Number of female hunters in Japan on increase

Toasted HereticToday 08:59 am JSTWhat is the attraction with hunting? Hopefully there will be an interest in disrupting such cruelties now.

Heretic, Japanese deer have no natural predators and, 200 000 are culled every year, yet they are still causing a lot of damage. Overpopulation of deer doesn't mean the weak animals will necessarily die off and leave the stock stronger, rather you get a huge population of low quality animals and disease. If hunting ends, the countryside will be overrun.

Just out of curiousity, do you disagree with wolves as well because they are cruel?

I think this report is misconstrued. It is not about J-chicks flooding the forests with 12-gauge shooting irons slung over their shoulders. Rather it is about inverse proportions of females getting so-called hunting licences compared to males in the light of the more significant massive long-term decline in numbers of licence-holders. It seems most of the female licence holders have them for trapping anyway.

There is just novelty value in paying attention to the increase in female hunters, like it is sexier - than an over-65 male shooter standing over the bloodied corpse of a culled diseased bambi

This is one topic city dwellers should either leave alone if they're not in favor of it.

Anybody who has lived in the countryside of Japan knows how serious the inoshishi (Wild pig) problem is. They are RAMPANT. They do extreme damage to crops - a single family of inoshishi can wipe out an entire field of crops in a few nights, and they just keep breeding and breeding.

Animals caught in traps can be killed in various ways - probably the most humane way other than using guns is using a cattle gun, which you may have seen in "No Country for Old Men". It's a piston activated by compressed air and basically turns the animal's brain into goo in an instant. Pretty much painless.

Other options are bleeding the animal out by cutting the jugular, or piercing the heart. Sounds gruesome but death comes very quickly, 5-15 seconds. This is how animal slaughter was done before guns were popular.

Keep in mind hunters generally eat what they catch, the idea of trophy hunters is overhyped in the media. Most hunters are very ethical and responsible people.

Love hiking, but more scared of senile hunters than bears.

Hehe.  I read the headline and thought they were talking about the end of the herbivore man.

I would love to be able to obtain a license to go and hunt deer and never have to buy processed meat again, but the process is so costly. If they were really concerned about these wild animals, they could at least make the licenses free of charge, or at least cheap to obtain without getting rid of the strict checks and balances which are needed to ensure safety.

I'd like to know how she kills the animals which she traps.

Japan's hunting licenses are divided into four types, including the top tier in which shotguns and rifles are allowed to be used if permitted through separate procedures. The license Hatakeyama owns is for trapping with no firearms involved.

In the US Hunting is generally separated from Trapping, although one my require the former to obtain the latter. To me the example doesn't really match the headline.

Number of female hunters in Japan on increase

So the 草食男 are starting to be more aggressive?

Agree with inkochi, a bit of an hybrid article, not about hunting per se but rather modern J women feeling empowered i.e they can now do things which not so long ago were supposed to be only for men (which is great).

Thing is wildlife control is a serious matter and so is women's emancipation or whatever you want to call it. The article feels to me like a thinly veiled attempt to 'promote' or at least highlight women's new attitude towards hunting/men stuff in general and, at the same time, how they can help better manage wildlife. Am just not sure focusing on trapping and female hunting fans who 'love exchanging info about wild game cuisine' was very pertinent. Tells me these women aren't 'that' empowered and that wildlife management isn't taken seriously (no one's gonna make me believe J female hunters a la Davy Crockett are going to fix anything).

There needs to be a more professionalized and/or technological approach to the problem, especially with the aging and depopulation of rural areas. Whether you are from the countryside or not is irrelevant. There are wild boars on the streets of Kobe as well.

I would hope that these traps are placed upon private land and are not likely to cause harm to humans trekking around the place.

As for hunting, what's wrong with that ? It's been in our nature for eons to do so, especially if what being hunted is causing threat or damage to property/life.

Hunting without reason, baring for the sake of the "sport", does however lack some respect for the land.

The reasons given for the increase is quite strange, "disrupted supply chains of food and other daily necessities in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami " I fail to see the motivation to become a hunter of feral pests in other prefectures. However, it is quite true there are problems with feral and native animals in Japan. Possibly, the government should be pushing to utilise this 'natural' food resource instead of hunting whales at the other end of the earth.

