I’m writing to you in defense of hunters everywhere.

In your article “When doves cry,” you portray hunters as mean killing machines.

In your article, you say the only reason people would want to hunt doves is “for the sheer pleasure of watching the light in their eyes dim as life flees their wee bodies.”

I’m sorry, but this is not the reason I hunt. Your description of hunters is totally false.

You are stereotyping hunters into a category that most hunters would find repulsive: killing for pure pleasure.

Sure, hunters take pleasure. They take pleasure in the fact of a good shot, the companionship of friends while hunting, the pleasure of sharing something with there children and perhaps the excellent field work their dog shows.

Most hunters respect the animal they are harvesting.

They show respect for the animal.

There are many reasons why I choose to hunt, the main reason being that I enjoy being outdoors. I don’t have to harvest an animal every time I go out hunting. I feel closer to relatives, and I feel more spiritual while hunting.

If it weren’t for hunting I wouldn’t be very close to my stepfather.

He taught me the ethics and morals of hunting, the rights and wrongs of a greater world that I was about to join the ranks of.

Those same morals and values could be used in the real world. Sort of a graduation from boyhood to manhood. It was a bonding experience that I was finally able to participate in — the world of hunting.

Also, wild game has a taste not to match any domesticated meat.

Pheasant under glass in some countries is considered an expensive, delicious dish.

Hunters, both in-state and out of state, help to support the Iowa economy.

Sure, we’re mostly an agricultural economy, but hunting does provide a source of income for a lot of businesses such as hotels, motels, restaurants and outdoors stores. Hunting licenses provide money to create parks. Parks that non-hunters use.

Hunters also provide habitat for game animals and non-game animals. Pheasants Forever chapters all across the state create acres and acres of habitat for animals each year. The habitat created helps non-game animals such as song birds.

Hunters make better environmentalists. We as hunters want to protect our environment. Hunters help the environment in many ways such as streambank protection programs. The planting of grasses around streambanks and watersheds not only helps to stop erosion but to filter out some chemicals used by farmers.

In the same article, you referred to the “wholesale slaughter” of doves. Why would there be wholesale slaughter? What other game species is slaughtered wholesale in today’s world?

Some people use the argument of the passenger pigeon which most people know is extinct, saying that if there was a dove season they may be killed off.

The reason being that the passenger pigeon became extinct was that there were no hunting regulations back then.

The days of market hunting are no longer. Dove hunting would be regulated if it were ever to become an active hunting season.

Here are the facts on doves. Taken from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in an article entitled “The Mourning dove in Iowa.”

There are 475 million doves in North America with a life expectancy of less than one year. Two eggs per nests; 3-5 nests per year; five times more mourning doves than geese and ducks combined; the annual natural mortality rate of doves is 60 percent. That is 4/10 survive. The annual harvest in the U.S. is 8.6 percent. The dove is a game bird, not a song bird.

If mourning doves only live for approximately one year, nest three to five times and have two eggs per nest, then why not hunt them?

They produce enough to support their species.

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Ryan Schlater

Sophomore

Animal ecology