Monthly Archives: September 2012

Washington’s Wedge Pack Slated for Extinction!

Posted on by
11

This is the pack I blogged about here: https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/leave-wolves-the-hell-alone/

Nabeki's avatarHowling For Justice

“Mike Hudak’s Western Turf Wars—the book you need to understand how governmental mismanagement of ranching is destroying America’s public lands with your tax dollars.”

It didn’t take Washington WDFW long to act like every other state fish and game agency, where wolves call home. They’re targeting the entire Wedge Pack of 8-11 wolves, including the pups, for death, over a few cow losses, cows that are grazing on THE AMERICAN PEOPLE’S PUBLIC LAND!!

Here’s a message to subsidized, welfare ranchers. GET YOUR FRIGGIN COWS OFF OUR PUBLIC LAND! You are the problem, not the wolves. If you don’t like wolves, then round-up your cows and put them in a secure enclosure ON YOUR LAND with an electric fence. fladry, range riders and whatever else you have to do to protect your investment. It’s not the American people’s job to subsidize your poor animal husbandry practices.

How many businesses in America…

View original post 871 more words

Celebrate National Anti-Hunting Day

Posted on by
14

Forget Watergate, the worst crime committed by President Nixon was his proclamation commemorating the first annual National Hunting and Fishing Day in 1972. Since then all the successive presidents have dutifully followed suit, including Barack Obama, who has declared September 22, 2012, yet another National Hunting and Fishing Day (despite a steady slide in hunter participation since the ‘70s and a Change.org petition urging the President to end the misguided tradition).

In the spirit of fairness and equality, I, as the self-appointed dis-honorary president of the Cleveland Amory Memorial Hunt the Hunters Hunt Club, by virtue of the authority vested in me (by myself and I), hereby declare September 23rd, 2012, to be the first annual National Anti-Hunting and Fishing Day.

To commemorate this sacred occasion, a family-oriented affair will offer fun and educational hands-on activities that every non-hunter can enjoy. It will be a great way to introduce young people and newcomers to the pursuit of anti-hunting, while teaching them about the important role that anti-hunting plays in true wildlife protection.

A lively outdoor festival (held on an anti-hunting compound at an undisclosed location) will feature such activities as a “trap-shoot” (or, if you don’t have a gun, a trap-smash-with-a-heavy-object) event, and time trials to see who can dismantle duck blinds, tree stands and bait stations the fastest.

If you happen to have any old Ted Nugent albums or CDs that you bought before knowing what a rabid, frothing bowhunter he would turn out to be, bring them, along with a shotgun and we’ll use them in lieu of clay pigeons for a traditional skeet shoot.

Sign up for workshops on how to identify plain-clothed hunters during the off-season, and how to avoid them. You can also learn the best method to secure a freshly harvested trophy hunter to the hood or roof of your car, along with the fine art of flagrantly flaunting your hunter harvest for the benefit of your favorably-impressed fellow anti-sportsman or anti-sportswoman.

There will be fishing pole and arrow-breaking contests and a Tarzan movie marathon (sponsored by the NBRA*) where you’ll witness Tarzan-tested techniques for bending poachers’ and trophy hunters’ rifles around trees (*naturally, NBRA stands for the National Bent Rifle Association). And vegan body-builders will be on hand throughout the day to demonstrate their prowess at tearing Cabela’s catalogs in half.

Kids, be sure to bring your pink and purple paints for the color-over-the-camouflage-clothing contest. Other festivities for the young and young at heart include: pin the arrow on the bowhunter, throwing pies at the cammo-clad clown and the ever-popular bashing the life-sized, orange-vested nimrod piñata.

The Wolf was Better off Endangered

Posted on by
27

Paradoxical as it may seem, wolves were better off endangered.  Not as a species perhaps, but to the individual wolf stuck for days in a steel-jawed leg-hold trap, or to the pack forced to dodge a hail of gunfire from cammo-clad snipers and a volley of arrows from a phalanx of archers, it must feel like the misguided war on wolves has begun anew.

