Look at the comments left by people on this deer pic on Flikr. its in the Shenandoah Nat park. I left my comment as well. If your not a member on flikr, please sign up so you can post and help me defend hunting.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwbrown/8045369655/in/pool-shenandoahvalley
I think he missed your point completely.
Typical "tree-hugger " who obviously has no idea ! He thinks that a deer will never leave it's home area and even states that he knows how big each deer's home range is simply because he takes pics of them . How many of you have hunted a big buck that you watched everyday and then he suddenly disappears off the radar ? They move around and it's not uncommon to abandon an area completely sometimes . Then months later , he magically reappears on your hunting area .
Larry's comments DO address all hunters even though he wants us to believe that he is aiming strictly at poachers . He also says that he used to be a hunter . Obviously that was prior to becoming a tree-hugging slug . It is safe to bet that he doesn't put out the money that hunters do , that benefits the wildlife . Now I agree that poaching is a terrible thing , but I will not accept that they were all poached just because he doesn't see them anymore . Uninformed , uneducated in wildlife biology and useless to me . Just my honest opinion.
It would not surprise me that these people think that the bucks are gone each year because they shed their antlers. 8pack won't be 8pack next year. The biggest problem with tree huggers is their lack of actual knowledge of wildlife.
As one who often reads the comments section about articles related to hunting, this one is not even close to some of the stuff that you will find, especially when the articles show up on some site with high visibility. I think Larry's only offense here is that he used the term "hunters" rather than using the term "poachers" to describe the possible disappearance of those deer. Even so, I was not at all offended by his comments. I think it was also good that you commented that the two terms should not be used interchangeably, and that there are other, reasonable explanations for the lack of sightings of those deer.
Having noted that, we hunters need to recognize the fact that there are those out there that are doing exactly as Larry suggests. Is it happening in this specific case? I don't know,...but it does happen,...and we should not defend the practice. The point to be made with the Larry's of the world is that true hunters and sportsmen recognize that this kind of poaching does occur, and that we are totally against it and will do everything we can to remove the types that do it from the woods. We do not and will not condone that kind of stuff. That is the message here.