Tag Archives: bear

Sun Tzu: the Art of War For the Wildlife

Posted on by
20

Like any other technological advancement, the internet is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Social media is a great venue for educating and rallying caring people and amassing an army of kind folks to work together for a positive change.

At the same time, it can also be a meeting place and breeding ground for sick minds sunk so deep in the gutter that hate oozes from every pore. The general public is now well aware of the problem of pedophiles and stalkers trolling the internet, but there’s another malevolence out there they don’t hear much about—mainly because the crimes committed by these psychopaths are legal.

I’m talking about the prideful trophy hunters showing off their kills on Facebook; the sneering wolf hunters and trappers who post their grotesque triumphs on webpages where they know they’ll be viewed by people who are already so distraught that one more image may push them over the edge. It’s part of the game to them, to see who snaps first. Don’t be their next victim.

My advice to those of you who, like me, can’t stand seeing another NRA leader gloating over a dead water buffalo, or country star hunched over a bear he murdered with a bow in a fenced in canned hunting compound, or a wolf-hunting website designed just to turn the stomachs of kindhearted wolf advocates: don’t go there—at least for a day or two. Take some time off if you need to. Hold on to the anger, but try to pace yourself. Wars are not won by those who are blinded by rage or lost in a pit of depression. There’s an art to war; it takes self-discipline and careful strategy to be victorious.

Rome wasn’t toppled by the first invading army; like the decadence of sport hunting, it had to crumble from within first.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

 

 

Finding the Christmas Miracle

Posted on by
18

This is the time of year when people like to find the silver lining in things. The phenomenon is especially obvious during mainstream media newscasts, as the networks are keenly aware that their viewers might abandon them and move on to a different channel if they stick too close to the reality of a given situation on this, the holiest of nights.

So, in the spirit of silver linings, I’m going to try to be positive and find the “Christmas miracle” in everything (at least until December 26th anyway). Okay, here we go…

-Although the Earth’s climate is changing faster than scientists originally predicted—due to the ongoing, rampant, anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, resulting in worsening droughts, more intense hurricane and fire seasons and a record melt-down of the Arctic ice cap—at least we survived the Mayan Apocalypse.

-Even if Ted Nugent personally poached and otherwise killed an inestimable, undisclosed number of bear, deer, elk and other undeserving victims this year, at least his silly T.V. show was cancelled.

-Though there was an increase in the number of noble, majestic elk who were senselessly yet legally “harvested” (read: murdered) by sportsmen in Montana this year, the numbers are in from hunter check stations for the final weekend of the general big game season across the state and overall it looks like 2012 saw fewer hunters taking fewer animals….(That one was easy; I just put a positive spin on the original end of the year report by the Montana game department that read, “The numbers are in from hunter check stations for the final weekend of the general big game season across Montana and overall it looks like 2011 saw fewer hunters taking fewer animals. One bright spot seemed to be a small increase in the elk harvest in several areas.”)

-Despite widespread trapping of mink, marten, otter, raccoon, beaver, muskrat, bobcat, fox and about every other “furbearer” in the state of Montana, the wolverine are off the hit-list there…for now.

-While gun sales set a record on Black Friday and spiked even higher since the Sandy Hook school massacre, at least some of this year’s crazed gunmen did the world a favor and eventually turned their weapons on themselves.

-Although 115 wolves have been sadistically slaughtered in Wisconsin (in addition to hundreds of others shot and trapped in the Lower 48 so far this year), that state has reached its “quota,” so no more wolves there can be legally killed by hunters…at least until the next hunting season (hunters there are calling for an unlimited quota next time).

-Despite the fact that we’re in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event in the planet’s history with so many species going extinct per year that no one can possibly keep track, remote cameras recently photographed both an ocelot and a jaguar in southern Arizona.

-And on a personal note: although, due to his failing health, my 87 year old father was spaced out and barely able to whisper a word or acknowledge anything the entire day yesterday, he suddenly started smiling and became animated and engaged when he found himself winning nearly every hand at poker last night (by the end of the game, he had amassed an enormous pile of chips and the rest of us were bankrupt).

