Zoli 16ga is definitely a challenge, and he seems to likes to set some pretty narrow limits. That he views my personal hunting ethics as hypocritical may says more about him than does me, but that's okay too. I do have some more information for him to chew on.
Let me begin with the word “cull,” From the Random House College Dictionary: - v.t. 1. To choose; select; pick; gather the choice things or parts: 2. to collect; gather pluck. - n. 3. act of culling. 4. Anything picked out put aside as inferior. The Eskimos believe that the wolf was an ally in the hunt for caribou. The wolf would remove from the caribou herd the diseased and weak animals, leaving them with health and strong animals for their food supply. Hence their view that caribou feed the wolf and the wolf kept the caribou strong.
Back on the farm I raised chicken, in the fall I would cull the cockerels and the pullets, the pullets were kept for egg production, with the exception of maybe one to keep the pullets active, the rest of the cockerels were used to provided table meat. The MNRF likes to use the word cull to describe the removal of animals from the deer herd to bring population into line with the supply of habitat resources for over wintering. There goal is to separate out enough animals to protect the integrity of the breeding herd. With wildlife, of course, separating out (the meaning of cull) often means killing off.
However cull can be apply to other aspects of life. For instance corporations do culls. They separate out and remove seemingly non productive elements within the organization. In that manner, resources can be made available for more productive element to survive downturns in the economy, sadly one the most recent example has been GM.
The Cormorants are, of course, is our focus. I believe it was point out to me that the Cormorants in the Great Lake Basin were at such a low ebb that they might have been able to worm their was on to the Endanger Species List. Then something happen and biological switch was thrown, leading to a population explosion. When it happy our club. conservation director, raised a couple of concerns the one, of course, was that of the tree destruction around their nesting areas, the second was the impact on the game fishery. The fear was because of their abundance they would out compete the game fish population for the ground fish in the lakes. A campaign began to locate their nesting sites in order to oil their eggs. Then shoots were attempted in certain areas in order to reduce their numbers. Apparently both endeavors have only resulted in a marginal impact.. Why?
My guest is that there is an abundant food supply, and a lack of completion for it. I have to imagine when their number were low in the Great Lake Basin, they nested further north where they competed for the available food resources with the various diving ducks species . The Great Lake Basin may only been a fly pass until some event interrupt their migration and landed them in the Basin to discover its rich resources, so they stay and began nesting..
My reason for thinking this. Back in the early seventies I was involved in an ethology course, in which I was required to research and write a paper. The subject could be on anything that was relevant to the field of study, and of our own choosing. Being hunter bird migration seem to be shoe-in. In my research I came across on article on the migration of geese. The article told of a very disappoint group of southern goose hunters. In that year, the geese migration came to an abrupt halt in the Delmar Peninsula area. The geese settled in and wintered. Farmers in the area were experimenting with a new type of corn harvesters, the machines appeared to have left more corn in their tailings than ended up in the corn bins. The geese prove themselves opportunist.
You don’t stop hunting because you grow old. You grow old because you stop hunting.
- Gun Nut,