding out ways how to live in peace with the predators? I think that this is the measure of our ingenuity – are we able to share the world with the creatures that inhabited it before us, or are we going to exterminate every species that can compete with us?
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* Let’s get this straight – I do like dogs in general. I just don’t like the barely domesticated ones kept outside 365 days a year, barking 24/7! Although… There are no problem dogs, there are only problem owners…[end of rant]
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