Seasons Greetings and always keep an eye out for that elusive silver lining!

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Great News! The “Sportsmen’s” Act is Dead…for Now

Posted on by
17

Great news—the “Sportsmen’s” Act of 2012 did not get past the Senate. Ironically, it was the Republicans that killed the bill. Not because of any great concern for wilderness or wildlife—quite the opposite; they just didn’t like how much of the budget the bill allocated for conservation projects.

What really doesn’t make sense is why every Democrat (except for Senator Barbara Boxer) voted to approve a bill with a main goal of opening up even more public lands for hunters. Why, for instance, did my two Senators from Washington State approve of a bill that would have allowed for the importation of “trophy” polar bear carcasses from Canada, undermining the ESA? And what did they stand to gain by giving a de facto federal thumbs-up to lead buckshot and other ammunition that have already poisoned so many birds, including endangered condors?

We dodged the bullet this time, but in the years to come there are sure to be other “sportsmen’s” acts rearing their hideously ugly heads (I was just going to say “ugly heads,” until I saw that one of my regular readers used the fitting adverb “hideously” before “ugly head” in reference to these contemptible acts). We can count on more puff about allowing bowhunting in parklands where wildlife is currently protected, more trophy hunters whining against regulations and most nauseating of all, politicians of both parties waxing poetic about hunting.

Hell, some people won’t be satisfied until Ted Nugent’s (hideously ugly) head is carved into Mt. Rushmore alongside Teddy Roosevelt’s.

Sport Hunting Should Go the Way of the Twinkie

Posted on by
12

In bemoaning the end of the Twinkie era (the company was only able to sell 36 million of the nutrition-less, lard-filled sponge-cakes last year and thus had to declare bankruptcy), the press have been calling Twinkies an American icon; a “family tradition,” even.

But what do Twinkies have to do with sport hunting? Well, both are long-standing traditions that should never have been. Hostess Twinkies (on par with hot dogs and canned spam) are an extremely unhealthy, potentially addictive, pseudo-food gimmick that should never have been invented, while hunting is a murderous act of desperation that should never have been taken lightly enough to have morphed into a sport. Both have seen better days, but while the Twinkie, along with its partners in crime, Ho Hos and Ding Dongs, will soon be ancient history, the US Senate is considering forever enshrining sport hunting with its very own act of Congress, the “Sportsmen’s” Act of 2012.

Those of you fortunate enough to own a first edition copy of Exposing the Big Game are in possession of a collector’s item. Subsequent printings will have the word “Twinkie” removed, since future generations will have no idea what they were.

The following paragraph from the book mentions the iconic junk food in association with an exceptionally despicable form of hunting–bear baiting…

Sometimes Elmer sets out a pile of “bait,” using whatever he happens to have on hand. Today it’s Twinkies and hot dogs (no surprise there). Then he waits in a lawn chair safely perched on a tree stand (a platform secured high in a tree, reminiscent of his childhood tree-house) for an unsuspecting ursine to discover his offering. To pass the time, Elmer reads a frightening bear-scare story in the latest issue of his favorite sportsmen’s magazine. After a while, a beastly bruin catches wind of his Twinkies. Now it’s time for action! With the scary bear’s attention focused on the goodies, the plucky huntsman makes his kill.

Unfortunately, now anti-hunters won’t be able to use the “Twinkie Defense” if they go ballistic to protect an animal from hunters like Elmer.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2012. All Rights Reserved

Chapter Titles

Posted on by
12

Here’s the Table of Contents for Exposing the Big Game?
Foreword by Captain Paul Watson

Introduction

Chapter 1) Hide-hunting Holocaust Survivors Still under Fire

Chapter 2) An Act of Bison Altruism

Chapter 3) War on Coyotes an Exercise in Futility and Cruelty

Chapter 4) Time to End a Twisted Tradition

Chapter 5) Avian Superstar Both Athlete and Egghead

Chapter 6) From the Brink of Oblivion and Back Again?

