Recreational Hunting Redux: Cougar Fund Opts For No Killing

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

Killing cougars doesn’t solve the “problems” at hand and should stop right now

Published on March 8, 2013 by Marc Bekoff, Ph.D. in Animal Emotions

Government organizations, hunters, and trappers are notorious for wantonly and inhumanely killing millions of nonhuman animals (animals) in their widely ineffective attempt to manage and control “problem” individuals and groups (for detailed discussions and data see and and). Just today I read that more than 550 wolves have been “taken” by hunters and trappers in the Rockies alone this season.

This article continues here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201303/recreational-hunting-redux-cougar-fund-opts-no-killing

Anti-Hunt Q and A

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

The following are my answers to interview questions posed by a journalism student who so was moved after reading my book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport, that she decided to undertake a project on the psychology of hunting…

1. Have you come into contact with anyone (especially hunters) who has stated that your book changed their view on the game of hunting and the mistreatment of animals?

Answer: Yes, I’ve heard from several non-hunters who have thanked me for exposing the truth about big game hunting. No longer ambivalent about the unnecessary cruelty of sport hunting, they are now active anti-hunters.

But I have yet to meet a hunter introspective enough to allow anything to change their inbred, imbedded views on killing wildlife.

2. Have you received any ‘backlash’ since publishing this book?

Answer: For what, for urging hunters and trappers to be more compassionate to our fellow beings? No, and they haven’t received any backlash from me for tormenting and killing my friends the animals (aside from my book and blog).

Deep down hunters and trappers know what they are doing is wrong; they just hope we’ll continue to let them get away with it.

3. Are you friends with anyone who avidly hunts? Do any of your family members hunt?

Answer: Unfortunately.

4. In the beginning of the book, it states that you have always been a man of compassion towards animals. Why do you think that spreading the word of being kind to animals is important?

Answer: I’m going to answer that question with another question, a couple of other questions, actually: Why did the emancipators think freeing the slaves was important? My grandmother and great aunts were suffragettes, why did they fight for women’s right to vote? Why did people push to ban kiddie porn or crush videos? Why? Because speaking out for innocent victims of exploitation is the right thing to do.

5. What do you say to those who hunt for food and not sport? Many hunters believe that it is more humane to hunt for food than it is to buy meat from a slaughter house.

Answer: First of all, most people who claim to hunt for food not sport are living far above the poverty level. They are not starving and they don’t need to kill animals to survive. They do it because they want to—it’s “fun.” In many cases they spend far more on the hunt than it would cost them to get their food from the markets where they buy their beer, tobacco and Twinkies. They can boast all they want about “using the meat”—hell, even wolf or cougar hunters will claim that they plan to eat what they kill—but they’re just trying to make their trophy hunt seem palatable to the unwary public.

And the claim that hunting is more humane than what cows go through is exaggerated at best. While there’s absolutely no denying that what cows at the slaughterhouse are forced to endure is appallingly cruel, hunters conveniently forget that the animals they stalk are stressed out from the time they hear the first gunshots fired by someone sighting in their rifles for hunting season.

The myth of that “good clean shot” is a grim fairytale in most every case. Hunters expect to have to track down and finish off an animal they’ve shot or impaled with an arrow. In reality, “game” animals probably suffer longer than those at the slaughterhouse (though this is in no way meant to condone factory farming).

When it comes right down to it, hunters don’t give a shit about being humane, or they’d quit eating meat and join the millions of people who are living proof that human beings can live longer, healthier lives if they swear off flesh foods and get their nutrients from the plant kingdom.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

Washington Another Hostile State Wanna-be

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

It’s clear from the irrational outbursts at a recent WDFW public meeting on wolves that Washington wants to join the ranks of the hostile, hateful anti-wolf states. At least the eastern Washington cattle ranchers do.

Here are some excerpts from an article in an eastern Washington newspaper, the Wenatchee World entitled, “Wolf management will include lethal removal, state officials say.”

(My comments are within parenthesis.)

OKANOGAN — State wildlife officials assured Okanogan County residents Thursday that some problem wolves that kill livestock will be trapped and euthanized this year.

(Is that a threat or a promise?)

“The lethal side of management is controversial, but it is a very real part of management,” Dave Ware told a standing-room-only crowd that included many cattle ranchers. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife game division manager added, “We’re trying to be more aggressive, and we’re trying to be more responsive.”

(By “responsive” he was no doubt speaking to bloodthirsty cattle ranchers, not those who suggest that wolves have their place and should be allowed to live in the state.)

Ware said his agency has also created a wildlife conflict section to stay on top of problem wolves, and has hired someone in Northeast Washington whose only focus will be on wolf conflicts.

(Sounds like some kind of a bounty hunter).

And, they will share radio-collar information about where the wolves are with ranchers who have cattle in the area.

(I knew there was a reason I hated those burdensome radio collars wolves are forced to wear; while the public is led to believe they are for “research purposes,” those collars can actually be used against the wolves by giving their locations to their sworn enemies.)

Still, more than 200 people who crowded into the Okanogan County PUD auditorium for Thursday night’s wolf meeting weren’t satisfied.

(In other words, they were out for blood.)

Some told Wildlife officials they plan to manage wolves their own way — by shooting them on sight.

(You don’t get much more hostile than that.)

An Okanogan County commissioner told them the county is interested in giving jurisdiction over the wolves to the Colville Tribes. Tribal officials last year issued nine permits to kill wolves on the Colville Indian Reservation.

(The Colvilles were the first in the state to initiate a hunting season on wolves.)

Ware said if problem wolves are located east of Highway 97 — where wolves are federally delisted — they’ll consider trapping and killing them.

(Meanwhile, the feds are planning to delist wolves elsewhere across the country—see below.)

It’s a decision that will still be made by Fish and Wildlife Director Phil Anderson, he said, but added, “Lethal removal is going to be part of that management.”

(Of course, “lethal removal” is standard practice for “wildlife managers”).

Ware also said he’s expecting the federal government to include the rest of Washington in the area where wolves are no longer protected.

(No comment).

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

Back To the Bad Old Days

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

What’s up with all the anti-wildlife legislation going on around the country these days? Everywhere you look there’s some state senator or representative introducing bills to keep non-human animals down and implement some new form of cruelty to punish them for the crime of not being born of our privileged species.

A few examples: a self-amused eastern Washington representative is calling for east-side wolves to be moved out of his district to the west side of the Cascade Mountains; at the same time Washington State politicians just introduced three bills to make it easier for ranchers to use lethal measures on wolves whenever they see fit; and of course you’ve heard that Montana’s public servants are on a rampage to get rid of their resident wolves. Now one of their legislators wants to lower the minimum hunting age for that state to nine years old.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, a senator just put forth legislation to instate a $100.00 bounty on sea otters! Never mind that these playful, aquatic mammals were nearly completely wiped out during the fur trade era, are critically endangered or extinct from much of their former range and are still listed in Alaska as Threatened or Endangered under the federal ESA, those poor, underpaid (sarcasm intended) commercial crab fishermen see them as competition. (Far from downtrodden, crabbers take pride in being the wealthiest of commercial fishermen; no doubt the senator who proposed the bounty is counting on a kickback into his campaign coffers from the crabbing industry for his otter oppression bill.)

And the list of detrimental anti-wildlife legislation goes on and on.

Is it just me, or have good ol’ boy state politicians stepped up the pace of non-human animal persecution? It’s as though they’re intentionally trying to drag us back to the bad old days of the 1800s, arguably this country’s most reckless period for uncontrolled animal exploitation—besides, perhaps, the present.

Take Action:

Not surprisingly, state legislators only take input from residents of their given state, but since there are bogus bills and measures cropping up across the country, there should be something to speak out against wherever you live. For instance, if you live in Washington State, contact your senator and urge them to oppose anti-wolf bills SB 5187, SB 5188 and SB 5193. Let them know:

These three bills would undermine the state’s wolf management plan by giving authority to the county legislators and local sheriffs over the state wildlife agency biologists, and would allow the public to override the state and kill wolves perceived to be a threat to livestock on public and private lands.
There are only 50 wolves in Washington. Now is not the time to remove their protection.
Washington’s wolf management plan was created with massive public involvement and adopted unanimously by the Washington Wildlife Commission; powerful ranching advocates should not be allowed to undermine it.

Hope for a Humane and Environmentally Sane Future

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

The following is my review of a new book published by Earth Books…

Often, over the years, I’ve thought about taking on the task of chronicling the ways in which humankind is destroying the Earth, and how we need to change to survive as a species. Now, equally sensing the dire need for such a book, long-time animal activist, Will Anderson, has risen to the challenge with his new book, This is Hope: Green Vegans and the New Human Ecology.

I have to admit, the title, This is Hope, sounded to me like it could be almost, well, overly-hopeful. But in fact the book takes a hard, realistic look at where we’re headed if we don’t make some major changes in our destructive ways, our eating habits and our view of non-human animals as commodities. For instance, Anderson doesn’t buy into the increasingly popular fallacy that hunting can somehow be sustainable in this rapidly growing human world. Not only does he take on hunting, and those groups who promote it, he employs the term “neo-predation” for the myriad of ways in which the modern world disrupts biodiversity—to the peril of all who share the Earth.

And the author does not fall prey to the politically correct notion that human overpopulation is an overstated myth. Instead we learn that as environmentally-conscious, green vegans who truly want to see a future for all life on the planet, addressing and reversing our overpopulation is a must.

If we are willing to embrace Will Anderson’s prescription for a “new human ecology,” there truly could be hope for the future. As Anderson puts it, “The new human ecology can be the transformation of human behavior all of Earth has waited for.” Some of the positive results he foresees from this transformation include:

• Vast landscapes subjected to grazing and growing food for livestock are released from animal agriculture.
• Some of that land will be banked and rotated with other croplands. Soil erosion and pollution are sharply reduced. Sustainably grown, organic food becomes more reliably available.
• Conceivably, fewer people on Earth and the efficiency of botanical agriculture will allow lower food prices and raise food availability.
• We will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions immediately by 18% to 51%.
• Other human pressures on ecosystems decrease and allow them to trend toward recovery.
• Vegan diets will create better human health. This should result in lower health care costs.
• We stop the intentional impregnation of billions of domesticated individuals from other species, the torment of their enslavement and denial of their innate needs, and their early, violent deaths.
• The science and implementation of wildlife and habitat management is transformed…control by the small minority of people who hunt, fish and trap is ended.
• Livestock fences will be removed. Wild herds of indigenous wildlife can reoccupy habitat and have room to migrate long distances. Ecosystem keystone species like black-tailed prairie dogs will not be cruelly persecuted on behalf of animal agriculture.
• There are no new ghost nets, those fishing nets that break away from vessels, drift with oceanic currents, and continue to trap fish, turtles, marine birds, and marine mammals.
• We stop bottom trawling that destroys sea bed marine ecosystems. Since vegan human ecology does not require fish, it ends the trashing of millions of tons of unwanted bycatch (non-targeted species), eliminates shark-finning that is decimating shark populations, stops the killing of octopi, and ends the drowning of dolphins and turtles.
• We finally create a moral code of behavior that is based upon biocentric innate value; it is more consistently applied to all individuals of all species and ecosystems.

Photograph ©Jim Robertson

Hunting Needs to be Part of the Gun Debate

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

The following OP-ED is by Anne Muller of Wildwatch, a division of the Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting

Hunting Needs to be Part of the Gun Debate:
Taking a Hard Look at the Pittman-Robertson Act

Hunting as a part of the gun debate appears to be inconsistent with the current goal of the White House, which is to fracture the monolithic power of the NRA. The common sense connection between hunting and violence has not merely been side-stepped, but the use of firearms to hunt has the explicit imprimatur of this administration. Although there is clearly a concerted effort to protect hunting from proposed gun control laws, the subject needs to be examined for its connection to the government’s role as both beneficiary and motivator of the use of firearms.

In a New York Times op-ed, Selling a New Generation on Guns, the author, Mike McIntire, stated that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) financed a study to explore attitudes toward guns in order to counteract the trend of declining hunter recruitment. Strategies were suggested for generating a greater acceptance of guns among children. As the question of why a government entity would have a strong interest in promoting firearms use among children was left unanswered, we would like to fill that gap. Not surprisingly, the reason is financial.

Mandated by the Pittman-Robertson (P-R) Act of 1937, an excise tax was placed on firearms and ammunition. The firearms and ammunition excise tax (FAET) is collected by the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade Bureau (TTB) within the US Department of Treasury. The tax is then turned over to the FWS. Eleven percent is retained by the FWS to cover administrative expenses. The rest is apportioned to all 50 states using a formula based on each state’s hunting license sales and state size. The P-R Act prohibited the taxes from being used for any purpose other than to generate more hunting and shooting opportunities, i.e., more use of firearms and ammunition. A galling aspect of this Act is that, in order to receive their federal share, states must match those funds with 25% from state coffers. Those who celebrate the P-R Act claim that matching funds can come from hunting license sales, but left unsaid is that they can also come from the general fund of the state.

To illustrate how aberrant the P-R excise tax is, let’s compare excise taxes collected on two other well-known products: alcohol and tobacco. Excise taxes on those products may be used for a variety of societal needs: education, health, housing, etc.

If the same government structure and financial mechanism that applies to firearms applied as well to alcohol and tobacco, the following would exist:

There would be two government agencies solely dedicated to the respective sale and use of alcohol and tobacco. They would collect excise taxes for the purpose of creating drinking and smoking opportunities, and pay their employees based on the number of people they motivate to drink and smoke.

They would not share their funds with the public, even with the direct or indirect victims of alcohol or tobacco.

Would we tolerate such government agencies? Not likely. Yet, that is precisely how the FWS and state bureaus of wildlife operate. The use to which the weapons and ammunition are put is irrelevant to the destination of the FAET. That means that firearms and ammunition used in drug-related or other crimes aid hunting and wildlife manipulation for hunting. The massacres at Jonesboro, Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, and thousands of individual murders in the urban areas of our country have, in fact, benefited wildlife management agencies. How can murder with a firearm and ammunition whose excise taxes pay only for wildlife management be justified? Are the victims merely “collateral damage”?

The FWS and the firearms industry are focused on youth hunting. Their studies have concluded that placing firearms in the hands of children will hook them on using weapons, thus ensuring sales well into the future. Mr. McIntire’s op-ed brought to light a suggested strategy for motivating disinclined children to hunt: “peer ambassadors.” In the 1990s, when the drop in recruitment of young people into the “shooting sports” became worrisome to the firearms industry and wildlife managers, hunters used another recruitment tactic that they called the “buddy program.” The industry had determined that the decline of hunting (use of firearms) was partially attributable to a rise in the number of families headed by single moms. Through hunting publications, hunters were encouraged to befriend these women in order to take their kids hunting.

While hunting is touted as a clean-cut pastime that allows rural traditions to be passed from generation to generation, it is actually quite an intimidating experience for those who encounter hunters on their property, have had property damaged, pets and livestock killed, and their children frightened. Rural citizens who wish to keep hunters off their property, or keep them from shooting near their property, are often harassed, abused, and ignored by hunters, while law enforcement officers and local judges too often back up the hunters. In particular, women living alone have been forced to pay fines, and spend time in jail and courts, having been charged with “Hunter Harassment.” Hunter Harassment laws, instigated by the NRA and others, now exist in every state, although they arguably violate the First Amendment.

Those who depend on the sale of firearms and their use are desperate to recruit children into the “shooting sports” to ensure profits and excise taxes well into the future. That is being done although studies have shown that for some there is but a fine line between killing animals and killing people, a line that can and has been crossed.

Recently, it was reported that a SEAL sniper attributed his indifference to killing people to having hunted in his youth. That came to light when he himself was killed by someone with a hunting background. Such news reports indicate and dictate that hunting has to become a part of the debate.

There are many responsible citizens, gun owners and voters among them, who are disgusted with the arrogant perspective that the recreational killing of animals is considered to be a justification for the purchase of firearms and ammunition.

One need not play video games to learn violence. Lessons in violence can be learned as readily from killing animals in the woods. Recently, a live squirrel shooting contest was sponsored by the fire department of Holley, NY. Their flier showed an adorable squirrel with cross-hairs covering his little face. The flier announced that the children who killed the fattest squirrels would win firearms, including a semi-automatic weapon. Who benefits? The firearms industry and wildlife management agencies. Who loses? The children who are taught that killing other living creatures can be fun. In the end, the society loses.

It is simply prudent to keep firearms out of the hands of some adults and certainly out of the hands of all children.

Anne Muller, President

Wildlife Watch Inc.

Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting is a division of Wildlife Watch.

http://www.wildwatch.org

http://www.abolishsporthunting.org

http://www.lohv.org

Tell the Calgary Herald NO grizzly bear hunting

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

According to the Calgary Herald, a “debate” is surfacing (concocted and spurred on by the Herald itself) over whether to resume a hunt on grizzly bears in southwestern Alberta.

The grizzly recovery plan was put in place after studies found there were fewer than 700 grizzlies left in Alberta, leading the government to declare the species threatened.

Please vote NO in their poll and share your thoughts with the editorial board Here.

Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Good Questions

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

On Facebook this morning a friend had posted a photo of a cruelly confined pig at a factory farm desperatly chewing on the bars of her cage. A caption read, “If your God had wanted us to eat animals, do you really think he would have given them the ability to feel pain and fear? What kind of sadistic individual would that make him?!”

Good questions. Taking it a step further, I have to wonder…if god had wanted us to eat animals, do you really think he would have given us the ability to feel their pain and fear?!

Unfortunately, empathy and compassion are not doled out equally to all.

Some people feel them so strongly it literally pains us to hear about the brutalities inflicted on nonhumans by their fellow man. The sadness is outweighed only by the understanding that many of the animal cruelties are so widespread and so accepted by society it will require nothing short of a major revolution in thinking to put an end to them. For those of us so well-endowed with empathy and compassion, every KFC, Arby’s or McDonalds commercial, every shiny photo ad for this weeks’ meat and dairy specials at the local market, every camo-clad nimrod in a pickup truck sporting an NRA bumper sticker inspires feelings of grief, anguish or anger.

There are those, Temple Grandin, for instance, may be able to feel empathy but apparently not compassion. Her autism allegedly allows her to experience the fear and anxiety factory farmed animals go through, yet her lack of compassion allows her to work for the animal industries, helping to spread the absurd, feel-good myth that some animals are “humanely” raised (and slaughtered), thereby giving consumers a license to ignore any twinges of empathy or compassion they might have.

And there are many who are completely incapable of feeling empathy for others. They’re the lucky ones—if hollowness, selfishness and superficiality are to be considered enviable traits.

Save the Animals—For Their Sake, Not Mine

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

Anthropocentricism is so deeply imbedded into the human psyche that these days it’s even hard to find a wildlife-related action alert which doesn’t focus on how some group of people might benefit from the continued existence of a given species. The well-being of the individual animal—let alone its species—so often takes a back seat to the ways humans benefit or profit from them.
Take wolves, for example. When Montana’s wildlife lawmakers were considering closing a few small areas around Yellowstone to wolf hunting and trapping, the primary reasons given by most wolf proponents for wanting the exclusion zones had to do with the value wolves have as tourist attractions and as part of a scientific study. To the majority of those who testified, the facts that the wolves themselves are sentient beings and/or are essential elements in nature’s design—who don’t deserve to be shot on sight as vermin—seemed secondary to the ways in which watchers and biologists were affected by the wrongful deaths of Yellowstone wolves.

Similarly, a petition to force Facebook to remove the page, Wolf Butchering, Cooking, and Recipes reads, “To protect the Wolves, and the Sensitivities of Native Americans. It is offensive, and a discrimination against the Religious Beliefs of Native Americans.” Of course I signed the petition, but I did so for the sake of the wolves, not because of anyone’s purported religious beliefs. I’m against cannibalism as well—for the sake of the victims of such barbarity, not because the culinary choice is considered a cultural taboo. At the same time, I don’t want migratory waterfowl habitat set aside just so I can go bird watching, or to save the whales so I can go whale watching. It’s about them, not about our perception or enjoyment of them.

As we’ve all heard, ad nauseam, “sportsmen” help wildlife by hunting—or so they would have us believe. As James McWilliams blogged in a timely post entitled Hunting, Land Conservation, and Blood Lust, “This land preservation defense of hunting is a common one. Get enough people who like to blow away animals on board and you can prevent undeveloped land from becoming a Walmart,” dispelling this myth with, “The vast majority of conservation-driven hunting policies are designed not to improve the quality of a particular ecosystem but to improve the quality of the hunt.”

Westerners didn’t know okapis or orangutans even existed until around a century ago. Were the lives of such unutilized and therefore unappreciated animals meaningless up until the day they were “discovered”? You or I may never get the chance to see a black rhino or a snow leopard, but that certainly doesn’t diminish their intrinsic value.

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Exposing the Big Game

Snaring’s About the Sickest

In Alaska, bears—in addition to wolves—are routinely hunted, trapped and shot from planes under the deathly ill-advised notion that eliminating those animals leaves more moose or caribou for more hunters to slay. What the Alaska state Board of “Game” can’t seem to figure out is, as the number of hunters goes up, the quantity of moose goes down, simple as that. Will we have to see an Alaska devoid of bears and wolves before the game players finally figure out who’s to blame?

But if anything could be sicker than aerial gunning for bears, it’s snaring them. Bear snaring is a recent addition to Alaska’s long history of animal abuse and exploitation; this new act of depravity was allowed “experimentally” for the first time in 2008.

In the following excerpt from an article, posted January 12, 2012 in the Anchorage Press, Bill Sherwonit dared to imagine just what snaring is really like for its victims:

Picture this: An adult female grizzly bear is roaming forested lowlands on the western side of Cook Inlet when she gets a whiff of ripe, decaying flesh. Sensing an easy meal, the bear follows her nose to a large tree. Several feet above the ground, a bucket partly filled with rotting guts and skin has been attached to the tree; placed on its side, the open-lidded container faces outward, inviting inspection. The grizzly stands and sniffs around the cavity, then sticks her right paw into it. When the paw hits the bottom of the pail, it triggers a metal snare that closes around the animal’s foot. Feeling the pinch of the trap, the grizzly pulls back. As she does, the metal loop tightens.

Two cubs have followed her to the bait. Now, sensing their mother’s agitation, they too become upset. One begins to bawl. This only deepens the adult bear’s determination to free herself. With her free paw she swats and tears at the bucket and tree and she pulls even harder against the snare, which begins to cut through the animal’s thick fur and into her flesh. Now the embodiment of rage, the adult grizzly roars and snaps her jaws, thrashes about. The cubs wail louder.

Eventually exhausted by her struggles, the grizzly mom slumps against the tree, while the whimpering cubs huddle together nearby. More time passes and the trapped grizzly resumes her fight for freedom. The cubs again cry in panic.

It goes like this for hours. A day might pass before the trapper-called a “snare permittee” by state wildlife officials-comes to check the snare, even longer if he’s delayed for some reason. When he does show up, the grizzly mom goes berserk. Depending on their age and personalities, the cubs might charge the person, run off, or huddle in fear. These two retreat into nearby bushes.

The trapper could legally shoot the cubs, now in their second year, but he chooses to ignore the small, frightened bears and heads for their mom. He takes aim, fires his gun, and kills her…

The cubs remain in hiding. Without their mother, it’s more likely they will starve than survive the summer.

Even five years ago, the idea was unimaginable: trap and shoot Alaska’s bears so that human hunters might kill more moose.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. Always trying to come up with new ways to rid Alaska’s landscape of competitors for moose and caribou meat, at least a few predator-control proponents, Ted Spraker among them, were looking toward Maine, then the only state to allow the snaring of bears. The retired Department of Fish and Game biologist worked nearly three decades to increase kills of wolves and bears, primarily to benefit sport hunters.…

Stomach churning stuff—those “snare permitees” must be as callous as they come. I’m just glad Sherwinot saved me the heartache of making the imaginary journey myself this time.

The late, Canadian naturalist and author, R D Lawrence, wrote:

“Killing for sport, for fur, or to increase a hunter’s success by slaughtering predators is totally abhorrent to me. I deem such behavior to be barbaric, a symptom of the social sickness that causes our species to make war against itself at regular intervals with weapons whose killing capacities have increased horrendously since man first made use of the club—weapons that today are continuing to be ‘improved’.”

Contact in for the Alaska Board of Game can be found here: https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/stop-bear-snaring-and-wolf-trapping-adjacent-to-denali/

Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

Exposing the Big Game

Forget Hunters' Feeble Rationalizations and Trust Your Gut Feelings: Making Sport of Killing Is Not Healthy Human Behavior

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