The Voice of the Rabbit: And the Proactive approach to hunting and fur trapping in the 21st century

By Steven Stahl

As the world propelled itself into the twenty-first century, technology exploded and busted into the homes of people around the world. With the explosion of technology came distribution centers, vendors, smart phones, increased traffic, and the increase in home delivery trucks.

People in the twenty-first century have turned to online shopping for ease and convenience. The problem with ease and convenience is that it creates unforeseen problems.

The explosion of distribution centers and increased traffic is squeezing animal populations out of what has been their home ranges for many years and forcing animals onto the highways where they are dying every minute of every day.

Not every twenty-first-century problem needs a technological solution; some things cannot be fixed with an app. Some things still remain basic.

Hunting and fur trapping are proven ways to manage animal populations that show respect to the animal, providing a food source or source of material for human beings that is the basic definition of organic.

In a world where clothing is made from plastic and shoes no longer contain leather, we as humans find that being disposable is a new way of life. We rely on petroleum products even more than we know. From clothing and shoes to car parts and furniture, plastic surrounds us.

Hunting and fur trapping provide a value to so many animals that may likely end up as roadkill on the highway or sickened from disease.

With increased construction and land consumption, it will only happen more frequently, and unless we as people act—and act soon—millions more animals are going to die and be wasted on our streets and highways.

And that truly makes me sad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648011771

Book preview

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The Voice of the Rabbit

And the Proactive approach to hunting and fur trapping in the 21st century

Steven T. Stahl

Copyright © 2020 Steven T. Stahl

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64801-176-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64801-177-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Habitat Loss

World Value

Animal Removal and Pest Inconvenience

Animal Health

Roadkill

The Emotional Roller Coaster

This book is dedicated to my wife, Bonnie, for always allowing me to be me. Growing up a young girl that was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, she had always been foreign to the lifestyle that I grew up loving.

Thank you! I love you.

Introduction

Photo by Brian Porr

When I first saw this photo, I was in no way shocked or surprised by the nature or the location of the picture. This event happens very frequently in nature but is, however, very seldom captured. The picture was taken by an archery hunter’s game camera in an area of northern York County, Pennsylvania—an area intersected with highways such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Interstates I-81 and I-83, US Routes 11 and 15, along with many state and local highways, homes, and businesses. Once an area covered in farmland and animal habitat, it is now changing to a more urbanized area. This area, like many others around the country, is becoming more and more urbanized every day.

The photo shows a coyote with a young white-tailed fawn in its mouth carrying the fawn down a trail. The coyote is probably feeding young of its own during this time of year as the circle of life proliferates and continues. As a trapper, I found this an educational moment and wanted to share information on the need and necessity of furbearer trapping, wildlife management, and animal control in the ever-so-growing population of the twenty-first century.

As a hobby furbearer trapper, I know the benefits of proper wildlife management and I can always anticipate the arrival of the fall season to once again get my hands dirty in the soil of old Mother Earth and again start the chess match with wild creatures that furbearer trapping provides to me. However, this story is not about whether or not a person agrees with the lifestyle that I pursue. This story is about the need and necessity of proper wildlife control and management to show respect to the animals that surround us.

In the United States, wildlife animal control or nuisance animal control or animal damage control—whatever title you want to give it—is a multimillion-dollar-a-year business, and in this part of central Pennsylvania, it is no stranger to wildlife control as a business as well. However, our state also sells more fur taker license, which is an additional license to allow a person to hunt or trap furbearing animals a year than any other state in our region. By the grace of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, we as residents and nonresidents alike are allowed to pursue furbearing animals during a controlled season, which, in turn, helps toward the greater good of healthy animal populations in our region and beyond. Scientific research proves this. And the need is visible daily as more and more construction pushes more and more animals onto the nation’s highways resulting in senseless death and decay with a loss of a valuable resource.

In recent years, the fur market has taken a big downward trend in the sale of raw furs due in large part to world economics and politics, provoking more people to store their gear for the hope of rising prices in the future. However, the downside to this practice is that all of those trappers are aging in the process whether they choose to believe so or not. The sales of raw fur have a world trade value, which allows companies in the United States to trade with other countries around the world every winter and spring, thus contributing to free trade and commerce, investments, jobs and business as well as fashion and garments. Many other wild furs enter into other markets like hobbies and crafts, leather making, and the taxidermy market. With the number of fur takers on the decline, the number of animals such as coyote, fox, raccoon, beaver, skunks, and so on is bound to incline. Many of those animals ending up as roadkill on the roads and highways of our country and even more suffering a more tragic demise suffering from such diseases such as mange, canine distemper, rabies, predatation, or abandonment.

On the business end of animal damage control, companies continue to keep professional animal control people busy during the seasons removing skunks, foxes, groundhogs, and other critters from the homes of people and their property. Every year around our region farms, forestland and other large tracts of land are taken over due to development of communities or strip malls, restaurants, shipping warehouses, or other development of human encroachment into the animal world, pushing and forcing the animals within that region to adapt to incoming human activity. While we are doing this, the animal populations continue to grow and populate around us while we invade more and more of their habitat, developing more and more human/animal conflicts and inconveniencing more and more people as they go about their busy lives. Many of those people never even give thought that there is another world out there and that it involves animals, both predator and prey species. These species are very good at adapting to changing environments; in fact, many of them probably already live on the properties of many of Americans without people even having knowledge of the animal’s existence on their property. Many foxes, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and a laundry list of other creatures that people find inconveniencing are removed from the cities, towns, and communities, dwellings, and businesses every year. And yet many others end up wasted and decaying on the roads as roadkill from motor vehicle conflict as drivers pass by belligerently speeding down the highway. Sometimes these conflicts end up having devastating results to humans. I have knowledge of more than one person who suffered devastating effects of a deer through an automobile windshield.

The threat of rabies and many other diseases such as parvovirus, mange, and distemper are very real in the animal world, and overpopulation of many animals is known to cause an upward trend in these diseases, which leads to unnecessary suffering, starvation, frostbite, and the continued spread of disease. Mange in itself results in hair loss and lesions on the skin. Not to mention a source of continuation of the spread to other animals such as bears, coyotes, foxes, and other mammals.

Starvation and the availability of food in these areas are of great concern to populations of animals. Unlike humans, the local fox union of one county cannot trade commodities, goods, and services with the local raccoon union of another county. What food sources animal populations have in any given area is what they have to eat. And there are no hospitals or long-term care centers for elderly animals in the wild. There are no small opossums dressed as nursing assistants that push other animals around on wheelchairs to get treatment from a raccoon dressed as a doctor; the real world is not fantasy. Many animals die