Some Animals Need Protection; Some Need Control

From the Memphis, Tennessee Commercial Appeal:

Loving hunting, animals not mutually exclusive -- by Bryan Brasher

During the past 18 months, I've written checks to several organizations who are working hard to restore North America's free-roaming wolf population.

I've contributed to conservation funds for orangutans, Siberian tigers, whales and blue-footed boobies (my all-time favorite bird).

But on Nov. 4 -- the opening day of Tennessee's muzzleloader season -- I'll probably shoot the first mature doe that wanders within range of my tree stand after sunrise.

Might even kill another one that evening.

Those of you who don't hunt might be wondering why anyone would pay money to protect some animals while buying a license to kill others?

I'll tell you why.

Some animals need protection. Others need management.

Some animals are too rare to be killed for human consumption. Others are so common their numbers need to be thinned.

Some people are animal lovers. Some people are hunters. I happen to be both.

The crackpot animal nuts who spend more time howling at the moon than they do actually trying to help animals will insist you can't be both.

Those same people have accused me of murder and torture because I hunt. In one of the most ridiculous e-mails I've ever received, a man I'll refer to only as "Char-Broiled Charlie" actually compared me to the ruthless Nazi doctor, Joseph Mengele.

I won't waste my time arguing with people who are so laughably irrational. I'll just say it in plain, simple English: They're wrong.

You can be both a hunter and an animal lover. In fact, some of the most animal-crazy people I've ever known never miss a weekend of hunting season.

At one point my grandfather, Clifford Brasher, kept nine blue tick hound dogs for deer hunting. He never ate supper before they did. If one was missing, he never rested until the dog was back home.

It doesn't matter how many Vegan meals you've had or how many rallies you've attended to protest the opening of a new fried chicken joint. I promise you, Clifford Brasher loved animals every bit as much as you do.

The same can be said for David Carrington -- an avid waterfowl hunter from Memphis-based Avery Outdoors who never goes anywhere without his white Labrador retriever, Hatchet.

Also for Dr. Allan Houston -- the president of Ames Plantation Hunting Club who drove to Memphis for a radio interview last year on no sleep after staying up all night to help his golden retriever deliver a litter of puppies.

Every time I drive to Wilson Lake, I see a sign that reads "Coon Dog Cemetery." I've heard that gray-bearded men with tobacco-stained lips often go there to weep openly and unabashedly for dogs that died decades ago.

Those men were hunters long before people with nothing better to do coined the phrase "anti-hunting." The men were also animal lovers long before the geniuses from PETA began scaring kids at youth hunting events.

You can be both -- and I suspect I will be long after the animal nuts find another "cause" to help get their names in the paper.