Tag Archives: deer hunting

Who’s in “Season” Now?

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I just came in from a long walk with our dog. For the most part, it was completely quiet out there. Not a breath of wind today, only the sound of our footsteps and the dog’s hot breath as she dragged me from scent to scent. Just as I started to consciously appreciate how peaceful it all was, the silence was extinguished by some damn neighbor shooting his gun.

What the hell was he shooting at? Who’s in “season” now? Deer and elk “season” are over. There’s an ongoing open season on ducks and geese, but this was no “pop, pop” of a shotgun; it was the echoing report of a high-powered rifle.

Coyotes can be shot on sight year-round, but thanks to assholes like this guy, there’s not much chance of seeing them out this time of day.

No, whoever it was, they were probably just firing off their gun for the fun of it. All’s I know is, it was fuckin’ irritating—and I’m sure the local wildlife found it even more annoying than I did.

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

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

Just Out for a Bit of Fun

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“I think it’s cruel that they would take sport in stuff like that. Very cruel. It’s just sophomoric, juvenile.”

That quote could just as easily have been a humane person’s reaction to witnessing any legal goose, pheasant, elk or wolf hunt, but in this case it was in reference to a speeding driver running over 92 protected shorebirds on the Washington coast (on the same stretch of beach mentioned in this earlier post, Compassion for All, Not Just the Endangered).

Shorebirds, like the dunlins who were senselessly killed, huddle close together on the beaches this time of year, which makes the act of running over nearly eight dozen of them at one time no great challenge for anyone willing to stoop to such an act.

The driver was most likely just out for a bit of fun when they spotted the flock of migratory birds dead ahead. After plowing through the birds—who have an uncanny knack of flying off at the last minute to avoid any vehicle following the posted speed limit of 25mph, but who must not have been ready for someone going twice that speed—chances are the driver said to his passengers something like, “that was pretty neat.”

That same line was uttered by a Dubois taxidermist and outfitter, Joe Hargrave, who, on Oct. 5, just four days after their season opened, became one of Wyoming’s first hunters to legally kill a wolf since 1974.

“It was pretty neat to be able to hunt them because they’re a magnificent animal,” Hargrave said. “I like to see them in the wild just like elk, moose and everything else. It is nice to be able to have the opportunity to hunt them.” (The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed wolves from the endangered species list in Wyoming on Sept. 30, kicking off the first hunting season since wolves were placed on the list in 1974. Conservation groups have filed three lawsuits seeking to re-list the wolves; they are expected to be decided sometime in 2013.)

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Wildlife Rehab Center of North Coast are offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the illegal killing of the protected shorebirds. Meanwhile, thousands of unprotected migratory geese, deer, elk, cougars, coyotes and wolves are shot each year by people with the same motive as those thrill seeking, sophomoric, sociopathic beach drivers—they’re just out for a bit of fun.

Text and Wildlife Photography© Jim Robertson

Text and Wildlife Photography© Jim Robertson

Finding the Christmas Miracle

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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

Well, Ted, We’re Waiting…

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Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Paul Ryan proved he was true to his word (unfortunately) and made good on his promise to see that his 10 year old daughter kills her first deer this year.

Now it’s time for his fellow die-hard bowhunting fanatic, Ted Nugent, to live up to (so to speak) a promise he made back in April. According to the website Right Wing Watch, Nugent swore that: “If Barack Obama becomes the President in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

It seems to me, if Nugent’s a man of his word, he has only five months to either die or go to jail. Well, Ted, we’re waiting…

Right Wing Watch reports that at the NRA’s national convention, Nugent called Obama a criminal and denounced his “vile, evil, America-hating administration” which is “wiping its ass with the Constitution.” And he concluded a video stumping for Mitt Romney with, “We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November. Any questions?” Meanwhile, Romney stated on a radio show, “It’s been fun getting to know Ted Nugent.”

With friends like Ted, who needs enemies?

 

Unfortunately, This Time Paul Ryan Was True to His Word

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It seems the only time you can count on a politician to make good on a campaign promise is when it’s something detrimental, like approving the Keystone Pipeline. I fully believe Mitt Romney would have done that, as promised, if he had been elected. And I had no doubt Paul Ryan was serious when he announced his plan to have his 10 year old daughter kill her first deer this year.

While I’m thankful he didn’t make Vice President, unfortunately it freed him up to spend more time at his hobby of murdering animals. And sure enough, he saw to it that his pre-teen little girl joined the ranks of deer assassins as well. On Thanksgiving (of all times), he sent her up a tree outfitted with a .237 caliber rifle to wait for one of the practically tame deer they feed to wander within range of her tree stand and blammo, that’s all she wrote. Physically, the “hunt” could not have been easier. Psychologically and emotionally, it may have been more of a challenge for her had the promise of being showered with daddy’s praise weren’t so alluring.

Ten is an extremely young age to have your heartstrings and pre-pubescence conscience toyed with. It is three years away from being considered teenaged—far too young to drive, vote, partake in alcohol or even to go to war.

I’m glad my father didn’t get his kicks killing animals. As any reformed hunter will tell you, obedience to peer pressure or a father’s expectations can take half a lifetime to outgrow. Hopefully it won’t take that long for young Miss Ryan to develop her conscience and decide to do what’s right.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Hunting is Hardly Sustainable

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There aren’t all that many deer around here, but you wouldn’t know it by the number of rigs full of hunters driving up and down the roads lately. Due to several factors—poaching, for one, along with a healthy population of natural predators, and the fact that thick evergreen forests don’t provide much to browse on—deer are far from common in these parts.

It seems hunters are the overpopulated ones. For every little deer there must be a dozen Elmers out for a drive-by drool. Often you see 3 of them packing the front seat of a pickup; but they’re there for the party atmosphere, not to conserve on fuel. The first weekend of hunting season is a lot like opening day at some popular fishing hole. But instead of boats full of fishermen tangling each other’s lines on a crowded lake, hunters troll back and forth on the roads, competing for that one “trophy” buck out there.

I often wonder if anyone has done a survey of just how much money is spent, and gallons of fuel burned, by the average hunter as compared to their success rate and the amount of food procured. According to their apologists, hunters in the U.S. spend $24.7 billion annually on their sport, including the cost of guns and ammo, travel, gas, food and drink, supplies, vehicles, leases, lodging, and guide services.

Meanwhile, the cost to society in dealing with the psychopathic behavior hunting encourages and enables is immeasurable.

I know one thing: it would be far more cost effective for them to get their protein from grains, like wheat or rice and legumes like beans or lentils. When it comes right down to it, hunting for subsistence can hardly be considered sustainable.

 

Waiting with Bated Breath

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He waits in silence—his scent masked, face painted, dressed in camouflage head to toe—alert for any sign of the enemy. Keyed up for the kill, he texts quietly to pass the time—eager to learn how much his investments have grown in the past hour.

Suddenly the enemy steps out from behind heavy cover and into range. The assassin tenses, every muscle in his body taut and ready for battle. He’s hoping to make a “clean” kill. Somewhere in the back of his mind is the vague, indistinct notion that a sloppy shot might cause his quarry to suffer; but of far greater import to him are the bragging rights among his comrades if his shot hits the mark, and the fact that an injured enemy could get away.

As his intended victim moves in closer, unaware of his presence (perched in a tree stand just overhead), the killer draws back the string of his compound bow and lets fly an aluminum arrow with a razor-sharp steel point (available tax-free in any sporting goods shop in his state, thanks to him). The arrow hits the target broadside, but as luck would have it the shot misses the heart, and sure enough the wounded enemy escapes…

But fear not, the “enemy” isn’t a dangerous terrorist out to destroy the American way of life. He’s a gentle, doe-eyed deer, peacefully minding his own business.  And the killer is not Rambo or some other heroic mercenary type, here to rid the world of bad guys. It’s just Paul Ryan, who, despite his cruel streak and his habit of bullying defenseless deer and wild turkeys, could wake up a week from now and find himself second in charge—only a heartbeat away from Commander in Chief—of the nation with the most destructive weapons on Earth.

The world waits with bated breath…

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Live With It, Elmers!

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Sorry Elmers, it’s time to snuff out one of the most overused and overstated rationalizations for your beloved sport.

Hunters would have you ingest the preposterous pabulum that hunting helps animals; that hunters are their philanthropic fairy godparents (well-armed well-wishers, if you will) performing the gallant duty of keeping animal populations in check; that animals won’t go on living unless they kindheartedly kill them (this of course is all the more outrageous in light of how many species have been wiped off the face of the earth, or perilously close to it, exclusively by hunting).

But deer, along with most other animal species—besides Homo sapiens, have built-in mechanisms that cause their reproduction rate to slow down when their population is high or food is scarce.  Though state “game” departments are usually loath to share any information that might work against one of their arguments for selling hunting licenses, even they know that in reality the wildlife can ultimately take care of their own. According to the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, “A mule deer herd that is at or above the carrying capacity of its habitat may produce fewer fawns than one that is below carrying capacity.”

The fact is, hunting encourages ungulates to reproduce more, thus seemingly warranting the alleged need for population controls via, you guessed it, more hunting.

Hunting industry propagandists have a lot of people convinced that culling is a necessary evil for controlling animal overpopulation. Lethal removal is their one-size-fits-all solution, no matter the circumstance. But there are always alternatives to that fatal fallback position. When we finally get past the viewpoint of animals as objects, or “property of the state,” and start to see them instead as individuals, the justifications for culling begin to wear thin.

Many places that provide habitat for healthy populations of deer could also support the natural predators who evolved alongside them. All that’s required of humans is to get out of the way and let nature take its course, or, in some cases, repair the damage they’ve done by reintroducing wolves or other native carnivores who were fool-heartedly eradicated. Yet, in the western US and Alaska, as well as in Canada, natural predators are still being killed to allow deer, moose or elk hunters a better chance at success. While some people complain that these browsers and grazers have gotten too tame, hunters in states like Idaho and Montana are whining that wolves make the elk too wild and thus harder for them to hunt.

I tend to be even more cynical about areas where humans have claimed every square inch for themselves and aren’t willing to share with native grazers. When I hear grumbling about deer, elk or geese pooping on a golf course, I have a hard time relating to people’s grievances. It’s the height of speciesism to expect that these animals should face lethal culling for successfully adapting to an unnaturally overcrowded human world.

Ours is the invasive species, overpopulating and destroying habitats wherever we go. We wouldn’t want some other being jumping to a knee-jerk “cull them all” reaction every time humans reached their carrying capacity in a given area.

Sooner or later Mother Nature will tire of humans’ destructive dominance and come up with a way to bring life back into balance. I can just hear her telling off the hunters: “Other animals have a right to be here too—just live with it, Elmers!”

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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

The Dreaded Day is Upon Us

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I awoke this morning to the sound of angry gunfire. Not just the occasional, distant pop, pop but a constant blam, blam, blam symptomatic of wartime—or of people shooting blindly into a whole flock or herd of fleeing animals. I knew it was almost “general deer season,” but this sounded more like the kind of mindless blasting that goes on during goose and duck season in the winter months around here. So I checked the Washington “game” regulations and sure enough, an all-out “incredible war on wildlife” (as Cleveland Amory put it) had begun!

Not only is Oct. 13th (fittingly) the opening day of deer season, it’s also an early opener on ducks and geese today as well. From now until the end of November, no deer, elk, goose, duck or bear is safe from human harm. Meanwhile, species like cougar, bobcat, fox or raccoon will be under the gun until mid-March. And coyotes, crows and other “common” animals can be killed year-round in this supposedly blue state. The only beings not on the list of allowable targets are six endangered species (who of course were driven to the edge of extinction by overhunting decades ago).

I knew this dreaded day was coming; I just hoped it wouldn’t get here this soon. On the bright side, this is also the first day of a long streak of steady fall rain storms which should make for some rusty guns, water-logged campsites and miserably wet nimrods.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Hunting Perverts Kids’ Natural Affinity for Animals

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In yesterday’s post I mentioned that the serial killer, Keith Hunter Jesperson, first got his taste for killing animals at the early age of six. I bring this up again because of the fact that our potential vice president-to-be intends for his 10 year-old daughter to get her first taste for killing deer this fall.

Candidate Paul Ryan said in a recent interview with the Safari Club International: “Lately, I’ve had the great pleasure of introducing my children to the hunt.  I have some two-seated ladder stands, so I take my kids with me for deer gun season (one at a time of course).  I also take my kids pheasant and duck hunting.”

Children are impressionable and easily influenced in their pre-teens. What kind of person wants his daughter to imprint on the killing, death and dismemberment of a creature as beautiful as a deer, duck or pheasant before she’s even old enough to date—let alone drive a car? And what kind of society encourages its children to learn to blast living beings out of existence? Are we trying to send a message to our youngsters that non-human life has no value and that an animal’s death is meaningless? Or are we purposefully trying to recruit more serial killers like Keith Hunter Jesperson, Jeffry Dahmer, Zodiak or Alaskan trophy hunter, Robert Hansen, who began their fledgling murder careers by killing animals?

The media has largely joked-off Paul Ryan’s plan to corrupt his little girl with killing, but when there are innocent lives at stake, it’s no laughing matter. In some cases it’s the hunting industry and their state game department puppets that are to blame for pushing kids into the killing fields earlier and earlier. Although no state issues a driver’s license to anyone less than 16 years old, most states don’t even have a minimum age for shooting at an animal with a gun.

In direct answer to the drop in sportsmen’s numbers over the years, meddlesome state game departments are encouraging grade-schoolers to get a taste for killing (thereby perverting their natural affinity for animals). For example, 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.

Farley Mowat, author of Never Cry Wolf and A Whale for the Killing, wrote the following about his indoctrination to hunting in his foreword to Captain Paul Watson’s Ocean Warrior:

“Almost all young children have a natural affinity for other animals, an attitude which seems to be endemic in young creatures of whatever species. I was no exception. As a child I fearlessly and happily consorted with frogs, snakes, chickens, squirrels and whatever else came my way.

“When I was a boy growing up on the Saskatchewan prairies, that feeling of affinity persisted—but it became perverted. Under my father’s tutelage I was taught to be a hunter; taught that “communion with nature” could be achieved over the barrel of a gun; taught that killing wild animals for sport establishes a mystic bond, “an ancient pact” between them and us.

“I learned first how to handle a BB gun, then a .22 rifle and finally a shotgun. With these I killed “vermin”—sparrows, gophers, crows and hawks. Having served that bloody apprenticeship, I began killing “game”—prairie chicken, ruffed grouse, and ducks. By the time I was fourteen, I had been fully indoctrinated with the sportsman’s view of wildlife as objects to be exploited for pleasure.

“Then I experienced a revelation.

“On a November day in 1935, my father and I were crouched in a muddy pit at the edge of a prairie slough, waiting for daybreak.

“The dawn, when it came at last, was grey and sombre. The sky lightened so imperceptibly that we could hardly detect the coming of the morning. We strained out eyes into swirling snow squalls. We flexed numb fingers in our shooting gloves.

“And then the dawn was pierced by the sonorous cries of seemingly endless flocks of geese that cam drifting, wraithlike, overhead. They were flying low that day. Snow Geese, startling white of breast, with jet-black wingtips, beat past while flocks of piebald wavies kept station at their flanks. An immense V of Canadas came close behind. As the rush of air through their great pinions sounded in our ears, we jumped up and fired. The sound of the shots seemed puny, and was lost at once in the immensity of wind and wings.

“One goose fell, appearing gigantic in the tenuous light as it spiralled sharply down. It struck the water a hundred yards from shore and I saw that it had only been winged. It swam off into the growing storm, its neck outstreched, calling…calling…calling after the fast-disappearing flock.

“Driving home to Saskatoon that night I felt a sick repugnance for what we had done, but what was of far greater import, I was experiencing a poignant but indefinable sense of loss. I felt, although I could not then have expressed it in words, as if I had glimpsed another and quite magical world—a world of oneness—and had been denied entry into it through my own stupidity.

“I never hunted for sport again.”

There is a 50-50 chance that an avid (and possibly rabid) bow hunter, who is taking “great pleasure” in perverting his young children’s natural affinity for animals, could become our next vice president. Let’s hope Mitt Romney doesn’t lend Ryan his magic underpants for the upcoming debate with Vice President Biden. Our family values are really at stake this time.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson