on the other hand, since a lot of predators animals in France have been hunted to extinction there, in certain areas hunting is used to keep the population of certain wild animals in check
I think you're assuming the culture around hunting is the same in france as in the place you're from but it isn't really. The class connotations are almost flipped from the US, it's much more of "rural gentry" thing than what you're thinking of.
This is wild. Is the land very flat? At least in my state, you’re required to complete a Hunter education course and pass a written, proctored exam starting at age 12. It was at least 75% safety.
We were taught to always know what we’re shooting at and what’s behind what we’re shooting at. You would lose your license if you shot a fawn, even if it were an accident, simply because saying it was an accident meant you clearly couldn’t see it. We were also taught how far a high-powered rifle round can travel. We wouldn’t even shoot up ridges.
If what you’re saying is true, then the only explanations I can think of is that either people shouldn’t be hunting there because of geography or these hunting rules and regulations around safety are garbage.
France seems to have a similar rate of hunting deaths to the USA.
> According to information released by the International Hunter Education Association, the U.S. and Canada combined see around 1,000 hunting accidents, specifically involving shooting injuries, on an annual basis. Moreover, close to 10% of these hunting accidents end in death.
> Since 2000, there have been 3,325 hunting accidents in France, of which 421 were fatal, figures from l'Office français de la biodiversité and la Fédération nationale de la chasse show.
> This is equivalent to 158 accidents per year, with 20 deaths.
France is just under 1/5 the population of USA and Canada combined. Perhaps it’s just that firearm deaths are so much more common in the USA (12.21/100k vs 2.33/100k) the hunting deaths are less notable
US may have 5x the population, but hunting is far more popular in the US - you have approximately 16M people in the US hunting per year, but only 1.3M in France. So it's more like 10x instead of 5x. On top of that, I suspect that in the US, hunters hunt more than hunters in France, so the total number of hunting hours might end up being 20x in the US vs France.
The US has roughly the same # of hunting deaths per year despite a much larger population. The US stats also include things like heart attacks and falling out of tree stands, dunno if French #s are comparable? If you look at injury rates per participant, hunting (5 injuries per 10,000 participants) is roughly on par with bowling (6 per 10k participants) and well behind golf (15) and tennis (16).
I don't think it would actually be the case: Banning hunting as a hobby would be a massive win.
There is an artificial imbalance in the ecosystems introduced by hunters who feed specific animals at certain times in order to have more, and thus easier to hunt, preys. Because of that, there is a need to restore a viable ecosystem in some areas.
This kind of thing should not be let to the "elite", but to professionals...
Hunting is usually well regulated in most places, with professional biologists watching the game animal populations and assigning the number of hunting tags to keep the populations in balance. Here in Massachusetts, the places we have the most problem with deer populations is in the east, where anti-hunting sentiment is high. The deer are overpopulated, unbalancing the ecosystem, and leading to all kinds of issues such as tick infestation, car accidents, and stress on some native plants, not to mention less healthy deer.
A state has an asset. They can assess the population of a certain animal, assess its growth rate, assess the impact it can have, both to human populations and to the ecosystem, and determine how many need to be culled each year to prevent negative impacts.
Now it has a choice. It can get people to pay to do it for them, or of can tax you and pay someone to do it. They can consider the animals assets or liabilities.
A government that would turn something very valuable from a source of revenue to an expense is an incompetent government full of bumbling idiots that have no business governing a territory of natural resources or a population of human beings.
You wish - the pestilential whitetail deer multiply without anyone's help and destroy tree seedlings and even peoples' gardens. When you encounter skeletal deer that look as if they has escaped Auschwitz you know that hunting increases animal welfare.
Hmm. Where I am there are a number of "Deer Feed" sellers and the buyers bring large trucks. Serious hunters do indeed attract animals with food.
In general you're correct, most hunters don't. But some hunters -- particularly the ones that hunt the most -- do feed prey. On the high end of that histogram are people that acquire property in communities that are designed to accommodate hunters. They feed a lot of game.
Its like fish bait. You set these feeders out to get them to hang around an area so that when you're ready to hunt you have an easier time finding them. Hunters don't feed anything near the amount of food mass needed to increase the wild population, this idea of an ecological imbalance due to feeding is wildly inaccurate, its like saying fishermen increase fish stocks with fish bait.
> this idea of an ecological imbalance due to feeding is wildly inaccurate
That is likely the case. General farming on behalf of human consumption is likely to be an order of magnitude greater impact on whatever "ecological imbalances" you care to measure.
Humans have been "imbalancing" ecologies thus for a long time.
