War Liberal

Anyone wearing Homer Simpson's bear armor at this hunt?

Mac- If you don't have anything better to do how about a running total via Ursipundit of the Bear-Human conflict? It can replace the IDF Failurometer.

It's a landslide for the humans, I'm afraid.

You know what got me about that episode? Homer actually does something sensible (being afraid of a grizzly is always sensible) and got mocked for it.

"Some more mystical protestors prayed that bullets would ricochet off the bears and back at the hunters, showing that (a) they're kind of stupid, and (b) that they like bears more than people"

I'd argue that they don't actually like bears at all. The Bear hunt was undertaken for the benefit of the entire bear population. Culling a group of any overpopulated animal population is ultimately for the benefit of those same animals.

I think those folks are just in love with their own distorted, "bambi" views of nature. The bears are just a prop to them.

I don't disagree, Damocles. But it's probably more ignorance than anything else. They just don't realize that animals can overpopulate an area and overuse the food supply. Most of them are probably against deer hunts as well (I've heard the "let the deer shoot back" thing more times than I can count) and it's absolutely clear that human predation holds deer populations back from catastrophe.

You might want to read the NYT story linked under "Bear Hunt Day" below, "Where Friends of Bears Foresee Slaughter, Homeowners See Defense Against Invasion", if you haven't already. The anti-hunt people are talking about living alongside bears. You know, the 500-pound predators that can maim you with one swipe of their forepaws and have no problem wandering into people's homes?

they like bears more than people

There are certainly some people for whom that's a true statement for me.

Yes, but as a class? Most people won't try to disembowel you.

The reason these people believe that the bear population doesn't need to be kept in check is because they firmly believe that bears are as sentient as people, but unlike people, bears would never ever do anything to disrupt the environment in which they live, like eating members of an endangered species, stripping trees of their bark, taking a dump near a river, or overgrazing on the local wildlife to the point where nothing is left for other predators.

I'm not kidding, people actually believe this. Educated people who work in the computer industry. Of course, the only experience these people typically have with nature is visiting the local zoo, touring a farm, or walking along a park hiking trail.

The asshats probably don't live in the affected areas, either. Give it another couple of years, though, and you'll be seeing bears wandering around Broad & Market in Newark.

Where a different kind of bear hunt would meet them, come to think of it.