Wisconsin Hunting Tragedy handily confirms.....

The professional hunters I've met, while being a wee bit red necked types who's idea of fun is to go down the pub and pick fights, have very strict firearm safety principles and won't even joke about the chance of someone being shot by accident (let alone on purpose).

Even if hunters are hunting for food (ie, they plan to eat what they kill), they don't NEED to hunt for food, hence they are still doing it for fun, for sport. They are still sport hunters. And I doubt most of them are doing it to protect their corn either, deer can't usually work can openers.

xpost: like I was saying

No one NEEDS to save a few hundred in food. They should all go down to Denny's instead.

I don't hunt, but I can think of these reasons off the top of my head:

1) can't eat deer hit by a car
2) cause that hit deer contain people who could be and often are injured
3) cars are damaged by deer, raising TCO and auto insurance costs for everyone
4) hunters (and there are a lot of them) have something to do
5) license revenues for the states generate funds for wildlife areas (it's true, check it out)
6) hunting keeps deer out of populated areas better than allowing deer to get hit by cars would

I'm sure there are a hundred other reasons, but do you really need me to list them?

It's harder to kill a fellow human being with a fishing rod.

For certain. But I thought we were talking about sports!

Shooting a deer is way preferable to it hitting with a car. First, much lower human fatality/injury rate (OK, that doesn't help the deer, but it does help half the equation). Second, intelligent hunting policies (which not all of them are, granted) controls population growth by skewing heavily toward doe hunting (most states let you shoot way more does than bucks). Third, if you used actual bait-and-shoot programs, which some of the most deer-infested places have started to do, and you hire skilled shooters to do it, they can usually kill the deer much more cleanly and painlessly than your average motor vehicle (ever seen an injured deer dragging itself off the road after a car accident? I have).

The deer population in the United States has exploded in the past century with the elimination of wolves and the spread of human habitats, which deer are very compatible with. One of the fallacies is that deer are a problem because we've overdeveloped their natural habitat. Not true -- they like our sprawl. They thrive in it. They're cute, I know -- I used to live in a house where I could get up in the morning and watch a family of them grazing on the lawn, and it felt very pastoral and fuzzy-wuzzy. But they're basically big rodents, they spread disease (I have a very close friend who has Lyme Disease, which is a miserable experience and is spread by ticks that live on deer -- as the deer population spreads and increases, so is Lyme), and they need to be controlled. Nobody has any objections to controlling rat populations in the cities -- deer are the suburban/rural equivalent, except that hitting a rat with your car won't hurt you or your car.

The biggest expense in hunting, especially deer hunting, is probably the license. For the cost of that and a box of shells, though, you can keep a family in meat for the year.

As to #6, hunting is generally restricted to non-populous wilderness areas. Those are where deer like to hang out, when they can. They only move into populated areas with cars when there isn't enough room in the undeveloped areas -- meaning that the deer population is already too big.

(xpost obv)

x=post

Plus, although I'm a pinkocommielefty who doesn't like guns, I'm pretty anti-gun restriction.

xpost: And I'm not just a pinkocommielefty who doesn't like guns, I'm a vegetarian. And I too have no real problem with responsible gun ownership (and the vast, vast, vast majority of gun owners are responsible, just like the vast majority of drivers).

What informs this belief, Alex?

I'm also amused that I'm here defending deer hunting, because I was on another thread on another board recently assailing the cruelties of fox hunting. But I don't think that's a contradiction, they're two different things. Fox hunts are not for population control.

Deaths From Collisions
With Deer Are Increasing

By JOSEPH B. WHITE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 18, 2004; Page D4

The number of motorists killed as a result of collisions with animals, mainly deer, is rising -- a trend that highlights the dangers of driving without seatbelts or riding motorcycles without helmets, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Motor vehicle collisions with deer and other animals killed 201 people in 2003, a tiny slice of more than 42,000 overall U.S. highway deaths tallied by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But the 2003 total of vehicle-animal crash fatalities was up 27% from the previous year. Deer-vehicle collisions are estimated to cause about $1.1 billion in property damage a year.

The study by the Insurance Institute, a research arm of the insurance industry, examined vehicle versus animal crashes in nine states from 2000 to 2002. Of 60 motorcyclists killed in accidents studied by the institute, 39 weren't wearing helmets, said the institute's chief scientist Allan Williams and associate JoAnn Wells. Among passenger-vehicle occupants who died in a collision with an animal, 60% weren't wearing seat belts. Deer accounted for 77% of the fatal crashes studied.

"The story is motorcyclists," Mr. Williams said yesterday. Motorcycles were involved in 40% of the 147 crashes the institute studied, far out of proportion to the number of motorcycles on the road. Overall, there are about 41 cars and trucks registered for every motorcycle.

For cars and light trucks, the main risk wasn't the collision with the deer, but losing control and either hitting an object off the road or rolling over. But in 14 out of the 147 accidents, a death occurred because a deer struck by one car flew through the windshield of an oncoming car.

Last year was the first time that the total number of U.S. motorists killed in animal collisions went above 200 people, Mr. Williams said. One factor, he added, could be population growth in suburban and rural areas.

"We're treading into animal territory," he said. November is usually the worst month for collisions with deer. Deer are particularly active at this time of year, in part because it is mating season and partly because hunters are in the woods in many areas of the country.

While deer hunting has detractors, Mr. Williams and other researchers have concluded that reducing the number of deer is an effective way to reduce the number of accidents. Fences designed to keep deer off roadways would help, but they are expensive. In some areas, signs that light up to warn motorists when deer are close to the road have helped.

But deer whistles -- devices motorists can stick to the front of the car -- are useless, Mr. Williams said. Deer whistles are supposed to emit a high frequency sound as the car moves along, frightening away the deer. In tests, however, deer exposed to the sound of a deer whistle don't do anything, Mr. Williams said.

"The theory is they will hear this thing humans can't hear," he said. "If they hear it, they don't react."

The IIHS study highlights the low rates of motorcycle-helmet use in states where laws requiring bikers to wear helmets have been repealed.

"It is likely that many of the deaths would not have happened if these simple precautions had been taken," the report concludes, referring to wearing motorcycle helmets and seat belts.

I agree though that most hunters aren't there to save the environment, first and foremost. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that most hunters aren't out there to hunt. It's usually a bunch of dudes hanging out at deer camp, riding around on four-wheelers, drinking whiskey and eating s'mores for a week. Sitting in the deer stand is sometimes just a formality.

since we were raised in the suburbs(very near open farmlands), we would go hunting for squirrel on the nearby golf course. always eat what you kill, so we had squirrel stew.

later, my dad got me a 12gauge semi-automatic shotgun for christmas. I traded him it for his epiphone acoustic guitar. it;s like a country & western song in reverse.

i still have the guitar, too.

On another note entirely, big predators are returning to many areas where they've been long absent:
http://www.easterncougarnet.org/iowa3-31-02.htm

(except I red "eat a bag of rocks, Chris Dick")

-- don weiner (migg...), November 22nd, 2004.

I can't speak for Alex (he certainly does that well enough for himself) but I grew up in WI and was, to borrow a favorite term of David Horowitz, indoctrinated into believing hunting was a natural rite of passage. I went through Hunter's Safety courses and was sent trekking into the woods at 12 years old with a loaded 20 gauge Winchester to kill an animal.

I did this every Fall until i began to discover my own conscience around 16 years of age (coincidentally around the same time i discovered Kurt Vonnegut and Punk Rock). I simply told my stepfather and his family I didn't want to hunt anymore because, for myself, it seemed pointless and cruel.

Nevertheless, my family still hunts every Fall, and I consistently refuse invitations to participate. I've come to realize I truly love animals. I work at the Humane Society and I foster care abandoned pets and other stuff like that all the time. It's just one of my fundamental characteristics.

I'm always so mystified by people in my family who will admire a big buck for all it's beauty and strength and then proceed to declare how they want to kill it and mount it's head on the wall like some kind of trophy. I often take this opportunity to remind them that that is what Jeffery Dahmaer and Ed Gein did to their victims too.

So, my opinion is that people, barring the need to hunt for food and shelter (this is the 21st century after all), generally hunt out of a combination of: a geniune love of the outdoors, a great desire to get away from home and be rustic for a weekend, and a significant streak of bloodlust that most who hunt recreationally are seriously in denial about.

I feel my opinion is informed, but still just and only that, mine.

Yeah, but when Dahmer mounted his victims, it was probably a little different than your family's method.

My impression is that in Minnesota, people are a lot more ambivalent about hunting than fishing. That ambivalence might occur because while most people don't hunt, enough of them do, and do so responsibly, that there's not a bad PR problem with it in the state. You can also quite legitimately wear fur in MN when it gets COLD.

My uncle hunted (birds) and my aunt was the prez of the local Izaac Walton League chapter (our neighbourhood in Mpls backs onto Minnehaha Creek, which is the size of a British river and thusly connects Lake Minnetonka to the Mississippi River. There were some examples of duck/goose taxidermy yet for five years my uncle raised geese from tiny goslings when Canada geese were endangered, had them tagged by the MN wildlife department, and into the bargain fed the five different kinds of duck but mostly mallards and wood ducks, Canada and escaped angry yard geese, coots, pheasants, partridge and the occasional swan with feed corn he kept in a barrel in the garage. Actually the kids fed the birds because it was fun and we got to know the different species.

The geese he raised used to stop there every year while migrating until there were HUNDREDS of the fuckers and many settled nearby to be sure to attend the annual Shitting Of Gary's Lawn. My mother's contribution to the environment stopped when no longer required to bring Salmonella Specials to the potluck table at the annual Izaac Walton picnic in my uncle's one-acre creekside back yard. Which used to be a mink farm. Some might see this as progress.

Anyway, he hunted and ate duck, pheasant, etc. We looked forward to the results of these trips and someone or other always got in trouble for poking someone else with a cold, dead webbed foot but that's what you do to siblings/they do to you when you're under 10.

Goslings are amazingly fun to play with but a real pisser to actually herd anywhere.

Recreational hunting tends not to be a super method of population control because the culling is selective towards older males (who have big antlers), whereas if you want to limit the rate of increase you take out the young females. Also some recreational hunters will lobby fiercely to keep deer abundant (i.e. against commercial culling or state control) so they are easier to catch (seems like it would ruin the challenge but that's how it goes).

However I am not familiar with the situation in America so maybe their quotas are adjusted to target breeding stock not just big males?

I think j.m. was pretty much right about why people go hunting. I think there are also motivations to do with avoiding society, towns and big groups of people. And a pride in being self reliant, in being able to make your own way with your personal resources, like 'if the worst comes to the worst I can look after myself'.

Someone mentioned upthread that you can shoot many more does than you can bucks in their state; I would assume this to be true for most deer-hunting states.

There's also the issue of the cost of driving to the supermarket, as opposed to walking to a field behind your house, and heart surgery or blood-thinning medication after a lifetime of eating shitty hot dogs that cost $2.19 a package.

(x-post: "culling is selective towards older males (who have big antlers), whereas if you want to limit the rate of increase you take out the young females," but hunting regulations in recent years have tended to increase the limit and lengthen the season for does.)

Yeah, but when Dahmer mounted his victims, it was probably a little different than your family's method.

-- Pleasant Plains (acewhiske...), November 23rd, 2004.

shit, you just made orange juice spray outta my nose! fuck that burns!

There are other ways to control deer. These mostly involve poison and are less publicly acceptable than hunting (though some maybe? more humane).

-- isadora (issadora9...), November 23rd, 2004.

i totally agree. i've always wondered why there aren't attempts to physically or chemically sterilize deer herds like we do with domestic animals to control the population. i'm sure there are a litany of economic naysayers to these kinds of solutions, and one cannot discount the overwhelming revenue that deer gun hunting brings to northern counties of WI, MN, etc. ideas about working towards more humane methods of controlling the admittedly out of control deer population is just not a welcomed topic of discussion in already economically depressed areas like northern WI.

I have been trying to respond to Dan's point but the situation I am familiar with is 3 way, not 2 way as he describes. Here, the views are: (1) deer cause great damage to natural areas and should be limited (2) deer don't cause that much damage and are fun to hunt. they should be encouraged and (3) I like being able to use deer to supplement my income/food.

The first two views are more likely to be urban, the latter more likely to be rural.

One good thing about the bait-and-shoot approach with professional shooters is that you can be very selective about which deer you shoot, the kills are clean, and the meat can be donated to food banks (this is done some places).

I always will remember,
'Twas a year ago November,
I went out to hunt some deer
On a morning bright and clear.
I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

I was in no mood to trifle,
I took down my trusty rifle
And went out to stalk my prey.
What a haul I made that day!
I tied them to my fender, and I drove them home somehow:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

The law was very firm, it
Took away my permit,
The worst punishment I ever endured.
It turned out there was a reason,
Cows were out of season,
And one of the hunters wasn't insured.

People ask me how I do it,
And I say "There's nothin' to it,
You just stand there lookin' cute,
And when something moves, you shoot!"
And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow.

My only crime is being too smart and good looking, making people feel inadequate merely by existing and engaging in public activities.

Plus, I have a beautiful wife and a loyal dog. To paraphrase your man Zimmerman - I ain't goin' nowhere.

why the hate?

ethical vegetarian argts fall poorly on my ears as even plain old vegetable agriculture is a violence to the landscape, tho with a tempo measured in centuries and committed against continents instead of a hapless and easily anthropomorphized critter...

AS IF collective Nature doesn't exact it's logical "revenge," case in pt: we slash the midwests's forests and till it's scrubby prairies, turning the whole lot into high-yield (& high nutrition!) grainfields; concurrently wiping out the few needed pretators (kinda) --> teeming deer populations, truly the dimwit rats of american rurality. "noble creatures" bitch, plz! BAMBI IS A SICK CON, they're walking bottomless ungulate appetites with frighteningly efficient genitalia, and make no mistake destroyers to their very bones. also often mounting stunned kamikaze raids on our automobiles (at night especially, truly beyond the pale, terror tactics combined with a worrying sense of expendability)

And HUMAN PREDATORS, well equipped as they are, in true phallocentric romantic fashion, mainly refuse to take any does & go only for the bucks! As if just one buck left isn't more than enough to fuck his way thru all the does you've ever seen in your life x100. (does reach sex maturity at 1 year; first birth is a single, but like clockwork, twins afterward, every spring, you do the math). again our aversion to boredom ("oh a doe? meh, not on my wall...") back to bite us.

OR OR OR (more obviously idiotic & blinkered) suburban communities in Colorado calling their sherriffs to gun down errant she-cougars on the prowl within "city limits" (probably on Halloween to boot; the avenues teeming with babes at their fleshiest and least camouflaged) wondering why why why what did we ever do? WELL, maybe bcz your hobbyfarm exurban idylls have developed ever closer to the treeline & every backyard has a salk lick and grainbox; you do so love the deer & antelope playing in your dewy lawns over morning banana-mango blends & meuslix, don't you? well DUH. slightly change the habits & patterns of Cute Nature and the Bad Nature is right there with it, see?

(Even tho I think Colorado is basically Florida with mountains, I suppose I can't advocate the feeding of their children to cougars; take aim fellas)

sort of left the topic by the end there didn't I.

related story: you're always told if you see any woodland type creature in the city it's Probably Rabid and needs to be destroyed. First summer I lived in mpls I saw a raccoon mom replete with train of a half dozen or so young ones weaving thru some parked cars on my street. Duty bound, I called the DNR; naturalist (not "naturist," tho who knows) on the other end thought I was complaining abt unruly nature and put me in my place with "well you ARE in their habitat." (43rd and Pillsbury being habitat to none but Metropolitans for the better part of a century)

It's like darts. only you sit in a tree in January for 6 hours in the dark before the dartboard walks by. and it can smell you 300 yards away, and hear you at 700. and your "gun" (depending on your local laws) maybe resrticted to the least accurate and powerful thing possible, the shotgun, outside even 50 yards you may as well throw the BBs at the motherfucker (you see why ppl trek up to N Wisc and use chinese semicivilian rifles, it's KIND OF HARD otherwise)

perhaps there's a way of administering birth control to deer, as opposed to hunting them? it sounds ridiculous, but i believe this is similar to how quebec city curbed its pigeon problem. they had large feeding troughs that included both food and birth control.

I'm kinda half in agreement with you on this one, but i would like to hear some explication on your part as this shift is the proveribial iceberg tip that could lead to a whole 'nother thread topic altogether.

My feeling is factory farming is an abomination, but with education and innovation our society could improve on this disgusting process.

However, hunting is not really improvable, i mean it's simply blowing an animal's internal organs to bits, and if those vitals are missed, well the animal can simply bleed to death for several hours.

I fail to see how hunting in the general sense, (again barring the need to hunt animals for basic sustenance), is not simply cruel and unnecessary destruction of innocent life for the purpose of fun and profit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/0/0a/Deerwindow.jpg

Part of the problem is different philosophical perspectives. The words 'cruel' and 'innocent' above are either unproven by any anti-hunting acount on this thread or meaningless. An animal can't be innocent as it can't be guilty - a plant is no more capable of wrongdoing that a deer. Cruel implies enjoyment of another's suffering, and without any special insight into the minds of hunters this is difficult to establish - I imagine hunters will not say that it is the suffering of the animal they enjoy. I personally don't see anything inherently wrong in killing an animal (though I do in a person), but I do see something wrong in inflicting unnecessary suffering on an animal. If you believe that killing animals is always wrong it is difficult to understand why people hunt, and as hunting does not impact on our moral community it is hard to see why your account of hunting should be listened to any more than a hunters.

Another reason is to limit the damage those animals do to other species or to their own population. Really arguments based on the innocence of wildlife are a nonsense. Life is notoriously a messy affair and in many cases people have already made it so much messier there's no point drawing back now and going "natural process, can't interfere"

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'd sooner butcher a roomful of human beings than hit a dog. Animals >>> people, no matter what Uncle Ted says

-- isadora (issadora9...), November 24th, 2004.

Okay, but the point is that deer hunting can only be defended from a purely economic standpoint. there are many areas of the country overpopulated with white-tail deer that were intoduced by humans a long time ago, and now have to be controlled or curtailed in order for human populations to continue to expand into the wilderness as their increasing population demands. the licensing of deer hunters ostensibly to control deer populations in these areas is a complete pretext.

The reason that our states license (or, deputize) humans to control the deer herds by shooting them with shotguns or rifles is too save the state (us) the cost of doing so themselves, and it is a huge economic windfall for corollary reasons too, ie, hotels, bars, restaurants, gas stations, hunting supply stores, etc.

My point isn't that this system isn't perfectly sensible, just that it is cruel and unnecessarily brutal just like the aforementioned factory farming comparison made above, AND IT IS TOTAL BULLSHIT TO SAY THAT LARGELY AMATUER DEER HUNTING IS MOSTLY ABOUT CONTROLLING DEER POPULATIONS, THAT'S THE PRETEXT.

And also like factory farming, the control of deer herds could be made more humane, in this case perhaps by using more creative methods of sterilization and so forth. Some people in the area where i grew up are so sick of fucking deer that they refer to them as rodents, so why don't we just poison the herds? it wouldn't be as traumatic as blasting their innards out but nor would it be as profitable.

And politically, I'm way more comfortable going after corporate farming than individual hunters who, like them or not, do a lot of good environmental work.

My dog is SO tough

all the same, we bought one of those stakes for the yard.

As was mentioned in the thread above, because their poop would pollute the earth. And it would kill the "good" animals like the bald eagle and wild horses.

telling xpost

Deerorists!
-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), November 24th, 2004.

Elk Qaeda
-- briania (lyriclas...), November 24th, 2004.

SHOCKING PROOF!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/deerosama.jpg

Good luck finding and capturing every buck and/or doe in order to administer this birth control. If any members of this population are missed they will get together and reproduce.

(Right now I'm working at a suburban U.S. Government facility that has a problem with resident deer. The maintenance people are experimenting with birth control for the does. However, they have two benefits: 1) the facility is fenced, which makes it much more difficult for unaltered deer to join the resident population, and 2) there don't seem to be any heavy woods or thickets on this facility, so it's relatively easy to round up the deer for processing.)

I saw this guy in a particularly affluent section of Montgomery County, Maryland, home to the sort of people who think of deer hunting as "killing Bambi's mother." I personally had no objection to the person (he probably had been collecting roadkill to take to a rendering plant), except that the back of his truck was down, which would have made me very nervous if I had been driving directly behind him.

We knocked down a fox some time ago and I felt sick for days. Taking a life is not pleasurable to me in the least. I could never set out to do it in sport.

To kill something and then congratulate oneself? Nah, I just don't get that.

Possibly the world's most ominous "or something".

Yeah, it's really too bad we have to pick one or the other.

(to shoot deer)

SLACKER

(My "false conflict" is more accurately described as "I would rather spend money to make human beings' lives better than spend money to make animals' lives better"; even without the "unnecessary skirmishes" (which at this point have now become necessary; thanks GWB) I would divert the extra money freed up from that to humanitarian efforts, education efforts, human medical research and Social Security before I diverted money to find a way to sterilize deer in a non-painful manner. This is not because I want deer to suffer; this is because I really don't care at all that people shoot deer. It is a complete and total non-issue to me and, given everything that's wrong with the human condition let alone with life in the United States, I don't understand the mindset that prioritizes the suffering animals over the suffering of human beings.)

and that the issue of how best to kill a deer, whilst not totally pointless, comes pretty low on the priority, and the amount of passion spent on these threads seems like wasted effort when there are other things to get raged about. etc.

Who knew that deer were on the ILE shitlist?

rubber up though.

I mostly agree, but with, among other things, externality asterisks - for instance, I think urban non-hunters have rights in the preservation of wildlife populations or habitats threatened by hunting. Do residents of the Grand Banks and Gloucester have exclusive political rights with respect to North Atlantic fish populations?

I think I believe that people who are spiritually injured by the killing of animals for sport should have some right to restrict such activities at least in proportion to their numbers, despite the economic impact, just as people who are spiritually injured by clearcut logging of forests should be entitled to restrict such activities in the same proportion, despite same. This is an outcome-oriented belief, though.

This may be true, maybe it is all about wearing clothes that look like trees and taking to the hills with guns to live out Rambo fantasies. Be that as it may, here amateur deer hunting or venison recovery for food is pretty much the only way *not necessarily a good way though* of limiting populations. I defend those forms of hunting because I would rather have them than none. In truth I would rather poison the bambis and move on but that's a pipe dream.

My question is: if we think about different ways to control the deer population, and include poison as an option, doesn't it make you think about how you would want to die? Poison, as far as i know, is a painful and ugly way to die - unless it is administered in high doses in a controlled environment. If I were Bambi, I would rather be shot.
I think many people who have dealt with poison released in wartime (or not) would also agree that being shot is preferable.
Which leads me to think about all of the poisons that have been released on human beings, as an attack, during the past century and this new century. And the five mutilated deer corpses on the edge of a major thouroughfare into NYC. I'd also rather be shot than get hit by a car and left by the side of the road.
I'd rather be a deer in Wisconsin than an Iraqi civilian. Or a factory farmed cow.

the point of improving the human condition does have a little to do with how we treat animals, plants, and other living objects on this plantet. it's called an ecological perspective.

didn't ghandi say something like how you can surmise a lot about a society by how it treats it's animals?

when i lived in a big city a few years ago, there was this raging debate over building a baseball stadium to replace the old one. i remember once listening to a woman on the radio say that the money that would go to finance this stadium should be spent on feeding homeless children instead. so her basic stance was that if you enjoyed baseball and wanted a new baseball stadium to be partially funded by tax dollars you also want homeless children to starve to death. wtf!?

why does wanting our government to develop more humane ways to control the deer population mean that i support a) people remaining homeless or b) the continued propagation of factory farming?

ps, aimurchie: don't even get me started on fucking nascar, it is the nadir of mass human entertainment. (and that includes the roman colliseums). i like the joke that goes: nascar is for people who think that professional wrestling is too complex.

"Socialism is the language of priorities", and society always had budgets and choices. It would be interesting to compare how much discussion occurs about a new baseball stadium compared to solutions to homelessness.

I don't think my dichotomy is false. Given the choice of how to die, as an animal, I would choose being shot over poisoned. I would choose being shot in the woods of Wisconsin over the streets of Fallujah. I would choose being shot while trying to escape rather than shot on my way into the meat factory. I would choose being shot rather than hit by a car.