Now that they have been declared “recovered” here, wolves are again under threat of the trap and rifle just as they were during the environmentally reckless Nineteenth Century.

By 1872, the year President Grant created Yellowstone National Park (in part to protect “game” species like elk from wanton destruction by overeager hunters), 100,000 wolves were being annihilated annually. 5450 were killed in 1884 in Montana alone, after a wolf bounty was initiated there. Wyoming enacted their bounty in 1875 and in 1913 set a penalty of $300 for freeing a wolf from a trap.

Though the federal Endangered Species Act safeguarded wolves from overzealous state hunting and trapping laws, as the director of the USFWS pointed out, the ESA is “not an animal protection act.”

The right of an American species not to be hunted to extinction is a relatively new advancement. At present, it‘s about the only right extended to the nonhumans in this, the land of the free. Alas, the river of speciesism still runs deeper than the Potomac at spring breakup.

Founding father and second US president, John Adams, may, or may not, have believed that all men were created equal, but he clearly took a dim view of the wildlife native to our formerly pristine land. In 1756 he openly expressed his scorn for the world his ancestors had strived to transform: “Then, the whole continent was one continued dismal wilderness, the haunt of wolves and bears and more savage men…Then our rivers flowed through gloomy deserts and offensive swamps.“

Unfortunately for any animal not blessed enough to be born human, our unalienable rights to life and liberty were specific initially only to white males, next, to all males and then to all human animals regardless of gender or sexual orientation but as yet do not extend to the nonhuman animals with whom we share this planet.

Our lawmakers have had a sad history of turning a blind eye to the most basic rights of those who differ from us primarily in that all four of their limbs are used for walking and they don‘t wax the hair off their backs. This seems a little biased when you consider that in terms of social skills, devotion to family and intellect relevant to survival animals, like wolves, are every bit our equals.

Why is this happening? So that “sportsmen” can claim all the “game” species for themselves. The return to full-scale wolf hunting gives today‘s anti-wolf bigots their chance to drive this misunderstood embodiment of wilderness back to the brink of oblivion.

____________________________________________

Portions of this post were excerpted from the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

For the Bragging Rights

Posted on by
6

Autumn in elk country would not be complete without the stirring sound of solicitous bulls bugling-in the season of brightly colored leaves, shorter days and cooler nights. Nothing, save for the clamor of great flocks of Canada geese, trumpeter swans or sandhill cranes announcing their southward migration, is more symbolic of the time of year. And just as any pond or river along their flyway devoid of the distinctive din of wandering waterfowl seems exceedingly still and empty, any forest or field bereft of the bugling of bull elk feels sadly deserted and lifeless.

Yet there are broad expanses of the continent, once familiar with these essential sounds of autumn, where now only the blare of gunfire resounds. By the end of the nineteenth century, the great wave of humanity blowing westward with the force of a category five hurricane—leveling nearly everything in its destructive path—had cut down the vast elk herds, leaving only remnants of their population in its wake.

Nowadays, a different kind of rite rings-in the coming of autumn across much of the land. Following in the ignoble footsteps of their predecessors who hunted to extinction two subspecies, the Mirriam’s and the Eastern elk, nimrods by the thousands run rampant on the woodlands and inundate the countryside, hoping to relive the gory glory days of the 1800s.

On the way back from a trip early last evening I saw one such nimrod as I turned at the local mini-market on the final stretch home. I have no doubt in my mind that he was parked there just to show off his kill; the antlers of a once proud, now degraded and deceased bull elk were intentionally draped over the tailgate of the assassin’s truck—clearly on display.

I can’t say that I see just what the hunter was so proud of. It’s not like he personally brought down the mighty animal with his bare hands. Elk follow a pretty predictable path this time of year, and the bulls are distracted and preoccupied with escorting their harems around. Taking advantage of them during their mating season is about as loathsome as anything a human can come up with (and that’s saying a lot).

All a deceitful sportsman has to do is blow an imitation elk bugle to lure a competitive bull within range of their tree stand or wait in hiding above the herd’s traditional trail to the evening feeding grounds. When the procession passes by (right below the camouflaged killer’s perch), the most challenging thing for the sniper is deciding which individual animal to shoot or impale with an arrow.

The fact that they let groups of cows and young spike bulls pass by and wait for the largest, “trophy” bull is proof positive that they’re not hunting for food, but rather for sport—and for bragging rights.

____________________________

The first portion of this post was excerpted from the chapter, “The Fall of Autumn’s Envoy,” in the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

The Feeblest Rationale for Hunting Yet

Posted on by
6

The Feeblest Rationale Yet

Dear Editor,

As I read the letter, “Not Fair to Hunters,” in last week’s MV News, I experienced a major WTF (ie: what the fuck?) moment at the line, “Even those who do not hunt should respect its place in the human psyche.” Of all the feeble rationalizations for hunting you hear these days, suggesting that it helped shape the human psyche in some respectable way is the feeblest yet!

Homo sapiens hasn’t proven to be a very kind-hearted species in terms of our treatment of others over the ages, and the act of slaying animals has done nothing to cultivate our moral evolution. To quote Sea Shepherd’s Captain Paul Watson from his foreword to my book, Exposing the Big Game, “The cruelty and destruction that humans have inflicted upon each other is surpassed only by the cruelty and destruction humans have inflicted upon the nonhuman citizens of this world.”

I devoted an entire chapter of my book to peering “Inside the Hunter’s Mind” and let me tell ya, it’s a dark and disturbing place down there.  Here are some of the startling things I discovered…

Hunters’ self-interests are consistently placed far above those of their animal victims, whom they depersonalize and view as objects rather than individuals. Reducing living entities to lifeless possessions and taking trophies of their body parts—without the slightest hint of guilt, remorse or other higher sentiment—is standard practice for the sport hunter…and the serial killer.

And like a serial killer, the sportsman keeps his malignant, murderous obsession concealed within the hollow confines of his psyche…until the next hunting season.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Like the KKK, the NRA will eventually Fade Away

Posted on by
40

Comparatively speaking, the body of hunters in America is withered and shrunken, only a wee fraction of its former self. Today there are six times as many photographers, bird watchers and others who enjoy seeing animals alive as those compelled to make them lie down and die. Like the KKK and the SLA, the NRA has seen its day and will rightfully fade away. Literally, figuratively and statistically, hunting is a dying sport.

But non-hunters should not be lulled into a false sense of security for wildlife. Sportsmen, though a skeletal minority, are a shrill and voluble 5 (or 6) percent when it comes to forcibly interjecting themselves into animal issues; they‘re reluctant, to say the least, to kiss their blood-sport goodbye and join the civilized world.

The NRA and other heavily-funded hunting groups are pushing to pass laws such as the odious “Hunting Heritage Protection“ acts (already shoved on several states), aiming to enshrine their perceived “birthright“ to shoot and kill nonhumans recreationally.

Worse yet are the unconstitutional Hunter Harassment laws, which essentially punish residents and land-owners for trying to protect animals and keep hunters off their properties. In direct answer to the drop in sportsmen’s numbers, meddlesome state game departments are encouraging young kids to get a taste for killing (perverting their natural affinity for animals).

Alabama opens deer season two days early for children under the age of 16 (so they’ll have a better crack at “bagging“ one), and Maine holds a “Youth Deer Day,” allowing pre-season bow hunting for children ages 10 to 16. States like Illinois and Colorado are preying on women by offering hunting lessons for single mothers, while the private pro-hunting programs “Becoming an Outdoors-woman“ and the NRA’s “Women on Target” are seeking to enlist the future Sarah Palins of America.

Fouler still are the ongoing schemes to open more and more public lands to hunting…

_______________________________________________

The preceding was excerpted from the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Occupy Wildlife!

Posted on by
14

A new USFWS survey suggests the popularity of hunting has risen from 4% in 2006 to 6% in 2011. Many are in doubt that a growth in hunting participation is actually going on, and suspect that those numbers have been skewed to give the illusion that it’s a growing, rather than a dying sport. Even if a few more people have fallen prey to the lure of the blood-sporting way, 6% of the population is not a very high percentage of the country considering that hunters and their ilk interject themselves into every issue that involves wildlife, while the rest of us who don’t approve of wildlife butchery are barely represented.

Whether hunters make up 4% or 6% of the US population, we are still the 95% (give or take a single measly point). It’s high time we start an Occupy Wildlife movement and give the non-hunting majority—and the animals—a voice!

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

The Monster Rises?

Posted on by
10

The moral of the story of Frankenstein is simply: don’t try to resurrect the dead, lest ye unleash a monster. Just as Doctor Frankenstein hastily dug up a grave and extracted the cadaver of an oversized, freshly executed criminal with a defective brain and reanimated it, the captains of the hunting industry are trying to breathe new life into the dying sport of stalking and killing animals.

When I wrote my book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport, the most current data available on the popularity of hunting was a 2006 US Fish and Wildlife Service survey which clearly demonstrated that hunting was steeply in decline. Now, they’ve come up with a new survey, taken in 2011, which suggests that blood sports may be seeing a minor revival.

It wouldn’t completely surprise me, considering all of the hip new pro-hunting books out on the market in the past few years (versus only one anti-hunting book) along with a stomach-turning smorgasbord of wildlife snuff shows on cable television lately. Not to mention, the ever-growing popularity of camouflage clothing…

According to the new survey, the percentage of Americans who hunt has grown from 4% in 2006 to 6% in this, the second decade of the new millennium.

The current survey breaks it down as follows: “Nationwide, 6% of the population 16 years old and older hunted in 2011. Regional participation rates ranged from 3% in the Pacific Region to 11% in the East South Central Region. Regions with participation rates above the national average of 6% were East North Central, West North Central, East South Central, and West South Central.”

Meanwhile, their figures for wildlife watching are more hopeful: “2011 participation rates for wildlife watching indicate its popularity across the country. 29% of U.S. residents 16 years old and older participated in around‑the‑home activities. Around‑the‑home wildlife watching is closely observing, photographing, feeding, visiting public areas, and maintaining plantings and natural areas, all within a mile of home. Participation rates for these activities ranged from 24% in the Pacific Region to 35% in the East North Central Region. Residents of the New England, East North Central, West North Central, and East South Central regions participated at rates above the national average in 2011.”

Of course, the new survey could be a sham. As Madravenspeak suggests, “I am guessing that hunters gave their federal hunting killing pushers (USFW) a frantic plea to change the way they estimated the money spent by hunters versus wildlife watchers and how they gauged the numbers. I have been told you can pretty much swing a survey to the desired result.”

Either way, we, the non-hunting majority, can’t let the mad scientists succeed in their plans for a full-on resurrection of hunting.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

 

Welcome Anti-hunters (No Nimrods Allowed)

Posted on by
25

I see by the comments coming in lately that there are a lot of new faces showing up here on this blog. I’d like to extend you all a warm welcome. I say, I’d like to, but unfortunately I can’t—not all the new folks who’ve joined us lately are benevolent toward their fellow beings. What I can and will do is roll out the welcome mat for fellow wildlife watchers and animal rights advocates and welcome anti-hunters and non-hunters alike.

There are some people who are absolutely not welcome. I’m talking about the hunter and trapper trolls who somehow found themselves here and are now thinking: “What the hell is this site?”

Well, I’ll start by informing you what it is not: This is not a red-neck tavern with a “Welcome Hunters” sign out front. It’s not a message board or a chat room for people wanting to argue the supposed merits of animal exploitation or to defend the act of hunting or trapping in any way, shape or form. There are plenty of other sites available for that sort of thing.

For your sake, I urge you not to bother wasting your time posting your opinions in the comments section. This blog is moderated, and pro-hunting outbursts will not be tolerated or approved. Consider this fair warning—if you’re a hunter, sorry but your comments are going straight to the trash can. This is not a public forum for nimrods or other self-serving animal abusers to discuss the pros and cons of hunting.

Those who know right from wrong on this issue may appear a bit narrow minded, but the fact is there are no real pros to the matter, only cons, so there’s no point in wasting everyone’s time with your tired old PR drivel. We’ve heard all the rationalizations for killing so many times before. Any attempt to justify the murder of our fellow animals will hereby be jettisoned into cyberspace.

What you’ve stumbled upon is a haven for wildlife and wildlife advocates, a wildlife refuge of sorts, that’s posted “No Hunting,” as any true sanctuary should be. Just as a refuge is patrolled to keep hunters and poachers from harassing the wildlife, this blog site is monitored to keep hunter trolls from disturbing other people’s quiet enjoyment of the natural world. Those are the people whose unselfish comments are always welcome here.

I Call Horse Pucky on That!

Posted on by
2

As I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the mainstream media is often full of shit—especially when reporting on animal issues. It’s not necessarily that they knowingly or willingly distort the truth, just that they keep re-hashing the same old bovine excrement that they pick up off the AP or some other newswire, without first checking out the facts for themselves.

For example, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen the following statement in papers over the past few days: “Washington Fish and Wildlife officers confirmed on Friday that two more cattle had been killed by Wedge Pack wolves in northern Stevens County.” If I were of a mind to trust the news—or Washington’s Fish and Wildlife officers for that matter—I might think there’s a reason the game department is resuming their lethal “removal” (read: sniping and trapping) of four more pack members.

But a little digging revealed these interesting details: Of the two carcasses found on Diamond M-owned land this Wednesday, one was intact, the other eaten. “We marked ‘confirmed’ on both individuals,” said the agency’s wolf policy coordinator Steve Pozzanghera this morning, “recognizing that there will be some question about confirming on an entirely consumed carcass.”

Damn right there’s “some question,” in fact there’s practically no way of knowing how a calf was killed after it’s been “entirely consumed” by hungry carnivores and/or scavengers!!!  Pozzanghera said at the end of the day, WDFW considered it a kill rather than a calf that had died of other causes and then was subsequently fed on by wolves…

I’m sorry, but if that’s how these “wildlife officers” go about determining whether an animal has been killed by wolves or not, I don’t have any faith in their decision that any calves or cows were ever killed by the Wedge pack. It all seems awfully coincidental to me that an outspoken wolf hater would suddenly start having problems with wolf depredation. It’s a little too reminiscent of when Washington’s first confirmed wolf pack, the Lookout pack, started hanging around convicted poacher Bill White’s ranch—just a mile out of the town of Twisp—of all places. I lived fourteen miles from the White’s place—fourteen miles further up the Twisp River, in a remote setting surrounded by the Lake Chelan Sawtooth Wilderness Area—and I never had a problem with wolves.

After a lengthy and costly police investigation (which resulted only in a measly slap on the wrist for the wolf poachers), it was determined that Bill White and his son set out deer carcasses as bait to attract wolves to the traps they had set for them. As ranchers, White claimed not to want wolves around, yet he lured them onto his property with bait.

How do we know that the folks at the Diamond M ranch aren’t luring in wolves with carcasses of calves who have died of one of the many other causes that cows naturally die from? We don’t. Unfortunately, we can’t count on our Wildlife officers to reveal the truth either. And don’t bother checking the local media; they’re too busy recycling horse pucky to get to the bottom of it.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson