Dogs more dangerous than bears
Ihave four modest suggestions for Florida’s next bear hunt. 1. Quit talking about “harvesting” the bears. They’re not broccoli. They have paws, not roots. Hunters killed 298 Florida black bears last weekend. They didn’t “harvest” them, as the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission kept saying. If you can’t use the word that describes what happens to a mammal when you shoot it to death, well, that’s pretty telling. Needing to use a euphemism for killing bears might give people the idea that you’re dancing around the truth because the truth is too ugly to say aloud. Take pride in sanctioning the slaughter of your fellow mammals for sport.
2. Install a new talking point into Gov. Rick Scott’s robotic answering mechanism.
Scott has been pretending that the hunt was done “to keep families safe” in Florida. In the past 10 years, the FWC has logged a total of 20 instances when people in the state of Florida have been injured during encounters with Florida’s black bears.
No deaths, 20 injuries in 10 years. And many of those encounters were the result of people not securing garbage cans or committing other forms of human error.
Forget the bears, Gov. Scott. If you want to single out a dangerous animal in Florida, consider the domesticated dog. Not only do dogs occasionally bite, but four Floridians have been shot by their own dogs in the past 11 years. Yes, dogs shoot people in Florida, and more so than in any other state. To date, bears haven’t shot a single person in Florida. 3. Embrace the true motive for the hunt. It’s to exploit Florida’s natural resources in a way that makes money for the state. Own it. It’s no secret. Gov. Scott wants to convert Florida’s natural lands into business operations. 4. Initiate Phase Two. The FWC raised nearly $400,000 by selling 3,778 hunting permits for last weekend’s bear hunt. There were more hunting permits issued than the estimated number of bears in the state. It’s a start. But we need to finish this hunt to reap its full economic potential. Environmentalist Chuck O’Neal, who monitored last week’s hunt from a check-in station on the edge of the Ocala National Forest, said that 24 of the 33 dead bears registered at that station on the first day were females. And of the females, 10 of them were lactating. And with each lactating female feeding two or three cubs, that means that last weekend’s hunt has also created a new population of orphaned bear cubs who suddenly need to fend for themselves.
With all those orphaned cubs in the wild, the humane thing to do at this point is to make more money off them by allowing our children to shoot them. New marketing pitch: “Kids Killin’ Cubs.”