Tag Archives: psychopathy

Be of Good Cheer

Posted on by
26

I get the feeling some people won’t be satisfied until I’ve plumbed the deepest, darkest depths of hunter/trapper depravity. I’ve had people ask me to write blog posts on issues as nauseating to cover as Wyoming’s new bounty on coyotes, and the glib manner in which some Wyomingites brag about cutting off coyotes ears in the parking lot of the “Sportsmen’s” Warehouse to claim their $20.00 bounty (following the same ugly tradition of  their forbearers who claimed cash at the fort for Indian scalps); incidents as horrible as the black bear (pictured here) who got caught in a 217855_388677001217027_1495584697_ntrap that some sick, twisted asshole set for pine marten; or report on how poachers are killing off the last of the world’s big cats; or go into how vacuous bowhunters sound when they praise one another for impaling animals for sport, or the malevolent tone used by wolf hunters or trappers when they get away with murdering beings far superior to them in every way.

The problem is, whenever I go there I get so irate I could end up saying something like, “They should all be lined up and shot, their bodies stacked like cordwood and set ablaze to rid the world of every last speck of their psychopathic evil once and for all.”

Well I’m not going to do that…at least not during the holiday season…

December should be a time for being of good cheer and spreading hopeful news, such as the pleasantly surprising announcement that, thanks to a lawsuit filed by Footloose Montana, along with several other litigants, the state of Montana put on hold its annual trapping season on wolverine this year, just 24 hours before that particular brand of butchery was set to begin! Of course, nearly every other “fur-bearing” animal in the state—from beavers and muskrats, to marten, fisher and mink; from otters and bobcat, to wolves, foxes and coyotes—is fair game for any sick fuck who feels the sadistic urge to set out a trapline in the wilderness…or just out of town.

But at least the wolverines—critically endangered from years of falling prey to a “celebrated” historic tradition, now down to only 35 successfully breeding individuals in the western United States—are illegal to trap right now.

Hallelujah! Thank goodness there’s some happy news to share with you this time of year!

Text and Wildlife Photography© Jim Robertson

Text and Wildlife Photography© Jim Robertson

That Thing Called God

Posted on by
17

As I’ve stated in earlier posts, and on the “About” page, I don’t normally approve comments from hunters trying to defend their blood sport. But I do sometimes save them as fodder for future posts. This is one of those comments, from someone going by the name “Sparky,” which warranted some examination on its way to the round file:

“Fine I’m a Psychopath. I enjoy feeding my family wild game meat instead of highly processed burger king. It’s healthier, period. Also animals ARE things. God created them for us to EAT!”

Okay, first of all, this may be one of those rare cases where the hunter in question is not actually a psychopath, simply because he says he is. A true psychopath would not have the insight to see it, nor the honesty to admit it.

On the subject of healthier eating, no one here is promoting or defending Burger King; but the fact is, a “processed” patty is probably not much worse for you than freshly killed venison—they’re both red meat, riddled with cholesterol. At least the hamburger might have a few vegetables and grains to provide some fiber to move things through that would otherwise sit in the colon and rot. Meat contains 0% fiber. And really, where did Sparky get the idea that there are only two food choices in the world: wild game or Burger King? Millions of good people are living proof that you can get by quite comfortably (and much more healthfully) on a completely plant-based diet.

Now, on to the last point sparky raised, “Also animals ARE things. God created them for us to EAT!”…instinct and better judgment would have me avoid any argument involving religion, but this is too outrageous to ignore. If all of the animals are merely “things” created by a god for people to stuff their faces with, then everything that was ever written by the world’s top scientists is wrong. Forget evolutionary biology, geology or physical anthropology: all we need to know was spelled out over 2,000 years ago on papyrus by people who knew nothing of science and had an agenda to champion the sandal-clad 2-leggers they deemed God’s favorite species—superior to all other animals in mind, body and spirit. Heck, to hear some folks’ interpretation, we humans are practically gods ourselves. But where does that leave all the other precious and amazing life forms who evolved along with us? According to the prevailing religion, they’re just “things” whose only purpose is to provide (colon-clogging) meat for the palette of the once-plant-eating-now-carnivorous-primates-gone-berserk.

Perhaps some hunters weren’t born psychopaths; for some, grandiosity, a lack of empathy and the objectification of our fellow beings are traits acquired by attending one too many sermons preaching that humans are the only ones that matter. It’s a pretty convenient mindset for those lucky enough to be born human, but I’m afraid it mirrors the kind of biblical misinterpretations that have been used to elevate one group of people and subjugate another. There is no chosen species any more than there is a master race. I don’t know what sort of thing God is supposed to be, but I can’t cotton to any being, supreme or otherwise, who plays favorites and gives special treatment to one creature while forsaking all others.

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

Yes, Hunters are Psychopaths—and Sport Hunting is Serial Killing

Posted on by
53

Based on your response to yesterday’s post, “Are Hunters Psychopaths?” the answer is clear: Yes, hunters are psychopaths. Therefore, by extrapolation, we can conclude that sport hunting is serial killing. There’s no way of getting around it. Not unless you consider non-human animals to be mere objects, possessions or “things,” but then you would be viewing them the way a psychopath views his victims. The fact that society still considers nonhumans as objects or possessions can only mean human society shares some of the traits of a psychopath.

Objectification is one of the benchmark behaviors of psychopathy.

Consider the words of Aaron Thomas, the accused East Coast serial rapist who says he doesn’t know why he couldn’t stop attacking women for nearly two decades. “They were objects,” Thomas recently told The Washington Post during a phone interview from his Virginia jail cell. “Whoever came down the street, an object,” he said.

Struggling to understand himself, Thomas admitted, “I don’t think I’m crazy, but something is wrong with me.” Yes, something is definitely wrong—it’s called psychopathy. Though not considered a defensible form of insanity that blurs the line between right and wrong, psychopathy is a disorder characterized by an inability to empathize with others, often accompanied by a compulsion to exploit, harm or kill in order to gain a sense of self-worth. Sound a lot like trophy hunting? It’s the same deal. Thomas said he carried out his attacks without regard for his victims. The same can surely be said about sport hunters in regards to their victims.

Predictably, Thomas’s early behavior involved cruelty to animals. As a youth, he dropped the family’s Lhasa apso into a post hole that had filled with water, nearly drowning it. Showing more insight than most animal abusers, Thomas told the Post, “I used to think to myself I could have turned out a serial killer.”

It’s eerie, yet enlightening, how much the obsession described by Thomas mirrors the preoccupation of an avid sport hunter. The following confession by a “lifelong sportsman” was printed in Montana Outdoors magazine, under the title, “Why I Hunt”:

“Why do I hunt? Well, I hunt because…. Yeah, right. As if there’s an acceptable answer to that question, one I can regurgitate to nonhunters at Christmas parties and still offer with a straight face to my fellow sportsmen, people who already know in their hearts and guts and bones that we hunt for the same reasons we breathe. Because we don’t have a choice. Just as some human beings are born with the gift of artistic talent and others have an innate facility with numbers, we hunters seem blessed with a genetic predisposition toward the chase.”

It is a “predisposition,” and it’s shared by stalkers, sexual psychopaths and serial killers. Sorry to burst their bubbles, but it’s not a blessing to be proud of, and it’s certainly not something to brag about.

 

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

 

 

 

 

Are Hunters Psychopaths?

Posted on by
20

Hey hunters, here’s a question for you: On a scale of 0-3, how strongly do you agree with this statement “Seeing an animal injured or in pain doesn’t bother me in the slightest.” If your answer was 3, do society a favor and get yourself fitted for a straightjacket and a Hannibal Lector hockey mask, because that was one of the top questions from the “How-to-tell-if-you-are-a-psychopath” quiz.

On a similar note, I just came across a September 3rd 2009 article by George Wuerthner with the no-brainer question for a title: “Are Hunters Stupid?” The article’s subheading, “The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting,” was more in keeping with his point, since Wuerthner is a hunter and former hunting guide who probably doesn’t really consider himself stupid.

He starts his article out by telling about Daryl, a co-worker of his at the Bureau of Land Management in Boise, Idaho. At a party, Daryl was trying to put the moves on a couple of women, asking them if they wanted to go gopher shooting with him…  “’Gopher shooting?’ they asked incredulously. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘gopher hunting—you know blowing away gophers.’ They looked stunned and remained silent. So Daryl tried to recover and said, ‘The fun part is seeing the red mist rise in the air when you hit one. It’s an incredible rush,’ he said with obvious enthusiasm. Those women just looked at each other like they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.  He might as well ask them if they wanted to go to the park and molest children. The women fled. Daryl was left baffled and standing alone. He just couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to go blow away gophers, especially when he offered to bring a spare rifle so they could join in the fun…”

Since I don’t personally know this guy Daryl, I can’t say for sure if he’d qualify as stupid, by today’s standards, but I can tell you one thing—he’s definitely a psychopath. A lack of empathy is a sign of psychopathy and Daryl clearly had no empathy for either the gophers he enjoys “blowing away,” or for the women he thought would be impressed by his offer. Other symptoms of psychopathy, according to the “Psychopathy Checklist” spelled out by Robert Hare, PhD, include a lack of remorse or guilt—neither of which hunters seem to be capable of when it comes to their animal victims.

Anyone who thinks, “The fun part [of gopher hunting] is seeing the red mist rise in the air when you hit one. It’s an incredible rush,” would surely score high on any psychopathy quiz. But the point of Wuerthner’s article (which, to be fair, does include some good lines in defense of wolves) is that wolf hunters who cluelessly boast about their exploits in public are a lot like his friend Daryl in terms of hunter PR. If he might hesitate to admit that all hunters are psychopaths, Wuerthner would have to agree the diagnosis when it comes to trophy wolf hunters.

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

Hunting is Hardly Sustainable

Posted on by
23

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.

 

Shotgun Wedding

Posted on by
25

As all good Sunday sermons should be, this one is about love.

Specifically, the misuse, abuse or perversion of the word “love,” as in “I love guns,” “I love hunting,” or when a hunter says, “I love wildlife.” In other words, any “love” that takes place over the barrel of a gun. I’m talking about the kind of “love” that would be better described as obsession, covetousness or, simply, the egomaniacal urge to possess.

Interestingly, some people (such as psychopaths) who are incapable of actually feeling benevolence towards others, act as if they know the meaning of the elusive “L” word. The terms “trophy wife” and “trophy house” are becoming increasingly popular, but if you care about someone or something just because you own them, it’s not the same as caring about them for who or what they are.

Hunters often claim to care about wildlife—to cherish the animals that they want to kill—but they’re confusing actual human emotions with an avaricious urge to manipulate, dominate and control (the three underlying behaviors of a serial killer, according to former FBI profiler John Douglas).

Hunting is not an act of love, it’s a hate crime. Killing animals for sport is nothing short of abuse. As studies have clearly shown, animal cruelty often leads to domestic abuse and other crimes along the violence continuum.

The serial killing of wildlife is certainly not a healthy expression of love.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

 

The Serial Killers Named Buffalo Bill

Posted on by
7

“It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.”

That haunting line was made famous by the serial killer, Buffalo Bill. Not the historic character credited with the serial murder of tens of thousands of gregarious and benign bison, including 4,120 in one eighteen month period alone. No, it was uttered by the other famous (though in this case, make believe) multiple murderer of the same name: the nemesis in the story, The Silence of the Lambs.

Like his namesake, the old west bison slayer (forever immortalized with towns named after him and museums devoted to his memory), the fictional “Buffalo Bill” made a habit of objectifying his victims, using the pronoun “it” to depersonalize them in order to avoid any stirrings of conscience that might drift by. Both Buffalo Bills thought those they killed were beneath them and therefore unworthy of their concern.

The fictitious “Bill” was modeled in part after the real-life serial killer, Ed Gein, who, like most sport hunters, made trophies and souvenirs from his victims’ bones and skin.

It seems whether their victims are human or non-human animals, objectification and depersonalization play major roles in the psyches of hunters and/or serial killers.

The First to Go

Posted on by
16

“We cause pain and suffering and apologize to no one.”

Another quote from an unrepentant, sadistic serial killer defending his fellow psychopaths’ right to manipulate and exploit others? 

Well, if by psychopathic serial killer you mean someone who kills repeatedly without conscience or empathy for his victims, then yes.

The quote is an edited version of a comment to the press by the vice president of the Montana Trappers Association. The entire statement went: “We trappers do cause pain and suffering to animals and apologize to no one.” Sure, as far as “sportsmen” go, trappers are the cruelest of the cruel, but this guy must have one over-inflated sense of entitlement to publically blurt out something this shallow, narcissistic and utterly absent of regret.

A lack of remorse or guilt, lack of empathy, grandiosity and shallow emotions are all key traits of psychopaths, according to the Psychopathy Checklist, spelled out by Robert D. Hare, PhD, author of Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us.

If a society were ever to practice pre-emptive incarceration based on a given person’s potential to do harm to others, trappers would be the first to go.