quote:

Originally posted by mule:
Well, my top secret was so top secret that I'm not even allowed to think about it!

Good one.

My TS is so secret if I think about it I have to kill myself... Hehehe......

They told me that I couldn't get out of the Army unless I refused to give up what I learned to Jack Anderson and the Washington Post.

GUN CONTROL BACKFIRE


2 Dec 2008, 1203 hrs IST, Prafulla Marpakwar, TNN

Cops just had 577 rifles, hadn't fired in 10 yrs


MUMBAI: The state constabulary was grossly unprepared to deal with the worst-ever terror attacks on the metropolis because of an acute shortage of
weapons and ammunition.

Official records show that for a force of well over 1.8 lakh, the home department procured a meagre 2,221 weapons — 577 for Mumbai, and 1,644 for the rest of Maharashtra.

‘‘Under the centrally sponsored modernisation programme, we purchased almost all types of weapons, but for a state like Maharashtra, the number of weapons was grossly inadequate ,’’ a senior official told TOI on Monday.

In the absence of a firing range and of ammunition for practice, members of the law enforcement agencies have not opened fire in the last ten years. ‘‘I’ve been in the police force for a long time, but I had no occasion to open fire for practice,’’ a senior inspector of police said.

As per the police manual, officials ranking from constable to assistant inspector get rifles with 30 rounds each, and those with the rank of police sub-inspector and above get revolvers, also with 30 rounds each.

Jawans with the State Reserve Police Force are given SLRs or self-loading rifles. In addition, AK-47 rifles have been given to officials posted in areas where there is Naxal activity, while officials on VIP security duty are armed with either revolvers or carbines.

The manual also prescribes mandatory training for all officials, especially shooting practice at the firing range. According to a senior IPS official, the norms prescribed in the manual now exist only on paper because of the acute shortage of ammunition for practice and the non-availability of a firing range.

As per the rules, every district should have a firing range exclusively for the police. But official records indicate that more than half the state’s districts have no independent firing range.

‘‘We have constables who have not opened fire even for practice ever since their recruitment,’’ the official said.

quote:

Originally posted by Billy Bob:
GUN CONTROL BACKFIRE


2 Dec 2008, 1203 hrs IST, Prafulla Marpakwar, TNN

Cops just had 577 rifles, hadn't fired in 10 yrs


MUMBAI: The state constabulary was grossly unprepared to deal with the worst-ever terror attacks on the metropolis because of an acute shortage of
weapons and ammunition.

Official records show that for a force of well over 1.8 lakh, the home department procured a meagre 2,221 weapons — 577 for Mumbai, and 1,644 for the rest of Maharashtra.

‘‘Under the centrally sponsored modernisation programme, we purchased almost all types of weapons, but for a state like Maharashtra, the number of weapons was grossly inadequate ,’’ a senior official told TOI on Monday.

In the absence of a firing range and of ammunition for practice, members of the law enforcement agencies have not opened fire in the last ten years. ‘‘I’ve been in the police force for a long time, but I had no occasion to open fire for practice,’’ a senior inspector of police said.

As per the police manual, officials ranking from constable to assistant inspector get rifles with 30 rounds each, and those with the rank of police sub-inspector and above get revolvers, also with 30 rounds each.

Jawans with the State Reserve Police Force are given SLRs or self-loading rifles. In addition, AK-47 rifles have been given to officials posted in areas where there is Naxal activity, while officials on VIP security duty are armed with either revolvers or carbines.

The manual also prescribes mandatory training for all officials, especially shooting practice at the firing range. According to a senior IPS official, the norms prescribed in the manual now exist only on paper because of the acute shortage of ammunition for practice and the non-availability of a firing range.

As per the rules, every district should have a firing range exclusively for the police. But official records indicate that more than half the state’s districts have no independent firing range.

‘‘We have constables who have not opened fire even for practice ever since their recruitment,’’ the official said.

