Tag Archives: trapping

Some Cold Hard Facts about Wisconsin Wolf Hunting

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Facts about Wisconsin Wolf Hunting:

  • The state of Wisconsin’s wolf hunting season began at an hour before dawn today, October 15th, and runs non-stop until the end of February.
  • Wisconsin received more than 20,000 applications for just 1,160 permits, some from as far away as Florida, Texas, and California. (Meanwhile, in Minnesota, wildlife officials have set a quota of 400 wolves and awarded 6,000 permits.)
  • State rules allow hunters to slay wolves by a crude assortment of methods and with a callous array of sadistic devices, including luring with bait, strangulation by snaring and slow-death in steel-jawed leg-hold traps.
  • In addition, the state had planned to allow hunters to start using hounds to hunt wolves beginning Nov. 26, when their deer season ends. But Dane County Judge Peter Anderson issued a temporary injunction against the use of dogs on Aug. 31, after humane societies and environmental groups sued. (Though Wisconsin currently does not allow the use of hounds for hunting wolves, they do allow hounding for bears, raccoons and many other undeserving species).
  • Kurt Thiede, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources* (DNR) lands division administrator, has issued a statement in support of the use of hounds: “We … have learned from other states that harvesting a wolf can be difficult. The use of dogs is a key way to increase hunter success. We will continue to work with the court to remove the injunction on the use of dogs….” (*Note to Mr. Thiede and the rest of the DNR: Wolves are not a “resource,” they are intelligent, sentient beings. Also, killing them is not “harvesting,” it’s murder!)
  • Wolves were once abundant in Wisconsin, numbering around 5,000 in the 19th century, before they were hunted and trapped to extinction.
  • Wolves have recently been shown to contribute to a greater diversity of understory plants, as well as improved deer herd and trout stream conditions, but the Wisconsin DNR has decided to allow hunters and trappers to kill 201 wolves this year alone.
  • Today the wolf population is growing and DNR estimates that the state could support 700 to 1,000 wolves. Yet they speculated that “this level may not be socially tolerated” and therefore have decided to limit the state’s wolf population to only 350 individuals. Of course, hunters and trappers are all-too eager to help…

Again, the injunction on the ‘hounding’ is only in place UNTIL DEC 20TH

Voice your objections to the use of hounds for wolf hunting and tell the court that hounding is not acceptable! Tell the governor and the legislators that the Wisconsin wolf hunt is exceptionally savage and will give the state a black eye. Please continue to put pressure on the governor’s office, the legislators, and the tourism department:

Governor Scott Walker

govgeneral@wisconsin.gov

608-266-1212

115 East Capitol

Madison, WI 53702

Wisconsin residents can find contact info for your legislators here: www.wisconsin.gov/state/core/government.html

You may also want to tell the tourism department that you will be unable to bring your family to Wisconsin for any future vacations, as you do not patronize the wolf killing states:

Wisconsin Dept. of Tourism

1-800-432-8747 or 608-266-2161

201 West Washington Ave.

P. O. Box 8690

Madison, WI 53708-8690

tourinfo@travelwisconsin.com

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some People Simply Like to Kill Other Animals

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In the title of an October 2nd post to his blog column in Psychology Today, University of Colorado evolutionary biology professor Marc Bekoff, PhD, asked, “Do Some People Simply Like to Kill Other Animals?”

The answer seems to me a foregone conclusion.

Bekoff writes, “Many know that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, made a pledge in May 2011 only to eat meat he hunted so that he could be ‘thankful for the food I have to eat.’ Of course, it’s not obvious that he has to eat other animals… Surely, in the arena of who, not what, winds up in our mouth, Mr. Zuckerberg and others are not my moral compass. It’s always good to remember that a significant percentage of the food we eat was once sentient beings who cared deeply about what happened to them and to their friends and family. They should be referred to as “who” not “that” or “what.” So, when someone wants to talk about a meal it’s a matter of who’s for dinner, not what’s for dinner.”

His post included the subheading, “‘Ethical hunting’ raises numerous difficult and sticky issues,” about which Bekoff states, “I see no reason to kill other animals for a meal that isn’t needed. Every time I read an essay about “ethical hunting” it makes me reflect on a number of different and challenging issues. One that comes up time and time again is that maybe some people simply like to kill other animals and then offer a wide variety of excuses about their lust for blood (consider also the unrelenting war on wildlife including the wanton killing of wolves, the man who used a trapped wolf for target practice…)”

Sea Shepherd’s Captain Paul Watson backs up the assertion that some people enjoy killing other animals, “Behind all the chit-chat of conservation and tradition is the plain simple fact that trophy hunters like to kill living things.”

But no one makes the case as clearly as hunters themselves. One anonymous thrill-killer recently posted the following shocking admission to an animal advocacy site: “What i like to do as a hunter is go in the woods and kill everything possible and let my dogs chew on it. I once shot a deer and it layed in the creek and i had to shoot it again in the head while it was crying and it kicked me lol when i stuck my knife in its belly so my brother cut its throat it was soo funny. Me and my uncle was guttin one he told me to hold its head and when i did he pushed on its belly and made it bahh at me and scared the crap out of me haha. Hunting is awesome like when you see a herd of deer and just start firing right in the middle and then go and see how many different blood trails there are.”

Prairie dog hunting is a popular “sport” that can in no way be defended as “ethical” or necessary for subsistence (people don’t eat them). Private ranches offer “sportsmen” the chance to kill prairie dogs to their heart’s content—for a fee. The following is an ad for a typical prairie dog hunting excursion: “We approach the edge of a prairie dog town and set up and shoot for an hour or two or until the prairie dogs start getting scarce, then we pull up and drive over the hill and continue prairie dog hunting…after you get tired of the carnage, it‘s also fun to try shots over 1000 yards.”

Note that the ad uses the word “fun,” laying to rest any doubt that they enjoy the killing. So, why shouldn’t people be allowed to have their fun? Beyond the obvious answer that their animal victims are not enjoying this “sporting” behavior, society at large should discourage this kind of conduct for public safety reasons.

Keith Hunter Jesperson’s history of aggression toward animals began when he was only six. An avid hunter and part-time serial killer, Jesperson got his first taste of killing living beings by bashing in the heads of gophers. He discovered that he enjoyed it. Later, while living with his parents in a mobile home park in Washington State, he started killing larger animals. He would beat stray dogs and cats to death with a shovel, strangle them with his bare hands, or shoot them with his BB gun. His proud father bragged to others about how Keith had gotten rid of the stray cats and dogs in the trailer park.

“All this did is spawn in me the urge to kill again,” Jesperson told an interviewer. “I began to think of what it would be like to kill a human being. The thought stayed with me for years, until one night it happened. I killed a woman by beating her almost to death and finished her off by strangulation,” he said.

Keith Jesperson is by no means the first hunter to go on to become a serial killer of humans. As long as we enshrine hunting in books, magazines, cable TV shows and acts of Congress, there will always be people wanting to expand their species hit list to include our own.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

A Day of Remembrance for Wolves

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If I a flag to hang outside my house, it would be flying at half-mast today.

Today should be officially declared a day of mourning for wolves, in honor of Washington’s Wedge pack—brutally killed last week to appease an intolerant cattle rancher—and also a day of remembrance for all of the wolves across the country and throughout our history who were hunted to extinction in order to make room for modern humans and their chosen food species.

This whole thing brings to mind the first time I beheld the sight of wolves. Due to repeated persecution by residents of a nearby, decrepit mining-town-turned-tourist-trap on the Alaska panhandle, wolves hadn’t been seen around there for decades. Their surprise return that year was greeted with generous appreciation by an assembly of bear watchers and photographers who shared in my elation.

But the spectacle lasted only one short season; by late fall a couple of local tyrants—under the patrician delusion that it‘s all here for them—had trapped, shot and otherwise driven off every member of the pack. These days, the only sign of wolves to be found is a hand-painted plywood sign advertising “Wolf Hides for Sale” in front of a detestable trinket shop on a muddy back road of the wretched little town.

Wolves in Alaska can legally be killed by anyone, virtually anytime and by any means imaginable (former Governor Sarah Palin‘s apparent personal favorite: strafing from low-flying aircraft).

I never thought I’d see the day that Washington wolves would suffer that same fate; when wolves here would be relentlessly pursued from the air and gunned down like escaped convicts as they fled for the Canadian border; when a radio tracking device would be used not for furthering scientific understanding, but to aid in the massacre of an entire family; when wolves in one of the most progressive states would be sacrificed on the altar of the T-bone and the cheeseburger.

As in Alaska, a few local tyrants here think they can dictate whether a wild wolf pack should live or die. Clearly, bigotry against wolves is alive and well in Washington State. It’s just tragic that the wolves of the Wedge pack had to be the first to find out.           __________________________________________

A portion of this post was excerpted from the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

The Wolf was Better off Endangered

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Paradoxical as it may seem, wolves were better off endangered.  Not as a species perhaps, but to the individual wolf stuck for days in a steel-jawed leg-hold trap, or to the pack forced to dodge a hail of gunfire from cammo-clad snipers and a volley of arrows from a phalanx of archers, it must feel like the misguided war on wolves has begun anew.

Now that they have been declared “recovered” here, wolves are again under threat of the trap and rifle just as they were during the environmentally reckless Nineteenth Century.

By 1872, the year President Grant created Yellowstone National Park (in part to protect “game” species like elk from wanton destruction by overeager hunters), 100,000 wolves were being annihilated annually. 5450 were killed in 1884 in Montana alone, after a wolf bounty was initiated there. Wyoming enacted their bounty in 1875 and in 1913 set a penalty of $300 for freeing a wolf from a trap.

Though the federal Endangered Species Act safeguarded wolves from overzealous state hunting and trapping laws, as the director of the USFWS pointed out, the ESA is “not an animal protection act.”

The right of an American species not to be hunted to extinction is a relatively new advancement. At present, it‘s about the only right extended to the nonhumans in this, the land of the free. Alas, the river of speciesism still runs deeper than the Potomac at spring breakup.

Founding father and second US president, John Adams, may, or may not, have believed that all men were created equal, but he clearly took a dim view of the wildlife native to our formerly pristine land. In 1756 he openly expressed his scorn for the world his ancestors had strived to transform: “Then, the whole continent was one continued dismal wilderness, the haunt of wolves and bears and more savage men…Then our rivers flowed through gloomy deserts and offensive swamps.“

Unfortunately for any animal not blessed enough to be born human, our unalienable rights to life and liberty were specific initially only to white males, next, to all males and then to all human animals regardless of gender or sexual orientation but as yet do not extend to the nonhuman animals with whom we share this planet.

Our lawmakers have had a sad history of turning a blind eye to the most basic rights of those who differ from us primarily in that all four of their limbs are used for walking and they don‘t wax the hair off their backs. This seems a little biased when you consider that in terms of social skills, devotion to family and intellect relevant to survival animals, like wolves, are every bit our equals.

Why is this happening? So that “sportsmen” can claim all the “game” species for themselves. The return to full-scale wolf hunting gives today‘s anti-wolf bigots their chance to drive this misunderstood embodiment of wilderness back to the brink of oblivion.

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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

Welcome Anti-hunters (No Nimrods Allowed)

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I see by the comments coming in lately that there are a lot of new faces showing up here on this blog. I’d like to extend you all a warm welcome. I say, I’d like to, but unfortunately I can’t—not all the new folks who’ve joined us lately are benevolent toward their fellow beings. What I can and will do is roll out the welcome mat for fellow wildlife watchers and animal rights advocates and welcome anti-hunters and non-hunters alike.

There are some people who are absolutely not welcome. I’m talking about the hunter and trapper trolls who somehow found themselves here and are now thinking: “What the hell is this site?”

Well, I’ll start by informing you what it is not: This is not a red-neck tavern with a “Welcome Hunters” sign out front. It’s not a message board or a chat room for people wanting to argue the supposed merits of animal exploitation or to defend the act of hunting or trapping in any way, shape or form. There are plenty of other sites available for that sort of thing.

For your sake, I urge you not to bother wasting your time posting your opinions in the comments section. This blog is moderated, and pro-hunting outbursts will not be tolerated or approved. Consider this fair warning—if you’re a hunter, sorry but your comments are going straight to the trash can. This is not a public forum for nimrods or other self-serving animal abusers to discuss the pros and cons of hunting.

Those who know right from wrong on this issue may appear a bit narrow minded, but the fact is there are no real pros to the matter, only cons, so there’s no point in wasting everyone’s time with your tired old PR drivel. We’ve heard all the rationalizations for killing so many times before. Any attempt to justify the murder of our fellow animals will hereby be jettisoned into cyberspace.

What you’ve stumbled upon is a haven for wildlife and wildlife advocates, a wildlife refuge of sorts, that’s posted “No Hunting,” as any true sanctuary should be. Just as a refuge is patrolled to keep hunters and poachers from harassing the wildlife, this blog site is monitored to keep hunter trolls from disturbing other people’s quiet enjoyment of the natural world. Those are the people whose unselfish comments are always welcome here.

Hunting Accident Season is Upon Us

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The days are getting shorter, leaves are starting to change colors and hunters are beginning to shoot one another—it would appear that hunting accident season is already upon us. With almost two weeks to go before fall officially begins, the guns of autumn are gearing up for another season of fatal mishaps.

According to the International Hunter Education Association, roughly 1,000 people in the US and Canada are accidentally shot by hunters each year; around a hundred of those victims are fatalities. Though the majority of unintentional targets are hunters themselves, innocent bystanders are also routinely injured or killed.

Hunting is one of the few outdoor activities that endangers the entire community (not just the willing participants), yet the perpetrators are almost never charged with manslaughter or any lesser crimes. As long as they are “lawfully” pursuing a recognized blood sport, the shooting of their fellow human is acceptable.

A case in point of a shooter hitting the wrong target (sent to me by an alert reader) happened just today in West Columbia, Texas, when a grandfather was aiming at a stray cat and accidentally shot his 3-year-old granddaughter in the leg.

The grandfather, Gary Van Ness, said some cats have been known to come inside his ratty trailer home uninvited. “The cat is brave enough to come in there and got him a couple of loaves of bread,” said Van Ness, adding, he’s already decided he’ll start trapping cats now, rather than shooting them. Granted, this one wasn’t a legitimate hunting accident, but he clearly had the same mindset, and armed response towards, “nuisance” animals as the typical nimrod…or game manager.

If that doesn’t fit your idea of a bona fide hunting accident, this other one that made headlines today surely will, as it was a clear cut case of one New Zealand deer hunter, Henry Worsp, mistaking his partner for prey. A local police commander called it, “another tragic reminder of the absolute necessity for hunters to properly identify their target before they shoot.” That’s no shit. But far too often hunters blast away at the sound of rustling in the bushes with a casual, shoot first, ask questions later attitude. I was shocked the first time I heard a hunter brag about getting off a “nice sound shot,” but now I know it’s just business as usual for some of them.

Today’s incident was New Zealand’s third hunting death so far this year. Cam McDonald, 29, was shot dead by another hunter in Aorangi Forest Park, on April 7. A few weeks earlier, 26-year-old Southlander Mark Richard Vanderley was killed by another man in his hunting group while spotlighting for deer. Of the 12 hunting-related deaths in NZ between 2002 and last year, 10 were caused by someone in the same hunting party.

And who can forget Dick Cheney’s world famous allegedly inadvertent peppering-in-the-face with birdshot pellets of Texas campaign contributor, Harry Whittington while at a Corpus Christi ranch, hunting quail? (No, not that other former Republican Vice President whose last name is Quayle; Cheney was out stalking small inoffensive birds this time.)

Whittington had just shot a quail and had dropped back to retrieve it and, upon rejoining the group, Mr. Cheney let him have it (apparently mistaking the tall, lanky fellow Republican for a small, inoffensive ground-dwelling bird, witnesses said). Though hit with pellets in the face and chest, to the 78 year old Whittington’s credit, he never lost consciousness. As though expecting trouble, an ambulance had been posted at the ranch while Cheney was hunting, and after debriefing, Whittington was taken to the hospital.

The owner of the ranch called the former Vice President “a very conscientious hunter,” adding “I would shoot with Dick Cheney everywhere, anywhere, and not think twice about it,” while at the same time cautioning, “The nature of quail shooting ensures that this will happen. It goes with the turf.”

Instead of perceiving the whole fiasco as a black eye for the Republican Party, it appears they see all the negative media attention Cheney received as a good thing (why else would they have chosen avid hunters Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan as Vice Presidential candidates?). In that way, the Republican camp is a lot like PETA.

Text and Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

 

Leave Wolves the Hell Alone

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Northeastern Washington cattle rancher Len McIrvin has made it clear: he really hates wolves—especially members of the local Wedge pack. Though the rancher way of life depends on government handouts and write-offs, he’s been unwilling to accept compensation for the cows he claims to have lost to wolves, fearing it would legitimize protection of the natural predators.

It may not be fair to compare him and his son to poachers Bill White and son, who illegally killed most of the Lookout Pack (Washington’s first confirmed wolf pack to return home from Canada), since the McIrvins appear to operate above board by deferring to the state game department to do the dirty work for them. But they are all cut of the same cloth—cattle ranchers who think wolves serve no Earthly purpose and should be eliminated (once again).

It’s no wonder some ranchers feel they can get away with murder, so to speak. They’ve gotten used to having everything handed to them, ever since the government paid for the cavalry to wage war with the Indians and bankrolled bounties and poisoning campaigns against wolves to make room for their private ranches—and ensure “Manifest Destiny” (the doctrine or belief prevalent in the 19th century that the United States had the God-given right to expand into and possess the whole of the North American continent). But Western ranchers aren’t satisfied with keeping cows on their vast tracts of private land (possibly given to their ancestors free of charge back in the homesteading era); they want the Feds to throw in a few thousand acres of cleared national forest land so they can expand their claim out into the neighboring wildlife habitat.

The US Forest Service contends that grazing fees bring in funds as part of their “Multiple Use” policy, but ranchers contribute only about $1.35 per “Animal Unit Month” (a detached, depersonalizing term for a cow and calf pair feeding for four weeks on public forests). According to a 2005 Government Accounting Office report, that paltry one dollar and thirty-five cent fee covers only a tiny fraction of the grazing program’s administrative costs, making this in essence just another a subsidy program in disguise.

Still, McIrvin feels entitled to prevail upon his buddies in the game department and local politicians to do whatever they can to make the entire Wedge pack disappear. He recently told the Capital Press that the only compensation he’s interested in is a dead wolf for every dead calf, copping a Bill White-like attitude: “This isn’t a wolf problem, we always could take care of our own problems,” adding that the only acceptable option is trapping and poison. Now he’s at it again, making extreme statements in any paper that’ll print them. Yesterday he showed his hand by making this fanatical comment to the Seattle Times: “Wolves have never been compatible with raising livestock.”

Okay, so you want to be an extremist, eh, rancher? (I’m doing the Clint Eastwood talking to a chair bit now…) Go ahead, punk, make my day. Two can play at that game; I’ll show you extreme. Hows about you damned cattle barons gettin’ your cows off my national forest and leavin’ my wolves the Hell alone. The wolves were here first and your poor cows don’t want to be livin’ out on some steep, brushy clearcut anyway. In fact, maybe it’s time you got outta cattle-ranchin’ altogether and started growin’ some healthy, organic crops insteada turnin’ your introduced livestock out into the woods to tempt the wolves and compete with the native deer, elk and moose who belong there.

Text and Wildlife Photography © Jim Robertson

Stop the Cycle of Violence

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If you’ve read my book you already know I’ve had more than my share of first-hand experiences with the gruesome evils of trapping—enough to make me want to take my phazer off “stun” and instantly vaporize the next trapper I see out of existence. Surely the vacuous lunatics who participate in that pastime aren’t worthy of this wonderful world. As a compassionate society we must stop them from causing further torment.

But there are many otherwise good people—understandably enraged by the demonic actions of hunters and trappers—who take it a step too far. They say they want animal abusers to endure as much terrible agony as their victims. Not only do these foul thoughts bring us down to their level, they perpetuate the cycle of violence we should be striving to end. I wouldn’t wish the kind of suffering I’ve witnessed trapped animals going through on anyone, deserving or otherwise.

Of course, I don’t expect folks to shed a tear if a hunter or trapper dies in the act of harming others. That is, as they say, just “nature’s way.” Maybe they were bucking for a Darwin Award and finally earned one.

Still, if you can’t think of one good reason not to wish some awful un-pleasantry on a hunter or trapper, consider this: is a sheep rancher justified in wanting to see a coyote suffer as much as the lamb she preyed on? It’s the same mentality, the same sort of rationalization used to validate cruelly trapping, shooting or poisoning coyotes.

“An eye for an eye” is an outdated holdover from a time when fornicators were turned into pillars of salt and gods were so malevolent as to drown every animal on Earth (except the lucky couples on the Ark, as the story goes) just to punish the human species. As Mahatma Gandhi saw it, “An eye for an eye makes everyone blind.”

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

The Only Acceptable Option?

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Make no mistake, not only is the mainstream media frequently full of shit, but also they distort the truth to fit their agenda. Case in point: the Spokane, Washington Spokesman Review ran an article on August 17th entitled, “Stevens County ranch reports new wolf attacks.” For one thing, the validity of the so-called “attacks” is still in question; and also, they didn’t happen on a ranch.

It turns out these alleged wolf attacks were on calves—not adult cows—yet the injuries were so minor some observers speculated that they could have been made by a strand of barbed wire. I’ve seen enough wolf kills to know that unless you arrive at the scene just when they were made, there wouldn’t be enough left on a calf-sized carcass to identify the cause of death. Wolves kill out of hunger and they eat what they bring down post haste, before the smell attracts a bear or any other scavengers.

Part way into the article, the “Inland Empire’s” largest newspaper revealed that the calves were not on the private Diamond M ranch, but on a Colville National Forest cattle grazing allotment, leased by the McIrvin family. That means the McIrvins (or their dogs or other guard animals) were not out with the cattle, so it’s highly unlikely anyone arrived on the scene of a fresh wolf kill.

I lived for many years in that part of Washington and worked in the Colville National Forest. I pity the cows, who are cruelly de-horned, trucked up to the ends of the logging roads and left to fend for themselves on some thistle-covered clear cut with only a dried up creek for water. My wife’s father “ran cattle” in the same way. It would be a big week if he checked on them twice. But he only had 30 “head” of cattle; the Diamond M ranch has over 400.

Rancher Len McIrvin has a state-issued wolf kill permit for depredation if wolves are caught in the act, but has said there’s little chance of meeting that requirement. The environmental organization Conservation Northwest released a statement questioning whether McIrvin made a “good faith effort” to reduce the risk of conflict between wolves and his livestock. “It’s unclear in this case whether the right livestock stewardship steps have first been tried to reduce conflict potential,” Mitch Friedman, Conservation Northwest executive director, said in the statement. “If we expect wolves to behave, ranchers need to meet them halfway.”

But Irvin told the Capital Press (a cattle industry tabloid posing as a newspaper) that the only compensation he’s interested in is a dead wolf for every dead calf. “This isn’t a wolf problem, we always could take care of our own problems,” he said, adding that the only acceptable option is trapping and poison.

Text and Wildlife Photos Copyright Jim Robertson

One Lucky Pup?

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On Wednesday, a friend…wait a second, I’d better look up the definition of “friend”…

1. a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.

2. a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile: Who goes there? Friend or foe?

…ok, in that case, a person who I am on good terms with and who is not hostile lent me a book about a woman who raised a coyote pup. It turns out the pup was given to her by a suitor who works for the “wildlife services” killing coyotes. The minute I read how the pup was (unlawfully?) acquired, I decided to return the book to the lender, while wondered why he lent me this tome of such infuriating rot in the first place.

This was not a heartwarming story of a selfless wildlife rescue. Instead, Mike, the wildlife “services” assassin, had shot a pair of coyotes, then went on with his normal routine of locating the den and inserting a poisonous cartridge to gas the pups to death. But this time he decided to spare one of the pups, probably thinking he’d score some points with his new girlfriend by making a gift of the poor young animal (who had just seen his family killed by his captor).

The one piece of worthwhile information to be found in The Daily Coyote was this bit of insight into the barren mind of a coyote killer:

“Mike killed coyotes through a number of means–snares; foothold traps; from the ground with a rifle; and with a shotgun out of a small, low-flying airplane. I asked him what it felt like to make eye contact with a coyote and then raise his gun and fire, watch it fall, see it die. He…said he didn’t feel, didn’t think about it; he blocked that part out…felt nothing.”

Although no real champion of wilderness or wildlife, the author could not overlook the fact that “there is a war between humans and predators…most ranchers and hunters would prefer there be less or none of the wild predators, coyotes and mountain lions and wolves. People feel entitled to take the land, the resources and the wilderness as their own without giving up anything to the land they are running on…and so man becomes the ultimate predator with a singular goal…”

Wildlife Photos Copyright Jim Robertson