This sounds like Wildlife Services under the Department of Agriculture in the states which uses taxpayer dollars to support its lethal, outdated and ultimately ineffective approaches to wildlife control. Hopefully no unintended targets—even endangered species and pets—are also killed in the process. Does Japan have the equivalent of a Humane Society animal welfare organization that can monitor wildlife management standards ?

Doing it yourself isn't always the answer, and neither is working with inhumane or unethical companies or governments.

What is the attraction with hunting? Hopefully there will be an interest in disrupting such cruelties now.

Back on topic please.

I think Magnus Roe above is referring to the idea of reintroduction of a top predator, something similar to the now-extinct Japanese wolf.

Aly RustomToday

"I would love to be able to obtain a license to go and hunt deer and never have to buy processed meat again, but the process is so costly. If they were really concerned about these wild animals, they could at least make the licenses free of charge, or at least cheap to obtain without getting rid of the strict checks and balances which are needed to ensure safety."

It isn't about ensuring safety. That is what the gun clubs that run safety programs do, like NRA, Boy Scouts in US. The gun control is really about control, same as anywhere else.

And for the record, in the only nation on the planet that requires a "riding license," to ride a horse, they are not going to let you, me or any random Hiroshi get anywhere close to a gun unless they have taken a sword and hacked his hands off first. It's just the kind of thing Japanese socialist would never do.

As a hunter and trapper in Japan, I am not fooled by the "poor little Bambi, three piglettes" fairy-tail safe-space commenters. When a problem becomes as big as the the deer and feral pig problem, anyone who finds a solution and promotes it gets a star by his/her name.

I will give the "stupid comment of the week" award to the poster who said, give them a sterilization virus. That is like the, "lock multiple mass murderers in jail because I thing execution is wrong!" limp-wrist people. If one is close enough inject a wild animal with something that in theory could escape into the entire food chain at large...you are close enough to cut it's throat and be 100% certain that animal will NEVER breed again.

"Go for it! Kari girls."

Terrible slogan. In fact, why have a slogan at all? I'm not against hunting, just the frivolity of a slogan for hunting.

you are close enough to cut it's throat and be 100% certain that animal will NEVER breed again.

Right now surgical sterilization or a birth control vaccine is more practical with urban/suburban captive populations but fertility control in deer is a rapidly evolving technology. And the numbers will go down over time unlike deer-killing programs that don't result in long-term population reduction.

http://blog.humanesociety.org/wayne/2017/07/epa-gives-thumbs-vaccine-manage-deer-populations-humanely.html?credit=blog_post_071117_idhome-page

EPA gives thumbs up on vaccine to manage deer populations humanely

Overpopulation of deer doesn't mean the weak animals will necessarily die off and leave the stock stronger, rather you get a huge population of low quality animals and disease. 

Except there are also now very effective contraception vaccine that can be used to control fertility in adult female deer and other mammals. I'm not even familiar with the most recent studies but there are a lot of innovations out there used to stabilize and reduce a deer population over time that could eventually replace hunting.

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2011/august/not-tonight-deer-a-new-birth-control-vaccine-helps-reduce-urban-deer-damage.html

Not tonight deer: A new birth control vaccine helps reduce urban deer damage

I'd like to know how she kills the animals which she traps

Also what kind of traps, how she ensures she does not trap any endangered species, and how long the animal remains trapped before it is humanely killed, assuming the killing is humane.

We hear tales of desperate animals chewing off their own limbs in order to escape traps.

I also see no attraction in killing wildlife. There may be those who argue that culling/population control is necessary and/or that they hunt for food, and while I do not agree, I can see their argument; but as a hobby? For fun? There is surely no fun in killing things unless you're a psychopath.

"Game hunting by Japanese women on rise". "Female Japanese increasingly drawn to hunting/trapping". "Female Japanese hunter/trapper numbers increasing".

Took some time, but juggling the words around found three alternatives with less ambiguity!? Haha.

The question of how humans should treat their animal cousins continues to perplex humanity. This can be seen in the quote above: "I feel somewhat uneasy doing it, but it is true that they damage crops and fields," Hatakeyama said. "This is something you can't talk about from only one aspect."

In other words, there is no simple answer.