What a mess. REH

With Daschel,(authored or voted for every anti-gun bill to come along) Clinton (co-authored "Clinton gun-ban) and Holder. (as far as guns are concerned Chicago is second only to DC for gun-bans) So Obama is already off to his stated policy of "police have guns, only" and his "privately policed communities" with "gun free citizans"... Where is Ronnie Ray-Gun when we really need him......

Early Brady Plans Revealed - Push to end all private sales
By Alan Korwin
Dec 1, 2008 - 12:30:16 PM


Plenty of gun-ban speculation is flying. I have this quote direct from Sarah Brady in a letter addressed to me: "On Election Day, we helped deliver a strong victory for President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden. They will be two of the most powerful allies we have ever had."

This is what Obama meant when he told you to your face that he respects the Second Amendment. He is the acknowledged champion of the anti-rights gun-ban movement.

POINT ONE

Most of you already know that phony talk about "gun-show-loopholes" was a smokescreen. Sarah and her team now confirm this. They are planning for: "universal background checks for EVERY gun sold in this country." (Her emphasis, not mine).

Gun shows, she says, are now merely "included" in that plan, this will appear as proposed legislation shortly after inauguration day.

Smart money says it will be fast tracked -- so be sure to join, re-up, or get friends to join gun-rights groups to aid the battle. The pro-rights groups are the main chance to slow it down and re-tool it to whatever extent possible. Don't wait.

Find your state and national gun-rights groups here:http://www.gunlaws.com/links


For ideas on what one person (that's you pal) can do, http://www.gunlaws.com/Tactics%20That%20Work.htm
The new gun-tracking plan will require somewhat complex legislation, to mix personal or private sales, and transfers between family members, in the centrally managed FBI NICS system for licensed dealers. A mechanism to accomplish that means making government larger and hiring more help.

The rhetoric has now expanded from phony "gun-show loopholes" to a new "deadly loopholes" idea: "We know Obama and Biden share our commitment to closing deadly loopholes in our gun laws."

If there was any doubt amongst the public about Obama's "support" for rights, the Bradys, now that the election is over, express the truth: "The Obama-Biden ticket won convincingly while clearly supporting gun laws." Everyone supports gun laws that disarm violent criminals. The Bradys though are talking about something else -- gun laws that disarm, encumber or infringe on the rights of the innocent. They plan on government tracking of every firearm in private hands.


POINT TWO

Campaign talk about making the phony "assault-weapons" ban permanent has morphed into "enact a stronger, comprehensive federal ban on military-style assault weapons." They're drafting it right now (Congress doesn't draft these things, interest groups do and hand it to them on platters).

The only thing that could be "stronger" than Clinton's total ban on the sale of new products would be to go after existing firearms in civilian hands, which Clinton left alone. That would require contrabanding, outright confiscations or at a minimum, registration schemes. We'll have to wait for the bill to drop to see what they plan.

"Comprehensive," and "military-style" seem like code words for "more guns banned," far greater lists and categories than Clinton was able to get enacted. Normal capacity magazines like police use will undoubtedly be included, and if the past is prologue, the lists of guns will include standard household firearms the public has safely owned for decades, with little concern for criminals who misuse firearms (already strictly illegal and widely unenforced). Never forget -- "assault" is a type of behavior, not a type of hardware.

I've said it before and it bears repeating. If the Bradys get Obama to go after CRIMINAL MISUSE of firearms, they'll have widespread support from NRA types and the marksmanship community as a whole. If they instead go after private property the community already peaceably owns, they'll meet outraged resistance.


POINT THREE

Sarah Brady is asking Obama to "close the deadly holes in our current laws that allow terrorists to buy guns." This is a solution in search of a problem, since terrorists already can't legally buy guns. Brady president Paul Helmke talks instead of blocking "suspected terrorists." That could mean anyone.

It's a back door way to vastly expand the NICS Index -- the list of prohibited possessors that reportedly includes more than ten million Americans. Once you're on, it can be next to impossible to get off, so making it larger serves the goal of the gun banners wonderfully. Many (but not all) currently in the NICS index are violent felons and other low-lifes who belong there.

