This Old Hunter Plaque is about 4 inches tall. It has our little hunter wearing his orange hunting vest with his lucky hat and in his right hand is his rifle and on his left arm is his adoring wife. The sign or plaque that they are standing on is framed in light green with an off-white background and red lettering which reads “An Old Hunter Lives Here With The Deer Of His Life!” On the top frame of the plaque is Field & Streams’ logo and on the bottom frame is a small deer. Select this link to view our Hunting Christmas Ornaments.
Hunting
Hunting is the practice of pursuing animals for food, recreation, trade or for their products. In modern use, the term refers to regulated and legal hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of animals contrary to law. Hunted animals are referred to as game animals, and are usually large mammals or migratory birds. By definition, hunting strictly speaking, excludes the killing - though similar techniques may be used - of individual protected animals, such as bears which have become dangerous to humans, as well as the killing of non-game animals, domestic animals, or vermin as a means of pest control. Hunting can be a necessary component of modern wildlife management, for example to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity when natural checks such as predators are absent.
In the United States, wildlife managers are frequently part of hunting regulatory and licensing bodies, where they help to set rules on the number, manner and conditions in which game may be selected for culling. The pursuit, capture and release, or capture to eat of fish is called fishing, which is not commonly categorized as a kind of hunting, although many hunters may also fish. Trapping is also usually considered a separate activity. Neither is it considered hunting to pursue animals without intent to take them, as in wildlife photography or bird watching. The practice of hunting for plants or mushrooms is a colloquial term for gathering. Select this link to view our Unique Christmas Ornaments.
Wildlife management
Hunting can be an important tool for managing wildlife resources. Hunting gives resource managers a valuable tool to control populations of some species that might otherwise exceed the carrying capacity of their habitat and threaten the well-being of other wildlife species, and in some instances, that of human health and safety. Hunting reduces the annual crop of new animals and birds to allow the remaining animals sufficient food and shelter to survive. Some environmentalists assert that culling can lead to an increase in population of predator animals or that introducing appropriate predator animals would achieve the same benefit with more efficiency and less environmental impact, but some livestock owners disagree, seeing human killing as more explicitly selective. For science on this topic see: Aldo Leopold. An example of using hunters in wildlife management can be found in the "Snow, Blue and Ross' Goose Conservation Order 2005."
The Conservation Order allows hunters, after all other waterfowl seasons are closed, to shoot an unlimited number of these species of geese. The reason for the Conservation Order is that these species have grown so numerous that they are destroying the Arctic environment which many species of animals use as breeding grounds. Animal management authorities sometimes rely on hunting to control certain animal populations. These hunts are sometimes carried out by professional hunters although other hunts include amateurs. Overpopulations of deer in urban parks might be hunted by animal management authorities. In some cases, particularly in the American East, populations of deer have risen to such environmentally destructive levels that organizations such as the Audubon Society have called for increased hunting to prevent environmental degradation. Select this link to view our Unique Christmas Gifts.