{"id":4621,"date":"2011-08-18T08:11:14","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T12:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4621"},"modified":"2011-08-19T10:48:48","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T14:48:48","slug":"why-do-young-men-attack-wildlife-what-can-we-do-to-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/08\/18\/why-do-young-men-attack-wildlife-what-can-we-do-to-stop-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do young men attack wildlife? What can we do to stop it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Reporting for this morning’s story on the great blue heron killing in Jay — which occurred last week<\/a> — I was startled and dismayed to realize how common an occurrence this kind of thing is.<\/p>\n

Wendy Hall, who operates the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge and Rehabilitation Center in Wilmington, showed me bird after bird that required care because they had been senselessly shot.<\/p>\n

And DEC spokesman David Winchell reminded me that last summer state officials caught three different groups of young men, in Tupper Lake, Raquette Lake and Inlet, attacking loons.<\/p>\n

In one case, according to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise<\/a>, boys actually attacked a loon nest with a paddle, shattering their eggs.<\/p>\n

In all of these instances, the legal penalties are relatively slight:\u00a0 a maximum of 15 days in jail, and a fine totaling a few hundred dollars.<\/p>\n

I think it’s fair to question whether those punishments are severe enough to act as a deterrent.\u00a0 But I also have to wonder at the parenting that leaves young men with the impression that this kind of behavior is anything less than revolting.<\/p>\n

(Can you imagine finding out that your child had been out smashing loon eggs with a canoe paddle?)<\/p>\n

This incident reminds of an experience I had in the woods when I was a kid.\u00a0 I had been hunting white tail deer all day with my father.\u00a0 It was cold and rainy and we hadn’t seen a single buck.<\/p>\n

While taking a breather in a little hemlock grove, we suddenly realized that there was a big grouse sitting perfectly still a few yards away.<\/p>\n

My father, who was frustrated and irritable, shot the bird with his hunting rifle, disintegrating it in a cloud of feathers.<\/p>\n

I was horrified, disgusted, furious.<\/p>\n

I’m a big supporter of hunting rights.\u00a0 And my own son spends a fair amount of time in the woods with his .22 plinking away at targets.\u00a0 But he knows like gospel that anything living is strictly off-limits.<\/p>\n

If you don’t plan to eat it, don’t even think about shooting it.<\/p>\n

So what do you think?\u00a0 Have you had experiences with this kind of thing?\u00a0 Do we need to send a different message to our boys?\u00a0 And if so, how?<\/p>\n

As always, your comments welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reporting for this morning’s story on the great blue heron killing in Jay — which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[22,6501,884,99],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}