It's not completely clear who they'd like to add, but in the past, an effort was made to grant arbitrary authority to the Attorney General to add names to terrorism "watch lists." This would prevent those people from air travel and place other restrictions on civil liberties. Sort of like Guantanamo detainees without the need to be caught shooting at Americans on a battlefield. Anyone on that list would be automatically banned by a NICS check, and those checks would no longer be limited to retail purchases from dealers.

FYI, if you're placed on the NICS list, it suggests you're a prohibited possessor whether you are or not, so any guns or ammo you already own or even touch could then constitute a felony. To a zealous cop or judge, a NICS listing might require you to prove your innocence, a nightmare of legal problems. That list should be scrupulously accurate and easily corrected, tasks government is known to do worse than their "management" of the economy.

Just for the record, any actual terrorist is totally banned from buying or having guns in this country, but they could hardly care less about lists kept in West Virginia by the FBI. Terrorist by definition means "We smuggle weapons you can't even get, easier than you can buy a bag of cocaine in any America city."

An aside -- these "terrorists" (generally a code name for radical muslims) are determined to kill and blow up everything they can, and they prove it around the world constantly, you needn't take my word for it. They haven't done it here since 9/11 for one main reason -- president Bush, although hampered with constant attacks in the media (which have now swayed large swaths of the public) has been killing them off as fast as he can, before they can strike us here. He may take a lot of flack, and be looked down upon by many, but he just may be remembered as one of the greatest presidents we have ever had the luck to have. Please don't write to complain to me about that. I'm just noting that the muslims are killing everywhere but here, and president Bush is leading that charge. What's the bumper sticker? "Saving your butt, like it or not." OK, so he says he doesn't read a lot, that's another discussion.


POINT FOUR

Sarah (Brady, not Palin) included one bald deception in her message by saying "we achieved a major victory when the first federal gun law in over twelve years passed." She refers to the NICS improvement act, for which both the Bradys and NRA took credit. It expands the NICS index by helping states add nut cases (the non-technical description) to the list (a rule Brady rightly applauds). It also lets falsely accused or no-longer-ineligible people get off the list, which you couldn't do previously (a rule NRA rightly applauds).

The 12-year part is laughably inaccurate, but no one expects the media to point out the lie so I will, for just this century, including:

--The PATRIOT Act (which redundantly disarms terrorists and broadens the definition of who the government can label and treat as a terrorist);

--The Aviation and Transportation Security Act (which arms passenger pilots and eventually cargo pilots);

--The Homeland Security Act (which arms all sorts of new federal agents);

--The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (HR218, which arms retired, off-duty and traveling police officers of every description across all state lines, exactly what the Second Amendment is supposed to but no longer protects for the public);

--The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act (which protects firearm manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits);

--The Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act (which stops authorities from gun confiscations after storms and disasters like Katrina);

--And that's just the bigger ones in the past eight years.

What hasn't been passed "after eight long years of watching the gun lobby run loose in the halls of power" (her words) was a single federal law that directly improved the rights of gun owners in their normal every day lives. Not one.

Authorities got armed and protected. Manufacturers got protected. Cured or falsely accused nut cases got a redress of grievances. Storm-disaster victims got something. But your routine human right to carry, right to defend yourself, right to travel armed, right to shop away from home, right to get a gun from your dad or brother in another state, right to get a tax break for going to the range, or for teaching your kids how to shoot safely -- no laws like that passed through Congress in all those years. What a lost opportunity while we ran loose in the halls of power. If only we had some of these laws: http://www.gunlaws.com/sunshin.htm

Sworn to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution, Congress has done nothing of the sort when it comes to your Second Amendment rights. That's a national disgrace, and it will be sorely felt when Brady and her evil cohorts savagely attack what rights you have remaining.


POINT FIVE

Suggestion for action --

1 - ALERT your local marksmanship clubs and fellow marksman by emailing them this Gun Law Update;

2 - DECIDE to go to lunch or dinner the week of January 12 before inauguration day at any decent restaurant near you (just pick a date and place and tell everyone to go there);

3 - AGREE together -- in person -- to get the word out and show up at your state capital and other high profile spots when infringements to your right to keep and bear arms are assaulted. Agree to face up to people who disrespect your rights and do harm to the precious and sacred Constitution of the United States of America.

More details when they arrive.
To sign up for future alerts go to http://www.gunlaws.com


POINT SIX

Crass commercial message from an unabashed capitalist free-marketeer -- books make excellent gifts, help us continue our work and do some good Christmas shopping with us. New gun owners need the rules, long-time gun owners need new tactics and strategies, the politically correct need correction, and everyone needs a little extra safety, preparedness and a good read or two. http://www.gunlaws.com/books.htm. It's a particularly good time to consider the Founders Package -- the books our Founding Fathers read and wrote. http://www.gunlaws.com/books8founders.htm


Ray. Do you now see why I worry. The Brady bunch was formally "HandGun Control Inc."(they merged) the most radical of all the anti-gun groups.
If they step into the private sales arena then what next? Governmental control over the arts?

RELOADERS TAKE NOTE!!!


Ammo Ban And Registration Proposal Getting Fresh Look

Friday, December 12, 2008

Happy Holidays: Now dispose of all of your ammunition! Every last round! From now on, you will be able to buy only overpriced ammunition that will be registered to you in a government database.


Not yet--at least for now. A small company, Ammunition Accountability--which wants to help anti-gunners price and regulate the Second Amendment out of existence, profit at the expense of our rights, or both--has found radical anti-gun legislators in 18 states willing to introduce bills pushing such nonsense.


But few anti-gun proposals are so overtly aimed at destroying the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. As we began noting on www.nraila.org in January, so-called “encoded ammunition” or “serialized ammunition” bills would require ammunition manufacturers to engrave a serial number on the base of the bullet and the inside of the cartridge casing of each round of ammunition for popular sporting caliber center-fire rifles, all center-fire pistols, all .22 rimfire rifles and pistols, and all 12 gauge shotguns. In all but one of the bills, people would be required to forfeit all personally owned non-“encoded” ammunition. After a certain date, it would be illegal to possess non-“encoded” ammunition. Reloading would be rendered illegal.


People would be required to separately register every box of “encoded ammunition” and the registration would be supplied to the police. Each box of ammunition would have a unique serial number, thus a separate registration. Gun owners would have to maintain records if they sell ammunition to anyone, including family members or friends. The cost of ammunition would soar, for police and private citizens alike. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturing Institute estimates it would take three weeks to produce ammunition currently produced in a single day. A tax of five cents a round would be imposed on private citizens, not only upon initial sale, but every time the ammunition changes hands thereafter.


And to what benefit in terms of fighting crime? Criminals already steal guns and would certainly steal ammunition. Burglaries would be encouraged. Criminals could also use shotguns, which fire pellets too small to encode, and which use shell casings made of plastic, which would be difficult to engrave. Criminals could also collect ammunition cases from shooting ranges, and reload them with molten lead bullets made without serial numbers.


Congress eliminated a handgun ammunition sale recordation requirement in 1983, because there was no law enforcement benefit. Be on the lookout in your states in the next legislative session for anti-gun zealots who refuse to learn from history, plus continue their crusade against our Second Amendment rights.


For more information on this issue, please visit [URL=www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=227&issue=005, and www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=289. ]www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=227&issue=005, and www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=289. [/URL]

quote:

Not yet--at least for now. A small company, Ammunition Accountability--which wants to help anti-gunners price and regulate the Second Amendment out of existence, profit at the expense of our rights, or both--has found radical anti-gun legislators in 18 states willing to introduce bills pushing such nonsense.

This is how it happens all too often in our public existence. Some group looking to make a buck teams up with either activists or certain people in government & lobbies to get laws passed for the entire populace to follow, just so they can make money. Personally, I'm tired of having my rights & the rights of my family stepped on, just because some jerk wants to pad his or her pockets.

Well, I just bought 3 boxes of 270 Winchester shells to make a total of 4 boxes. I figure they can have them if they can find them. I'll have shells to hunt with until they do. Since I like to just shoot too, I'll buy a box a month for a while to stay supplied. As for numbers on the ends of the shells, I don't need no stinkin numbers. BB, going on that holiday doe hunt? I got one tied up waitin.