Or, and this is really the way that deer in an overpopulated (with deer, not necessarily people) area die: starve to death.

The annual deer harvest in Virginia takes a quarter of the population. Illinois, a third. Michigan, about 20%. The gruesome deaths of hundreds of thousands of deer-- occasionally painful and prolonged, when a shot misses the heart, and occasionally a cruel wounding-- unquestionably prevents a like number of prolonged and painful deaths from certain starvation and disease. Knee-jerk opposition to hunting is laissez-faire sadism. The human-altered ecosystem, with habitat destruction and depopulation of natural predators, requires one means of killing deer or another. I think a shot through the heart from a 30.06 is far less cruel way to go than (a) a poisoned bait trap, (b) getting thumped by a Ford, or (c) the slow brain rot of chronic wasting disease, or the agony of bovine tuberculosis.

(N.B.: I live in Brooklyn, so by the Alex rule, my opinion shouldn't be expressed. But I get the feeling he was taking on the terminally naive urbanites who want to tell country folks what to do.)

fwiw, I love animals and would never kill one on purpose but 1. I've had far too many heart-stopping nearly-hit-a-deer moments and had too many friends/family total their cars after hitting Bambi's dad to feel bad about deer-hunting season and 2. vension can be pretty tasty.

dammint, xpost

that la cucaracha is the highest life form.
And we all hunt 'em. Sorry Alex!
Charlotte is beeyooteeful!

I have fished an entire litter of orphaned raccoon babies out of our juniper bushes because the animal control doofus the county sent was too scared of their hissing/biting potential - it's kind of like the Sleestaks in Land of the Lost were there in his mind instead of this posse of distemper-infected ickle cuties (they'd found their dead parent near the marsh at the end of our road). Annoyed baby raccooons are EXTREMELY cute in lots of ways but if there's a distemper epidemic, tough shit, time to die.

I KILL AMINALS WITH GUNZ! (Well, not really, but still . . . )

Is it REALLY that hard to grasp that if you spend money on A, you cannot spend that money on B? Am I really expecting too much when I assume that that concept is insultingly obvious?

By the same token, i could say that any ideas on cleaning up public parks is taking funds from protecting soldiers in Iraq in a roundabout way. so if you care about clean public spaces you are against the troops. it is a diry debate tactic, and you know it. address the shortcomings inherent to my ideas sensibly and you might convince me to pay attention.

If you shoot those things, you're an asshole. Period.

My daughter's role in the post you are referring to was purely anecdotal/incidental. Moreover, I don't really know what you're getting at. My point was that the deer I happened to see was a beautiful animal, and I can't understand wanting to pump it full of lead. Furthermore, I firmly doubt that those who do enjoy shooting deer do it because they are "concerned" about deer overpopulation or because they are "concerned" about they environment -- they do it because they like killing things and like carrying guns around (i.e. they're fucking idiots).

http://rublines.com/issues/01_09_2.jpg
"Lookee here, we done got one!"

I had a turkey. And I named her Alison before I sank my incisors into her and fed myself with her dead flesh. My point is that no one hunts because they're concerned about the environment. They hunt because they like killing and guns.

Then why do they strenuously insist on calling the activity "a sport"? You can't have it both ways.

I'd gladly see the NASCAR nation in the cold, cold ground, for what it's worth.

Sorry. I was trying to keep things lighthearted. You have now made me feel like a tiny worm. Thanks for making a nice exchange really shitty.

You must have a really difficult time putting nails into wood.

Hmong elders have come to use hunting as a chance to share at least one rural cultural tradition with the youngest among them, some of whom never saw the hills of Laos.

In the November deer season, the two groups have often met in the woods and sometimes clashed, but mostly quietly until last Sunday. Some said they feared those tensions would now grow amid raw feelings of intrusion on one side and exclusion on the other."

,

I think there is a difference between a gun and a hammer. I might choose to use a nailgun to shoot nails into a structure. i would probably not use a handgun to build a house.
The instruments that come into my hands are used by my choice. i like sharp knives because I enjoy cooking. Not because i enjoy stabbing(although some stabbing sometimes occurs when I go too fast).
Everything is a weapon. But guns are particularly lethal. And guns are particularly uncertain vis a vis - there is no going back.
So,,yes- I would rather not handle a gun.
I don't like guns. I also don't like salmon. I don't want to eat braised salmon and I don't want to own or shoot or hold a gun.
BUT - I could skin and eat a salmon and shoot a gun if I had to do it to survive.
It's not a moral question. Everyone is armed in their own way.

most hunters, I guess, DO in fact eat deer when they kill it. but the idea about killing deer for their own good is nothing more than justification of the wonderful bonding that humans do around the practice of killing other species with guns.

Basically, Alex in NYC's point is this: the tragedy in Wisconsin (my back yard) confirms for him that hunting is best left to gun-crazy barbarians that are desperate for a way to play out their macho blood-lusting tendencies. Therefore: they=stupid and bad. Or at least ranking lower on whatever ladder it is he's considering. Ditto for NASCAR fans: watching cars drive around in a circle means you are stupid. This judgement can be extended to just about anyone participating in any activity enjoyed by lower- to middle-class rural America. Actually, rural America period.

Way to go. And you wonder why Kerry lost the election. How is this different than someone saying "men having sex with other men is decadent and depraved and fucking stupid?" "Obsessing over a stupid and noisy rock band from England and it's self-important leader is dumb." etc.

And before you jump in and say, "But butt-sex and collecting records doesn't harm fuzzy animals (insert joke) or play into an atavistic yen for bloodying my hands," let me say this: shut the fuck up. Yes it does: the carnal desire to have sex is as natural as the carnal desire to engage in the hunting, killing and eating of another animal. Just because you, advanced city-dweller, have never felt/acted on it doesn't mean that it's not a very real--and very natural--reason to hunt (besides all the economic/environmental reasons which, to be honest, are really just window-dressing).

I don't mean to jump down your throat Alex (or anyone else), but most of the anti-hunting/more "humane" hunting/anti-gun arguments here have as much to do with a disdain for the stereotypical hunter (rural yahoo) as it does with the actual practice of shooting and killing an animal. Which means: I = fuck you.

Plus: Formula 1 is the most popular sport in the world of sport, but it's dominated by wealthy Germans and South Americans, so it's OK.

It's not killing them "for their own good," though. People keep wanting to make this just a moral issue on one side or the other, but it can't be just a moral issue -- it has to be a practical issue too. There are too many deer in many parts of the United States to coexist peacefully with humans. If the population is not controlled one way or another, the result is all the things detailed above: more starvation and disease among the deer, more deer-vehicle collisions, more spread of lyme disease. Now, you can argue that the problem is really too many humans, but that's a less defensible position -- the human population of the United States is not growing anywhere near as fast as the deer population, and we're actually doing a pretty good job of controlling our own population growth with birth control.

There are some options in deer population control, but most of them involve killing deer one way or another. This is really no different than rat population control, or rabbit population control in Australia. And just as rats in cities and rabbits in Australia have few natural predators, so too with deer. We are their predators, plain and simple. A failure to fulfill that role fucks with the whole ecosystem.

I'm a vegetarian. I don't hunt, I don't eat meat, I buy organic eggs from free-range chickens. I also grew up in rural and suburban areas and have watched the deer population explode. My parents, also vegetarians and non-hunters, live in a deer-infested area and not only support deer hunting but also bait-and-shoot programs. A close friend of mine has been dealing with Lyme Disease for the past two years, and has had months of real physical agony as a result.

Do hunters enjoy killing? I guess. They enjoy the hunt, and the kill is part of it. But as someone said above, if you've got a house full of mice, you're not likely to be too troubled about whether your cat enjoys killing the things or not, as long as it gets the job done. I don't want to have to kill the mice or deer myself, so I'm happy to let the hunters take care of it.

Believing that a gun is inherently "more"--more evil, more unexpectedly dangerous, whatever--than a hammer, car or oven is exactly why accidental shooting deaths happen. A gun is a thing. It is a thing that does EXACTLY what you tell it to do and does so extremely efficiently. Therefore: people that (a) don't know how guns work or (b) tend to see material objects as fantastical and anthropomorphized engines-of-intent (or whatever) should never, ever handle guns (ie - children that have not been taught anything).

OTM.

I used to take my mom's two thirty-aught-sixes (sp?) out and play with them when I was 12ish. I didn't ever find any bullets. It was always unloaded. A kid down the road a couple of miles was playing with his dad's gun and accidentally shot himself. Guns should be highly regulated.

Alex in NYC, I agree with you to an extent, too.

Hunting would be really the wrong thing for city-dwellers to do. For country folk, hunting sometimes makes sense and is a real part of the culture. I grew up in the Bitterroot valley in Montana. On the first day of hunting season, half the high school boys are absent because they're out hunting with their dads.

Is this wrong? Maybe.

it's been a while since i've read anything sensible on these kinds of threads.

alex in NYC in appearing as a reactionary self-righteous lefty shockah!

I respect your viewpoint, but, as you probably know, i'm a 'cold dead hands' kinda guy. You don't have to love guns or even enjoy guns - not owning a gun, to me, is irresponsible.

I mean, for example, I don't necessarily enjoy home repair. For the most part (drills and leaf blowers aside) I don't enjoy messing around with tools. But I wouldn't want to be without a screwdriver in a pinch if I needed one. Better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it, etc etc etc.

Do you have fire insurance on your car? Chances are you won't need that, either. But peace of mind counts for a lot. Or at least it should.

How about a flashlight? A spare tire? Duct tape? Do you believe in having those on hand in an emergency?

Uh, yeah, actually. And I don't mean to suggest that you're a child-like simpleton for not wanting to handle a gun. I'm all for the pacificist stance; my point was more that some people feel as though handling a gun or knowing how it works etc. is the same as being rabidly pro-gun or somehow condoning a gun's use as an instrument of human death. Thinking that is stupid. A gun a thing that makes another, smaller thing go really fast out of one end. This is most useful as a means to make other, living things unliving very quickly. End of story. What things you choose to kill is another topic altogether.

(we will ignore, for a moment, sharpshooting at non-living targets since most anti-gun folks see it merely as "practice for the real thing." To which I respond: but what about fencing? ...anyway)

I don't want to get into the issue of guns vis a vis gun control as that seems a little off-topic. Instead I would rather say this: owning a gun and knowing how to use it properly does not a killer make. The people that really get off on killing tend to prefer less efficient tools that allow for artistic expression: axes, knives, etc.

Haha, yeah I know your opinions on gun control, and that's fine. As for insurance, I don't drive, but I would have it if I did (it's mandatory, for a start). I need things 'just in case' like a torch or tape - there is no situation in which I would shoot someone, so that comparison doesn't work for me.

cool. I don't think knowing how to use a gun is the same as being pro-gun, and I don't think being pro-gun is insane, or psychopathic.

Way to jump to conclusions. And can we leave the homophobia out of this? Being a hunter is a choice. Being gay is not.

I'd rather use a baseball bat or something like that to defend my home. In the case of mistaken identity the repercussions will be far less severe and less likely in the 1st place as I'd have to get close to any suspected intruder. Plus if my kid (if I had a kid) got his/her hands on it they'd probably play baseball with it - not shoot themselves or another kid.

2xpost

In all seriousness, this is the most frightening and ridiculous thing I've read on ILX in three years.

Ditto for guns: if you have a gun around you can, in theory, kill your food or an intruder. Or both at the same time if the deer are getting pushy. For some people this is a comfort. For others, it's not. No problem.

If Rog wants to have a gun: let him. If you want to smoke pot: fine. Ditto whatever.

"Those who would sacrifice their freedom" yadda yadda yadda. Now we're really getting off-thread.

Also, Alex: the only reason I would drag homosexuality into this is because YOU were taking a moral stance against hunting, much like the stereotypical rural American you disdain so much takes a moral stance against homosexuality. Choice has nothing to do with it.

Mistaken identity? No such thing. I hear a loud, suspicious bang in the night, my finger's on the trigger. I see a face I don't recognize, I pull it. Simple.

And you logic re: kids is flawed, of course. More people die in bicycle accidents than in accidental gun deaths, which many would have you believe is a regular occurance. That fact is that kids who are educated and informed about guns don't usually end up killing themselves.

(note to self: don't deliver pizzas to Roger's house.)

I still can't quite see the connection. And I'm not talking about "morals", I'm talking about being a stupid asshole (the "m" word is one you'll scarcely hear from me). If you want to go shoot Bambi et al, I can't understand it and I think you're a huge greasy dick for doing so, but I don't think there's any code of universal conduct that will or should prevent you from doing so -- beyond self-awareness. In this day and age, no one is born with an irrepresible need to aim a shotgun at an Elk (or deer or buffalo or whathaveyou). Thus, the comparison to those who are born with an inherent sexual preference that happens to be frowned upon by a depressingly sizable percentage of our largely pig-ignorant nation is a moot one.

Go kill it and grill it, man, have a fuckin' field day, but don't try to spin it like it's some biological imperative or god given right.

xpost

Grow up. Thinking someone is a huge greasy dick for killing a majestic animal is, ultimately, YOUR FUCKING OPINION. I mean, what does "beyond self-awareness" even mean? That the only people that go hunting are "unaware"? Aren't plugged into the....the what, dude? Seriously: what the fuck are you talking about?

You're right: no one is born with an irrepressible need to point a shotgun at an animal and kill it. However, ACTUALLY DOING THAT does, in fact, satisfy some irrepressible need, no? A need that might otherwise be satisfied by some other primal, focused and physical activity. Hunters are not kill-bots; they're people doing something they enjoy.

And yes, Alex, it IS my god-given right to kill something and eat it: I shouldn't have to ask for your (or anyone else's) permission. Which brings us back to the homosexuality issue: no one should have to ask for permission to do date/love who they want (except, obv, the other person). But I agree: it's not really germane to the discussion beyond the "free to be me" aspect.

I have about 238,547,000 points to make but this thread is kind of derailed enough.

I sort of over-reacted to this. You mean that, since hunting is no longer a necessity of this our modern age, you can't understand why people do it anyway? Duly noted.

...I'm mostly cheesed because I see a thinly-veiled prejudice against rural America behind all of this.

Note to self: rob Kevin's house.

Seriously dude: you don't have to be naive just to prove a point. Yes, fine, there are some *hypothetical* situations where someone could, in theory, be in your house for a perfectly valid reason. Whatever. Those situations are rare and Rog is banking on statistics.

You don't like guns and don't want one in your house. Leave it at that. Roger will shoot you if you are in his house uninvited. Fine: don't go to Roger's house without telling him. I won't. Unless I'm egging it, in which case I'll hide behind my car.

Kevin - I'm not sure about loads. I live in a pretty rural area. To get into my house, you'd have to park the car in the driveway. You woudn't just be an intrepid neighbor, happening up the street, and see a prowler, and selflessly pursue him into my house. It's just not plausible.

Somebody breaking in to hurt me or my family is much more plausible. And if you don't believe me, just open any american newspaper and check out the Daily Blotter. Of all those dozens of people every day who are knifed, burglarized, raped and beaten, not one of them ever 'expected' to be a victim.

Did I ever suggest that it was something other than my own fucking opinion?

I mean, driving cars in a circle really fast is, well, fun. So is shooting guns (wouldn't know about hunting). Ditto for snowmobiles, ditto for drinking beers around a campfire.

x-post Alex: You're right: you didn't. Like I said before: I'm bothered because it seems as though our opinion goes beyond just hunting. Which is fine, if you admit it.

NASCAR just seems dull to me, but y'know...to each their own.

jesus fucking christ

"You are aware that, in the US, the toughest gun laws are in New York City, Washington DC, and California, right? Even being from the UK, I'm sure I don't have to tell you about the crime rates in those particular cities."

I'm not sure about NY or California, but the vast majority of guns in D.C. come from Virginia, a state with lax gun control. They are simply bought and brought over the border to D.C.

And a great number of guns find their way onto the street from houses like yours. A burgler breaks into your house when you're not there (as they almost always do) and take your gun.

Oh for sure. My neighbor (hi Len! Don't shoot me!) is one of 'em. Also a man that shouldn't be allowed to own guns. And, now that I think of it, ISN'T allowed to own guns in those weeks immediately following his most recent course of shock therapy.

I helped him gut a deer last week. It was creepy. Not because of the guts (my job calls for far worse than that), but because of the heavy breathing. Ewww, Len.

Seriously.

Guns in my mind: don't own one, never want to, bring on the gun control but only if we can go whole hog and repeal the amendment, something which was brought into being due to the historical situation at the end of the 18th century (a recently fought war for independence, understandable concern that the new nation might yet face all sorts of huge troubles, etc.) rather than because of some sort of intrinsic correctness, and which was enacted in an era when revolvers and their various descendants did not exist. The likelihood of the amendment being revoked is extremely slim if not nonexistent at this point, however, which for myself I regret -- the NRA's reflexive paranoia on the point is no less understandable than the ACLU's is on their own particular bugbears, say, but I find it somewhat galling myself that a political pressure group regarding gun ownership and attendant fetishization of the objects has more financial support and clout than one dedicated to principles of civil liberty in general. Such, however, is society, and I do not expect perfection [as I would see it] as an automatic requirement for living in it.

How long do you think it'll be before they decide that with all the kiddie porn, flag burnings, and Eminem CDs, that the first ammendment could use a little, err, reevaluation as well?

I'm entirely serious on a conceptual level. Consider the exact text of the amendment:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed

The intent of the amendment is to ensure that the militia can exist and function for reasons of state security -- not, I think, a particular worry for America 2004 as opposed to America 1790 or so -- but that's not my point here so much as it is the bald, core point of the original sentence as it ends. The exact history of gun control and its constitutionalism has a huge history behind it now, but ultimately there is something in the constitution as it currently functions -- something in a specific legal document that, unlike the general concept of gun rights or indeed any rights, is utterly intrinsic to American government and political and social life -- which baldly states that the right cannot be legally infringed. Therefore, in order to outright ban gun use and ownership -- which is my preferred state of affairs -- the Constitution itself would have to be changed. The NRA recognizes this and therefore its core defense of gun rights is actually built on incredibly solid legal ground. The various attempts to regulate and limit gun sales and use in this country, while something I find favor with, ultimately run up against that point, and the Constitution cannot be ignored in a haphazard fashion. Therefore, the amendment must not simply be legislated around in a scattershot way, but repealed.

