Tag Archives: deer

Romney Taps Diehard Bow Hunter for Running Mate!

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A bowhunter could soon be the U.S. Vice President!!!  Spread the word–Mitt Romney’s choice for running mate is an avid, diehard trophy deer hunter!!

“Diehard” is more than a euphemism, in this case it has a double meaning. Unfortunately it’s the deer who literally die hard, thanks to Ryan’s chosen hobby.

According to the blaze.com, ‘He’s an avid bow hunter who emails from the brush as he waits for deer.’ Number 10 of the US News list of “10 Things You Didn’t Know about Paul Ryan (and, I would add, never hoped to find out) is: #10. Ryan’s hobbies include hunting and fishing. He is a bowhunter and belongs to his hometown’s archery association, the Janesville Bowmen.

“I butcher my own deer, grind the meat, stuff it in casings and then smoke it,” Ryan told Politico.

Here’s Paul Ryan’s Voting Record on the Environment:

  • Voted NO on protecting free-roaming horses and burros. (Jul 2009)
  • Voted NO on environmental education grants for outdoor experiences. (Sep 2008)
  • Voted NO on $9.7B for Amtrak improvements and operation thru 2013. (Jun 2008)
  • Voted NO on increasing AMTRAK funding by adding $214M to $900M. (Jun 2006)
  • Voted NO on barring website promoting Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. (May 2006)
  • Voted YES on deauthorizing “critical habitat” for endangered species. (Sep 2005)
  • Voted YES on speeding up approval of forest thinning projects. (Nov 2003)
  • Rated 10% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
  • Inter-state compact for Great Lakes water resources. (Jul 2008)
  • Make tax deduction permanent for conservation easements. (Mar 2009)
  • Rated 13% by HSLF, indicating an anti-animal welfare voting record. (Jan 2012)

And here’s Paul Ryan’s “hobby:”

Terms of Undeerment

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I studied a bit of wildlife “management” in college and the one thing that comes across loudest and clearest in that discipline is how animals are not to be regarded in the context of their place in a healthy, freely functioning ecosystem, but by what value they have as a “game” species. Our fellow beings are viewed in terms of “population densities,” a convenient way of ignoring the welfare of individual animals. 

Wildlife “mangers” have dreamed up their own language—their own special terms—to degrade animate non-humans to the level of rocks or soil. A deer isn’t a precious creature, it’s a “resource,” and killing one isn’t murder, it’s “harvest.” As a scientist, the biologist is expected to look upon their fellow animals as a geologist would see a vein of minerals to be melted down to feed the hungry human machine, rather than as fully-formed sentient beings with their own self-interests in whether or not they are exploited or made to suffer. 

The late, great Edward Abbey (author of such inspirational works as The Monkey Wrench Gang and Heyduke Lives) imparted, “To speak of harvesting other living creatures, whether deer or elk or birds or cottontail rabbits, as if they were no more than a crop, exposes the meanest, cruelest, most narrow and homocentric of possible human attitudes towards the life that surrounds us.”

photos copyright Jim Robertson