Many people are against hunting for its trophy prizes and the usage of firearms that are often thought of as a violent way to harvest an animal. Often people do not understand how hunting can be beneficial. They just see hunting as a way to harm an environment. These assumptions prove that these same people are failing to understand how hunting positively affects the environment and what benefits it brings to the table in terms of sustainability. Sharon Levy, writing for Hunting Magazine sets out in her article "Hunting Plays a Crucial Role in Maintaining Natural Habitats and the Environment" to prove that hunting can be a tool used to increase sustainability in return allowing healthy game populations to thrive. How does Levy make the argument hunting is good to a group of people who hate hunting with a passion? She provides countless examples from all over the globe that provide rock hard evidence that hunting is beneficial to our environment when done so responsibly under the law, leaving no room for scientific disagreement that hunting is a harmful practice and no good can come of it. Levy spans over a scope of many environmental concerns, and provides multiple examples of sufficient evidence for each one. It is this relentless use of logos that drives her argument to the end, leaving the reader with only one option, to agree that scientific fact proves that hunting is good for the environment. 

Immediately Levy dives into her article bombarding the reader with logos usage. She means to start off her argument using logos, but to also discredit the counter argument providing the reader with an example from within the United States talking about how many deer were affected by a growing cherry tree population stating, "Much of the Allegheny National Forest is now dominated by black cherry trees, and the forest floor is covered in a thick mat of hay scented fern." Levy is giving us an example within the real world to introduce the rest of her article.  She steers away from the usage of hypothetical statements. She wants the reader right off the bat to understand she is talking about real life issues and examples in return further enhancing her argument. She writes about the growing cherry tree population that, "Now because deer can't eat the cherries they've come to overwhelm nearly all their natural competitors. They are among the few successful survivors of a devastating plague of deer". What Levy means by deer plague, is the problems that arise with exponentially growing populations of deer that have had some kind of problem arise to allow their population to increase uncontrolled. Many times this exponential increase can cause repercussions within that same environment that causes the dwindling of other species. This is why Levy states hunting is necessary and beneficial because it keeps these populations under control.  

 As most authors do at the end of their articles, she gives one of the "few successful" stories that would be grounds to counter her argument at the very beginning of her article. The particular deer population of the Allegheny National Forest itself was not harmed from the growing cherry trees. Only species that were competing for the same water and area to grow with the cherry trees were harmed. This is usually not the case. Usually the deer population would be harmed, but for whatever reason this population found a way to thrive. The success story in this case is one where hunting did not in fact benefit the environment because the environment did not need to be regulated, apart from majority of other scientific studies where hunting was needed to control an increasing population. She immediately acknowledges with this quote that her argument is not true all of the time, but then states throughout the rest of her article that there are countless others that are more numerous that prove her claim hunting can often be used to regulate populations that are growing too quickly. She means to start off her paper with a counterclaim also ground in fact and experiments and make her way through arguing against this particular example of the cherry trees with many more examples that prove logically hunting is most beneficial in restoring populations sustainability. The very first paragraph we read uses logos to provide the reader with an example that is still ground in fact and experimentation of population numbers. Levy doesn't attempt quite yet to establish her credibility, or to guilt the reader into thinking that hunting is good because then the audience would immediately begin to question how one can argue that something is good for the environment without proving good examples ground in number and science. The audience would immediately begin to question why they should listen to what Levy has to say for the rest of her article. She hits us with facts so that the reader is intrigued behind the science of her argument and is wanting to learn about the other instances where deer population numbers did actually benefit from hunting. She is already not allowing the reader to argue with feelings like many other articles do because this would not prove anything. Feelings would not actually change anything about the argument except make the reader feel bad, but how would that benefit anybody. Levy is making the reader think factually because this is how she plans to argue the rest of her case of hunting as a beneficial tool for the environment and how she wants the reader to start thinking about the subject. Levy won't change somebody's mind about hunting if they think it is harmful and sad to kill animals. What Levy can do is make them agree that although they think killing an animal is sad, it is sometimes necessary to maintain an environment and hunting is the best way to do so.

Lack of hunting in a particular area allows the population to grow rapidly. When this happens the animals begin to compete for the same sources of food and water making them harder to find. Also, if there are too many animals some are forced to leave the area and find new homes that might have more food and water. Levy means to acknowledge this particular effect of a population that is too numerous when she mentions the following about overgrazing, "A similar pattern of logging and over-browsing is affecting forests from New Zealand to Europe to North America".  Here, she has not showed what hunting specifically can do to prevent overgrazing but mentioned one of the many effects of overpopulation of species and state many places that this overgrazing is affecting. Levy wants the reader to make the jump that overgrazing is just one of the many problems that arise with overpopulation of species and is just as devastating as displacement and some of the other effects. She wants the reader to make the jump that hunting can be one of the tools to fix this problem, and that this problem is not one that is only in North America, but Europe and New Zealand also making her target audience much larger. 

A similar pattern of examples can be tracked throughout her article. Each times she spans to a new concern, or a different heading, she gives an example or two, maybe even three. What each of these examples is attempting to do is to hit a different place either in the country, or the continent for example, Pennsylvania, Quebec, Wisconsin, Eastern United States etc. The point of giving factual evidence from all over is making a point for not just the state Levy wrote the article for, but states all over, even countries. What she has done here is to make this issue a problem of many different times of people. She makes this an issue for people of United States, and all the countries in Europe, and people in New Zealand. Levy when stating all of these places is actually stating, "Hey you should care about this too". No usage of pathos or ethos could account for scientific data from all over the world, and prove without a doubt that hunting is beneficial. Somebody could say hunting is beneficial, but the words don't always make it true. People in certain places can say "well this is not a problem in my area, I do not have to care about this right now" and to that Levy wants the reader to acknowledge that it is a problem worldwide and the reader just might not know it. 

Apart from fact and evidence, Levy' argument lacks in accounting for the morality of hunting, which is often the biggest argument against hunting. The author is assuming up to this point in her article, that the people reading are either hunters who agree with her, or are extremely in disagreement and are looking for an argument that is scientifically based to prove them wrong. What she doesn't take into account is that people who disagree with hunting might not be looking at the scientific basis of it, but rather the feelings hunting often brings forward. It could be good for the environment, but that does not necessarily make it right. The only thing she really does to sway this big argument against hunting is write, "Deer hunting is the basis of Anticosti Island's economy, people living there have no wish to purge their home of introduced deer." An assumption can be made here that if hunting were to be banned on a basis of, "its immorality", this economy of Anticosti Island would fail in a very short amount of time devastating thousands of lives. If you take hunting away from an Island who might have very limited sources of food otherwise, you are taking away a majority of their food source as well as economy if they sell the meat and other parts of the animal. The difference between scientifically based arguments and moral arguments makes this article completely ineffective unless both parties are discussing science based facts and research.  If one is arguing morality and the other is arguing fact, there is no stasis. This is one of the only downfalls of Levy's argument, she assumes the reader wants to hear facts or is open to hearing facts. Ignoring the morality argument can make this argument less effective depending on the audience, but if you are trying to prove without a doubt that hunting is good for the environment, pathos must be pushed to the backburner and scientific facts and logic must be brought forward, exactly like Levy did. 

Although subtle and hidden, pathos is found within this article. Levy does a good job of interjecting it eloquently to not seem as though she is trying to convince the reader it is morally right.  She does not try and persuade the reader to hunt. She does not make an accusation that if somebody thinks hunting is wrong they are a bad person. She lets her example of pathos speak for itself in a form of a quotation. She samples an excerpt from an essay called "Thinking Like a Mountain" a paragraph that talks of an experience Aldo Leopold had, of course after she introduces him and talks of countless awards Mr. Aldo has won in this field. In this essay he talks of a mountain that had been overgrazed by deer with no natural predators to stop the growing population and the effects it had on it. Rather than make a fact-based argument, Leopold writes a descriptive tale, talking of the mountain as if it were a person struggling with this problem. Aldo writes, "I have watched the face of many a newly wolf less mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death." His tone is very serious, and he ends with the word death, adding severity to the argument not only in the essay written by Aldo but to Levy's article as well. Levy doesn't spend her time writing to make the reader feel bad, but lets this essay she quotes speak for itself and stand-alone. If her argument was trying to argue that hunting is morally good, taking into account feelings and the nature of human beings would need to occur. What Levy is attempting to do in her article however, is argue that from an environmental standpoint, it is beneficial for all forms of life if hunting by humans occurs within the bounds of law. This can only be done by experiments that prove it's positive effects. 

Although also not the main appeal used in her argument just as pathos was not, ethos can be found subtly throughout her article in examples to make Levy seem credible and worth listening to. As in any good article based factually, logos cannot stand successfully without some form of reputable source. Unless Levy was a scientist particularly studying the affects of hunting on the environment, she cannot make factually-based claims and have the reader believe her, unless she gives the reader a reason to believe her. Levy, a freelance writer from California has no scientific experience in this field, therefore she must get her information from somewhere else. She cites numerous quotes from scientists all over the country working at universities such as Walter Carson of the University of Pittsburgh, James McGraw and Mary Ann Furedi of West Virginia University, and Don Waller of the University of Wisconsin Madison. Within all of these, she mentions the scientific studies that provided her evidence and the journals they were published in, further adding to her credibility. Ethos alone in this article, would merely be listing of various sources that have looked into the issue, but logos is what actually allows the reader the knowledge behind the argument. It shows them with numbers and data, that what Levy is arguing, hunting as a biological tool to increase sustainability and not be harmful to a population, is true. No name of a scientist can illustrate to a reader the effects hunting has on an environment; the reader needs to be provided data.  

Although sometimes dull in nature to those seeking passion and emotion, Sharon Levy's article is nonetheless effective in convincing the reader that hunting is necessary. She touches on every base there is in terms of loss of biodiversity covering 7 different areas, leaving no room for counter arguments based scientifically. Her argument is widespread, well rounded, and thorough in her of use of logos while still hounding in on professional research and compassion from the reader. The question levy doesn't propose, is it morally right to do so? The reader must then wonder if hunting was morally wrong, why was hunting the very first form of substantial food for humanity? And also, is mass murder of animals chemically for mass food production any more righteous? That's for you to decide. 

