Deer Could Raise Your Taxes

Aug 30

If anti-hunting groups like PETA and the Humane Society of the United States had their way, citizens could be paying higher taxes to hire professional deer killers. To reduce deer/automobile collisions in Salon, Ohio, bureaucrats recently hired sharpshooters to cull about 300 whitetails in that town. The cost was slightly over $600 per deer killed. Imagine the cost to society if "recreational" deer hunting were outlawed. About 10 million human hunters shoot about 5 million deer in the U.S. each year. This annual harvest has been sustained for decades because Nature functions as a "dog eat dog" closed system. Herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat herbivores and everything reproduces to offset the obligatory annual losses. Remove the carnivores and plants suffer overgrazing and potential extinction at the mouths of herbivores. Remove the herbivores and carnivores die for lack of food. Remove U.S. deer hunters and our nationwide population of whitetails and mule deer, somewhere around 20 million, would explode, gobbling up rare native wildflowers, farm crops, the vegetables vegans love and even Grandma's flowers. Deer/vehicle collisions would skyrocket. Eventually deer would literally eat themselves into illness and death. So society would demand governments do what Salon, Ohio, did. Step in and shoot the deer for the good of everyone. At $600 per deer, that would cost taxpayers about $3 billion annually. But that would be just the start. We'd need to raise a few billion more tax dollars to compensate for the loss of more than 10 million deer licenses, which run anywhere from $10 to $700 per hunter per year. This pittance is what pays for biologists, game wardens, habitat improvements, and restoration of wildlife from frogs to woodland caribou. Furthermore, we'd need to provide new jobs or welfare assistance to the tens of thousands of men and women who would no longer be employed manufacturing hunting clothing, boots, guns, bows, knives, ammunition, calls, scents, binoculars, tents, sleeping bags, camp stoves and all the rest of the gear that supplies the hunting market. Then we'd need to find work or support for thousands of outfitters, guides, cooks, wranglers, butchers, taxidermists, motel operators... On the bright side, there should be plenty of applicants available for those sharp-shooter jobs. # # #

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