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Yesterday as I was on my commute home, I came across a flock of ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus ). I was right in the center of town, and eight young birds were crossing in front of a supermarket entrance at evening rush hour. Of course, the town is Lincoln, Mass. which has a population of 6 or 7 thousand people, and evening rush hour is a constant but quiet stream of Audis and Volvos. But nonetheless, c'mon! It definitely qualifies as wildlife occurring in human space.
Of course, pheasants in New England (or to broaden the point, anywhere but Asia) are a human phenomena. The whole point of the existence of a ring-necked pheasant is to give humans something to blast at with a gun. They were brought from Asia to Europe, and then to North America (and probably Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, if they follow the pattern of deliberate game introduction by colonists) as hunting targets.
I have mixed feelings about this--pretend for a second that hunting animals is a good thing, which it may or may not be. Why import a pheasant when you've got perfectly good turkeys and quails to shoot? On the other hand, if hunters are legally allowed to kill pheasants then they can theoretically be prevented from killing, say, passenger pigeons or heath hens.
Fortunately, for those of us perplexed by moral issues, it doesn't matter. Passenger pigeons and heath hens are both extinct. Frankly, though pheasants are nice birds, I don't care if people hunt them or not. Part of me can understand wanting to assume the role of predator, and I definitely enjoy target sports, and I also like the idea of collecting food from the wild. But on the other hand there is virtually no place in Massachusetts that you can safely discharge a firearm--the state is simply too densely populated--and I don't think hunting with guns should be legal here at all. And I also feel that hunting is just another way someone with power is allowed to dominate over someone with less--as a culture we need to move away from this idea. Otherwise the past 40,000 years of social evolution are meaningless.
That said, hunting is not a sport. It can be a target sport--like darts. But I think very few hunters could be considered athletes. (The Nuge notwithstanding.) If I were in charge, hunting with projectile weapons would be illegal. Shooting a deer from 200 yard away is not a sport. Dropping onto the back of a deer and stabbing it with a knife--now that requires an athlete.
Of course, pheasants in New England (or to broaden the point, anywhere but Asia) are a human phenomena. The whole point of the existence of a ring-necked pheasant is to give humans something to blast at with a gun. They were brought from Asia to Europe, and then to North America (and probably Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, if they follow the pattern of deliberate game introduction by colonists) as hunting targets.
I have mixed feelings about this--pretend for a second that hunting animals is a good thing, which it may or may not be. Why import a pheasant when you've got perfectly good turkeys and quails to shoot? On the other hand, if hunters are legally allowed to kill pheasants then they can theoretically be prevented from killing, say, passenger pigeons or heath hens.
Fortunately, for those of us perplexed by moral issues, it doesn't matter. Passenger pigeons and heath hens are both extinct. Frankly, though pheasants are nice birds, I don't care if people hunt them or not. Part of me can understand wanting to assume the role of predator, and I definitely enjoy target sports, and I also like the idea of collecting food from the wild. But on the other hand there is virtually no place in Massachusetts that you can safely discharge a firearm--the state is simply too densely populated--and I don't think hunting with guns should be legal here at all. And I also feel that hunting is just another way someone with power is allowed to dominate over someone with less--as a culture we need to move away from this idea. Otherwise the past 40,000 years of social evolution are meaningless.
That said, hunting is not a sport. It can be a target sport--like darts. But I think very few hunters could be considered athletes. (The Nuge notwithstanding.) If I were in charge, hunting with projectile weapons would be illegal. Shooting a deer from 200 yard away is not a sport. Dropping onto the back of a deer and stabbing it with a knife--now that requires an athlete.
