Environment: To Kill or Not to Kill

Some verbal duels between hunters and defenders of wildlife

When rifle shots ring across the nation's forests and marshlands each fall, they signal the renewal of a perennial debate: How much hunting can be permitted without threatening the well-being of a species? Sometimes the answers are neither easy nor obvious:

Man vs. Moose. The bull moose is the largest animal in the North American woods, standing as tall as six feet at the shoulders and weighing up to 1,800 lbs. with antlers six feet across. Yet the moose is about as ferocious as a mouse. Many hunters concede that shooting the lumbering, dimwitted...

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