Chapter 7) A Day in the Sun for the Hayden Wolves

Chapter 8) Critical Cornerstone of a Crumbling Castle

Chapter 9) Bears Show More Restraint than Ursiphobic Elmers

Chapter 10) The Fall of Autumn’s Envoy

Chapter 11) Inside the Hunter’s Mind

Chapter 12) A Magical World of Oneness

Chapter 13) Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Chapter 14) A Few Words on Ethical Wildlife Photography

In Closing

Acknowledgements:

Looking back, this was not, at the outset, planned as a podium from which to lambaste anyone’s hobby or heritage, but was originally intended as a venue for relating some of the behaviors and capabilities I’d observed among animals living in the wild, and as a celebration of life along the compassion continuum. However, after delving deeper into the histories of the species covered here—thanks in part to the invaluable references listed below—I found it impossible to simply depict their natural activities without also chronicling the shocking stories of abuse they have suffered at the hands of man. It would have been doing the animals a disservice to merely record how they naturally lived without at least alluding to the far-reaching and pervasive ways that human actions have altered their lives and sometimes their very natures. And the facts are clear: there has been no greater direct human impact on wildlife than the ongoing threat of hunting. As with the other pertinent and profound quotes from a variety of enlightened sources, this one from Edward Abbey proficiently puts it in a nutshell, “It is not enough to understand the natural world. The point is to defend and preserve it.”

Somebody Definitely Needs a New Heart

Posted on by
32

Normally I would feel sorry for a girl born with a rare heart disease that requires her to get both a heart and liver transplant. But when 11 year old Kaitlynn Bessette of Stetsonville, Wisconsin, shot a 335 pound black bear through the heart, she lost all my sympathy.

Why is it that when some people suffer adversity they feel the need to take it out on others? And what is going on in the mind of a pre-teenaged girl that makes her want to kill a magnificent animal like a bear anyway? How can a person who knows all too well what it’s like to be the target of undeserved misfortune say, “I felt thankful, like really thankful I shot a bear”? Are kids today reading or watching too many stories, such as “The Hunger Games,” where the heroin is a huntress? Or maybe they’re playing too many violent video games, like “Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2012” (available for only $79.99 in Xbox or Wii).

Of course, Kaitlynn wasn’t out there on her own; she had the help of the Wisconsin-based “United Special Sportsman Alliance,” a hunting group that grants wishes for children (most of which no doubt involve killing animals). They must have lured the bear in with bait and had Kaitlynn safely stationed in a tree-stand close enough for an easy kill, since she wasn’t even looking when she pulled the trigger: “…I held the gun as steady as I could, I turned my head and then I shot.”

After learning that her daughter had killed a bear, her mother said, “I started instantly crying.” Crying would be an appropriate reaction to hearing that a bear’s life was just unnecessarily ended or learning that your youngster was a murderer, but Mrs. Bessette was crying tears of joy instead of sorrow, “…it was amazing.” Kaitlynn’s father was equally pleased with the carnage, “She’s a good kid. I’m really proud of her.”

The family plans to mount the bear’s remains on their wall to keep the memory alive. Had the child been satisfied with taking only a photograph of the animal, both the memory—and the bear—could live on.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

No Offense, but You’re an Animal

Posted on by
13

I’m an animal, and if you don’t know it yet, it’s my duty to inform you, you’re one too. All we animals, the big-brained two-leggers, the furry four-leggers, the feathered and the finned are carbon-based creatures made up of the same ingredients. Every last earthling oozed from the same original, primordial stew pot.

The sooner we accept that we’re all animals, the sooner we can make peace with the others of this planet, rather than doing battle with them. Ultimately, it’s to our detriment that we deny evolution any longer. Humankind can’t live in a vacuum. We need all our best science to figure how to live with the many diverse, interconnected life forms that help keep this planet hospitable.

Bill Nye, ‘the Science Guy,’ recently stated in his Big Think video (which has been viewed nearly 3 million times so far), “I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that’s completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it.”

In rebuttal, the spokesman of a group of ‘Young Earth Creationists’ proclaimed, “No, we are not just evolved animals as Nye believes; we are all made in the image of God.” Young Earth Creationists, or ‘Biblical Creationists,’ as they prefer to be called, believe in a literal interpretation of the creation story in the book of Genesis. They say the weeklong account of God creating the earth and everything in it represents six 24-hour periods (plus one day of rest) and date the age of the earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years.

Nye’s view falls in line with the vast majority of scientists, who date the age of the earth and the universe as 4.5 billion years old. “The idea of deep time of billions of years explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent,” Nye said in his video. Still, polling from Gallup has shown for the past 30 years that between 40-46% of the survey respondents believe in creationism: that God created humans and the world within the past 10,000 years.

Granted, there are folks whose belief in creationism compels them to treat “God’s creatures” with compassion. As far as I’m concerned, people can believe whatever they want—as long as it promotes kindness to all sentient beings. Although I’ve never read it, I understand the Bible contains a number of passages that promote benevolence toward the vulnerable. (Before someone says something like, ‘If you haven’t read the bible, you’re ignorant of what you speak,’ I will argue that a person could end up even more ignorant and confused after reading it.)

Unfortunately, for the majority of believers, creationism leads to a sense of human superiority and the self-serving notion that we humans are in a higher realm of importance than the rest of the animal kingdom. This convenient fallacy has been used to justify the exploitation of animals over the centuries and continues to have widespread acceptance to this day.

For example, my uncle, a hunter who boasted of killing the largest black bear in the state, held to a word for word interpretation of the Bible which led to his belief that, “Humans were meant to subdue the earth” drawing his own conclusion, “There’s no earthly purpose for cougars.” His reasoning, shared by so many people the country over, was: to make life better for humans we should rid the world of species like cougars, bears, coyotes and wolves. Another example of this kind of stinkin’ thinkin,’ Republican vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a “pro-life” creationist bow-hunter who doesn’t see the hypocrisy in committing the sin of killing non-human animals for sport.

The idea of creationism was abandoned by the mainstream scientific community shortly after Darwin introduced The Origin of Species in 1859. By 1880 nearly every major university in America was teaching evolution. Bill Nye summed up his video with, “In another couple centuries I’m sure that worldview [creationism] won’t even exist. There’s no evidence for it.” While it seems only logical that any continued cultural advancement would include the acceptance of sciences such as geology, paleontology and evolution, I’m not so sure I share his optimism for the further progress of humanity.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Bears Not the Most Dangerous

Posted on by
2

Bears are powerful animals who deserve respect and warrant a dose of caution, but their reputation as a menace is far out of proportion with reality. One or two people may be killed by bears in a given year, but over that same time period 50 will die from bee stings, 70 will be fatally struck by lightning and 300 will meet their maker due to hunting accidents. A person has about as good a chance of spontaneously combusting as being killed by a bear.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of bears are killed by people each year, and no one is keeping track of how many are wounded, only to crawl off and die slowly without hospital care to pamper them back to health. 30,000 black bears are slain during legal hunting seasons in the US alone. Possibly another 30,000 fall prey each year to ethically impotent poachers seeking gall bladders to sell on the Chinese black market. Victims lost to that vile trade are eviscerated and left to rot, since bear meat is not considered a desirable taste treat. To make it palatable, backwoods chefs traditionally douse the flesh and offal with salt and grind the whole mess into sausage.

Why then, is it legal to kill bears when we have long since concocted a myriad of ways to turn high protein plant foods (such as soy, seitan or tempeh) into a perfectly scrumptious, spicy sausage, sans intestines? Clearly, the hunting of bears is nothing but a warped distraction motivated by a lecherous desire to make trophies of their heads and hides. But, dangerous and terrifying as they must seem to trophy hunters out to prove their manhood from behind the security blanket of a loaded weapon, they aren’t the “most dangerous game,” as the serial killer, Zodiac (an avid hunter who grew bored with “lesser” prey and progressed to hunting humans) divulged.

_________________________________________

The preceding was an excerpt of the chapter, “Bears Show More Restraint than Ursaphobic Elmers” from the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Text and Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson