Tag Archives: wolf hunt

Are Hunters Psychopaths?

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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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Save the Wolves, Go Vegan!

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If you really want to save the wolves, go vegan! And urge your friends and family and neighbors and co-workers to do the same. Tell it to the world: Eating meat is killing the planet, one wolf at a time; one species at a time; one ecosystem after another. Every time you order a steak or grill a hamburger, you legitimize wolf-culling for the sake of livestock growers. And every time you purchase a hunting license, you validate wolf trapping for the sake of elk hunters. To game managers, every action, right down to your purchase of ammo and cammo at Outdoor World is a show of support for their policies.

By now, you regular readers of this blog are probably thinking to yourself, “Well, duh…tell me something I don’t know.” But you might be surprised just how many people who advocated for the reintroduction of wolves eat meat like there’s no tomorrow. Comfortable in their justification, they reason that cows are “domesticated” or “dumb” and therefore bred for slaughter. This post is for them. Their beef comes from a feedlot (as far as they know) and not out on the open range, where wolves are being killed. Others pride themselves on eating only “grass-fed” beef, yet somehow they don’t see how their food choice helps lead to a policy of “controlling” wolves.

And how many hunters can honestly say that they don’t mind sharing their elk or deer with the likes of wolves, cougars or coyotes. Meanwhile, mainstream environmental groups and their members cling to the notion of “sustainable” beef (surely some of the ranchers and hunters out there can afford to look the other way when desperate wolves come around hoping for a quick meal to stave off their hunger pangs).

Rather than continually trying to revise your rationale, wouldn’t it be easier just to remove yourself from the equation and leave the predating to the predators? Human beings can live much healthier on a plant-based diet, like their primate cousins always have. True carnivores, such as wolves, coyotes, cougars, marine mammals or members of the weasel family have to eat meat to survive. If you’re not willing to go vegan for the sake of the animals you eat, maybe you should think of the other animals affected by your bill of fare.

Now, if Mitt Romney had chosen a vegan, instead of a diehard bowhunter like Ryan for a running mate, he might have gotten my vote.

Text and Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

Wolf Hunters Prefer an Imbalance of Nature

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First, a reminder to hunters who might happen upon this blog: please don’t bother commenting in support of your sport. Pro-hunting comments don’t get posted here. There are plenty of other forums for that sort of thing. Though your arguments may be “heartfelt” and well thought out, all pro-kill comments end up in the round file. Readers here have heard you sportsmen’s rationalizations ad nauseum and instinctively know the truth about hunting. Anyone wanting to hear hunter rationalizations can visit any number of sites dedicated to the disemination of hunter propaganda–this is not one of them.

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Now back to today’s sermon:

In a recent discussion on wildlife issues with some longtime friends, I felt a little out of place to learn they were all against the reintroduction of wolves to places like Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. No, they weren’t a group of hunters selfishly seeking authority over nonhuman life; these good folks were understandably upset because the wolves are being killed in horrible ways, ever since their removal from the federal endangered species list left them at the mercy of state game department policy makers. While I share their outrage and the urge to end the suffering of wolves, I have to argue that at least the ones “that got away” will go on to fill a gap in biodiversity.

The point of recovering endangered species should be to bring back and/or protect enough diversity to allow nature to function apart from human intervention. The presence of predators like wolves can help to restore a sense of natural order and nullify the claims by hunters that their sport is necessary to keep ungulate populations in check.

Wolves in Yellowstone have been keeping elk on the move enough to allow willows to thrive once again in places like the Lamar Valley. Newly emerging willow thickets in turn provide food and shelter for an array of species, from beavers to songbirds. The loss of each thread of biodiversity brings us one step closer to a mass extinction spasm that would wreak more destruction and animal suffering than the Earth has seen in some 50 million years.

Hunters want their cake and eat it too. Out of one side of their mouth they declare that there are too many elk and that they do the animals a favor by killing them to prevent overgrazing. Yet when wolves spread out and successfully reclaim some of their former territories, hunters resent the competition and call for every brutal tactic imaginable to drive wolves back into the shadows, thereby restoring the imbalance that hunters depend on to justify their exploits.

Now more than ever we need to counter the hunter agenda at every turn, for the sake of a functioning planet. It’s high time to put an end to the notion that wildlife are “property” of the states, to be “managed” as they see fit. The animals of the Earth are autonomous, each having a necessary role in nature. Only human arrogance would suppose it any other way.