You bet I am. I refilled my feeders Saturday and I have my "Bark-o-lounger" and heater in the blind so I'm ready for anything...Good luck!



I'm going to gwet tha old dweer..huhuhuhua

DOs and Don'ts of an Armed Encounter

THE BEST ARTICLE OF 2008..
After The Shooting
"...there are some things that you need to remember..."
by Larry Correia
As self-defense oriented people, we tend to think about the actual encounter a lot, and seldom, if ever, about what we should do in the aftermath. If you are unlucky enough to be involved in a violent encounter, there are some things that you need to remember to maximize your chances of a successful outcome.

Call for help immediately. Even if you produced the gun and your assailant retreated with no shots fired, call the police. If there is somebody out there worth pulling a gun on, then the cops need to know about it. They may have just gone around the corner to pick an easier victim.

As soon as it is safe for you to do so, call 911. Always ask for an ambulance. If somebody has been shot, whether injured or even if you are a hundred percent sure that they are dead, I still want you to ask for medical attention. First off, killing people sucks, so if I've got an injured assailant, I don't want him to die, I just wanted to make him leave me alone. Second, if you don't ask for medical attention, then there is a good chance that fact will be brought up during any potential trial. Basically it is just another tool of a prosecutor trying to portray the permit holder as a blood-thirsty vigilante.

If humanly possible, have your weapon secured before the police arrive, at least in your holster, but definitely not in your hand. The responding officers do not know you, and the information they got from dispatch was probably sketchy at best. The last thing you want to do is survive a violent encounter only to get shot by the cops because they think you're the bad guy.

If you are ever in a situation where you still have the gun in your hands, and the police arrive, they are going to order you to drop the gun. Comply with their instructions because otherwise they may think you are the threat and very well may shoot you. Do not start talking or trying to explain what is going on. Don't be offended because they are treating you like the bad guy. This is not the time to get indignant. This is the time to keep from getting shot.

If you have medical training, and you have just shot and injured an attacker, you may be tempted to administer first aid. Keep in mind, however, that a minute ago this person was trying to hurt you bad enough that they were worth shooting. That threat may still be a threat. Your primary advantage is the fact that you have a firearm. If you then put yourself close enough to administer treatment, you are giving up that advantage. He may not be as incapacitated as you thought, and when he wakes up and sees the person who just shot him within arm's length, you have a real good chance of getting your head twisted off your shoulders. He may have a folding knife that you won't know about until it cuts your kidney in half.

Keep in mind that when the police shoot somebody, the paramedics do not rush in and give immediate aid. The police always secure the individual before the paramedics move in. That is for everyone's safety. If you have been through first responder training, keep in mind one of the very first examples that was given to your class. If you come across a car accident, and the car is on fire, you do not have to climb into the burning car to try and help, because now you are just one more injured person to treat. You never want to endanger yourself to administer aid.

Never tamper with the crime scene. You may have heard the old myth, usually given by an imbecile that does not understand self-defense law, "if you shoot the guy on the porch, drag him in the living room." Bad idea. Do not ever do that. Once you shoot someone, wherever it happened is now a crime scene. If you tamper with the evidence, the authorities will figure it out, and this will now create doubt in the minds of the reasonable people looking at your case. If you felt the need to tamper with the scene, they will believe that you are trying to hide something. The only thing you may do is to make the area physically safe for yourself, but other than that, leave it alone.

On that same note, do not flee the scene. Your personal safety comes first, so if you need to get away to keep from being injured, that is one thing, but make sure that you then call the police as quickly as possible. If you flee the scene of a shooting, that once again raises the specter of guilt with the authorities, and that will color their investigation accordingly.

The responding officers are going to question you. I want you to give a brief statement, and then shut up, accent on brief, with little or no details. As in, "Officer, he attacked me, I was in fear for my life, so I shot him." That is it. Do not start to babble to the police. Do not try to explain everything at the time. They will continue to question you. At that point you will politely tell them that you are not going to answer any more questions until you have your attorney present.

When you shoot somebody, unless you have ice water in your veins, you will be going through various stress reactions. Some of you may be in shock, others will be distraught that they just took a life, others may be enraged that some bad guy just threatened their children, but whatever your reaction, you will not be in a calm state of mind. It is a medical fact that adrenalin affects our higher brain functions. You will tend to forget details, some of which may be very important, or even worse, your brain will fill in the forgotten blanks with facts that will later be shown to be incorrect.

Wait until you have an attorney present before you make your complete statement. This gives you the time to compose yourself and calm down. Also, the Bill of Rights gives us the right to legal counsel. Take advantage of it. A good attorney will keep you from saying anything stupid that will be used against you in court later.

Now some of you may not like this. You may have the mistaken belief that it is the bad guys that need the defense attorneys, not us good guys. Unfortunately that is not how it works in real life. We work in an adversarial system, and anything you say during a statement, can and will be used against you in a court of law.

These are just a few basic tips to keep in mind. Your primary consideration in a violent encounter is to first survive the attack, but doing these things may help you survive the aftermath.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

-Larry Correia is an author, firearms instructor, and one of the owners of Fuzzy Bunny Movie Guns in Draper, Utah. FBMG is a gun store, specializing in self-defense needs, training, and full-line smithing.


This guy is good!

At shooting ranges in Massachusetts, it is illegal to shoot at targets depicting a human --whether as a figure, effigy or a silhouette -- unless you're a public safety officer performing official duties.

I wonder how many lives this law saved?

It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny

Researchers see 'evolution in reverse' as hunters kill off prized animals with the biggest antlers and pelts.
Lily Huang

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009

Some of the most iconic photographs of Teddy Roosevelt, one of the first conservationists in American politics, show the president posing companionably with the prizes of his trophy hunts. An elephant felled in Africa in 1909 points its tusks skyward; a Cape buffalo, crowned with horns in the shape of a handlebar mustache, slumps in a Kenyan swamp. In North America, he stalked deer, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep and elk, which he called "lordly game" for their majestic antlers. What's remarkable about these photographs is not that they depict a hunter who was also naturalist John Muir's staunchest political ally. It's that just 100 years after his expeditions, many of the kind of magnificent trophies he routinely captured are becoming rare.

Elk still range across parts of North America, but every hunting season brings a greater challenge to find the sought-after bull with a towering spread of antlers. Africa and Asia still have elephants, but Roosevelt would have regarded most of them as freaks, because they don't have tusks. Researchers describe what's happening as none other than the selection process that Darwin made famous: the fittest of a species survive to reproduce and pass along their traits to succeeding generations, while the traits of the unfit gradually disappear. Selective hunting—picking out individuals with the best horns or antlers, or the largest piece of hide—works in reverse: the evolutionary loser is not the small and defenseless, but the biggest and best-equipped to win mates or fend off attackers.

When hunting is severe enough to outstrip other threats to survival, the unsought, middling individuals make out better than the alpha animals, and the species changes. "Survival of the fittest" is still the rule, but the "fit" begin to look unlike what you might expect. And looks aren't the only things changing: behavior adapts too, from how hunted animals act to how they reproduce. There's nothing wrong with a species getting molded over time by new kinds of risk. But some experts believe problems arise when these changes make no evolutionary sense.

Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, is home to a population of bighorn sheep, whose most vulnerable individuals are males with thick, curving horns that give them a regal, Princess Leia look. In the course of 30 years of study, biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec found a roughly 25 percent decline in the size of these horns, and both male and female sheep getting smaller. There's no mystery on Ram Mountain: male sheep with big horns tend to be larger and produce larger offspring. During the fall rut, or breeding season, these alpha rams mate more than any other males, by winning fights or thwarting other males' access to their ewes. Their success, however, is contingent upon their surviving the two-month hunting season just before the rut, and in a strange way, they're competing against their horns. Around the age of 4, their horn size makes them legal game—several years before their reproductive peak. That means smaller-horned males get far more opportunity to mate.

Other species are shrinking, too. Australia's red kangaroo has become noticeably smaller as poachers target the largest animals for leather. The phenomenon has been most apparent in harvested fish: since fishing nets began capturing only fish of sufficient size in the 1980s, the Atlantic cod and salmon, several flounders and the northern pike have all propagated in miniature.

So what if fish or kangaroos are smaller? If being smaller is safer, this might be a successful adaptation for a hunted species. After all, " 'fitness' is relative and transitory," says Columbia University biologist Don Melnick, meaning that Darwinian natural selection has nothing to do with what's good or bad, or the way things should be. Tusks used to make elephants fitter, as a weapon or a tool in foraging—until ivory became a precious commodity and having tusks got you killed. Then tuskless elephants, products of a genetic fluke, became the more consistent breeders and grew from around 2 percent among African elephants to more than 38 percent in one Zambian population, and 98 percent in a South African one. In Asia, where female elephants don't have tusks to begin with, the proportion of tuskless elephants has more than doubled, to more than 90 percent in Sri Lanka. But there's a cost to not having tusks. Tusked elephants, like the old dominant males on Ram Mountain, were "genetically 'better' individuals," says Festa-Bianchet. "When you take them systematically out of the population for several years, you end up leaving essentially a bunch of losers doing the breeding."

"Losers" tend not to be very good breeders, meaning that this demographic shift ultimately threatens the viability of a species. Researchers also worry that the surviving animals are left with a narrower gene pool. In highly controlled environments, a species with frighteningly little genetic diversity can persist—think of the extremes of domesticated animals like thoroughbred horses or commercial chickens—but in real ecosystems changes are unpredictable. Artificially selecting animals in the wild—in effect, breeding them—is "a very risky game," says Columbia's Melnick. "It's highly likely to result in the end of a species."

At present, researchers' alarm about these trends are based on theories that are hard to prove. To make scientific claims about the effects of hunting on the evolution of a species, researchers like Melnick would need thorough data from animal populations that lived at least several decades ago, which rarely exist. Evolution, it turns out, is a difficult beast to study in real time because it is the product of so many factors—changes in climate, habitat and food supply, as well as gene frequencies—and because it occurs so slowly. Researchers began tracking sheep on Ram Mountain in the early 1970s, corralling the entire population every year to make measurements and trace genealogies. "You cannot really just go out and take data and look for a trend," says Festa-Bianchet. "Even if you find a trend it can be due to environmental changes, to changes in density. You're really trying to tease out the genetic part of the change."

The time scale is one reason that most wildlife departments managing hunting harvests simply count the heads each year and decide how many to let hunters bag without thinking about genes. The most popular method of regulating hunting—restricting legal game to males with a minimum antler size—results in populations overrun with females and inferior males, which is ultimately no service to hunters. "The hunters wish for animals with large antlers and large horns, and yet their actions are making that harder to achieve," says Richard Harris, a conservation biologist in Montana. As a hunter, Harris knows that the outcome of this trend will satisfy no one, the Teddy Roosevelts of the next generation least of all.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/177709

The report is misleading.

Deer 2 years old can have spectacular antlers and a 10 year old can be a 4 point
The doe season is three times as long as the buck season because of the heard unbalance. Oklahoma hunters check stations are all over and they take all kinds of information about population and age of the population. Oklahoma has decades of information to go by and our hards are healthy and growing both in numbers and stature and the gene pool is randomly checked and it is healthy at one in seven...

Next time ask a hunter or Ranger. He is out with the varmints and knows the report is wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by Billy Bob:
The report is misleading.

Deer 2 years old can have spectacular antlers and a 10 year old can be a 4 point
The doe season is three times as long as the buck season because of the heard unbalance. Oklahoma hunters check stations are all over and they take all kinds of information about population and age of the population. Oklahoma has decades of information to go by and our hards are healthy and growing both in numbers and stature and the gene pool is randomly checked and it is healthy at one in seven...

Next time ask a hunter or Ranger. He is out with the varmints and knows the report is wrong.

Thanks for the comments. I've sent it to my brother in law who is a ranger in Montana. Thanks for the suggestion. REH