As I said, I harbor no illusions that the amendment will be repealed or that there would even be something close to a full-on political debate nationwide any time soon. It is not a political issue on that level even slightly, and certainly given the current cast of Congress and the White House, not to mention the current state of affairs in general, nothing will change for a while yet. Like many other issues I have a particular interest in -- I do not believe the death penalty should be applied in any situation, for instance -- I do not expect to see things change in my lifetime. But it is not short-sighted to hold particular beliefs and conclusions about overarching issues, Roger, and I'm not annoyed with your opposition to my general point of view as it is your choice of words in describing it.

Slavery was not ended in this country legally until the appropriate amendment passed. Amendments had to be passed to further enfranchise the vote beyond an extremely limited base. Alcohol was completely regulated by constitutional action, then reversed by the same action. That there has been no successful amendment passed or a repeal put in place for over thirty years is no reason why it cannot happen again -- that is the point of the American experiment, that the law of the land itself is not immutable.

I think Roger is OTM w/r/t repealing the 2nd amendment vis a vis the 1st amendment (how many shorthand buzzwords was that?! gooddam!). The government should have as little oversight of my life as possible. The idea that certain dangerous things should be outlawed is a mind-set motivated by fear AND the idea that you know better than everyone else. That doesn't fly with me.

I find it weird and logically dissonant that there are people that would support the legalization of drugs et al. and, in the same breath, call for the banning of all guns. Imagine the ponderous and harmful War on Drugs expanded beyond stoners to guys like Roger Fidelity except a bazillion times bloodier cause, you know, it's guns we're dealing with.

That there has been no successful amendment passed or a repeal put in place for over thirty years

1992 wasn't THAT long ago.

(This has nothing to do with killing animals. Please forgive me and carry on.)

As is Kevin: there is an almost religious respect for the Constitution over here. I, for one, think the thing is pretty rad as it is. Simple. However, unlike the Bible, the Constitution IS the law of the land and any laws actions, etc. made that contravene it should not--legally--stand. So, to ban guns you have to repeal an amendment. To legally (IMHO) outlaw gay marriage you have to pass an amendment. And passing amendments is really friggin' hard, as it should be. In theory, laws are passing transient things, subject to the whims of fashion (redundant?). Amendments are like Super-Laws. If something actually made it through the rigorous ratification process it MUST be the will of the people and a Really Good Non-Partisan idea.

Which is why neither guns nor gay marriage will ever be banned. Which is great.

The trickiest bit is when you get people that ONLY obey the Constitution--any mere "law" is but an activist "interpretation" of the Immutable Document and therefore illegitimate. Not surprisingly, these people have a lot in common with nut-job Bible thumpers. Frequently they are the same person (there's quite a few batshit Christians that are incredibly libertarian/anarchist; they just don't make themselves known all that often).

I find these assumptions incorrect. I do not fear guns, in that, say, I do not walk down the street gripped by some sort of worry I'm about to be taken out (also, as already noted, I appear to have far *less* fear than Roger does about armed burglary or the like, while living in an area that has a lot more people, for a start, and which Roger himself appears to find suffering more of a crime problem than where he is at). I've shot guns before -- heck, my grandfather taught me how to use a rifle, though all I've ever shot are targets. Meanwhile, I don't believe that I know better than everyone else -- no more so than you apparently know better than everyone else that you are correct, after all. Rather, I am resolutely unconvinced of the need for guns in American society and have not seen a philosophical argument in favor of their possession I yet agree with.

For my part, I wonder if and how a more closely ingrained use of guns from the start of the history of the amendment -- one which was predicated on the 'well-trained militia' clause and which revolved specifically around questions of defense and training that applied to all citizens for those reasons, in otherwards valuing the first part of the amendment *as much as* the second -- would have changed how the current nature of the debate stands, and whether we would not be speaking of issues of fear -- whether it is fear of guns or fear of government or fear of other people -- so much as ones of national defense. The obvious parallel to be drawn, in Western terms at least, would be the Swiss model -- universal male military training, requirements to own guns and ammunition, etc. -- but then again Switzerland is not America and Swiss history is not American history, and wishing otherwise is a pointless exercise.

The observation about how amendments are hard to pass is of course most valid. I would caution against, however, the implication, perhaps unintended by G--ff, that my argument about the Constitution not being immutable is the same as calling it 'perfectly malleable.' I see my take as one of a promise -- in otherwords, that the possibility can exist should there be, as Giboyeux notes, a 'really good' idea, or at the least one that to the voters as represented in both Congress and the state legislatures is a good idea (Prohibition being an instance where it was first seen as a good idea and then a bad one -- an allowance for the Constitution as being not merely immutable but able to have later changes changed back if the experiment doesn't work).

I've already said a couple of times here that I don't believe a repeal of the 2nd amendment would pass due to the current climate, so to my mind I instead have faith in the promise of change rather than the change itself. In contrast the anti-gay-marriage forces more explicitly believed that the change itself was a possibility -- one which was rapidly debunked, precisely because the climate did not exist for it on a national level. The state level, alas, was another matter.

It's a strange, strange world.

For god's sake, what a completely ridiculous comment.

giboyeux is largely OTM. latebloomer is completely OTM, especially here:

i hate people but you don't see me putting animals on a pedestal. if deer or dolphins or platypi had evolved language or self-awareness (or whatever "seperates" us from other animals) they probably would be dicks too.

I am not so sanguine on this point.

TS: Expanded funding for humane ways to curb the deer population vs Homeless shelters
-- The Ghost of Dan Perry (djperr...), November 24th, 2004.

I nominate n/a to be the guy to tell the 400,001st homeless person in line at the new shelters that we could have put in more beds but we decided it was more important to find a way to stop people from shooting deer; please enjoy your street corner!
-- The Ghost of Dan Perry (djperr...), November 24th, 2004.

Ghost - sorry, but i've gone for a few days eating turkey and enjoying the company of my gun toting, deer hunting, and much loved (by me, that is) in-laws deep in the heart of northeastern wisconsin. funny how i can disagree with them about the spiritual relevance of amateur gun hunting as a control on deer populations without them telling me to fuck off as long as i'm as reasonable with them as i've certainly been with you.

above i've included some of the quotes you requested regarding your dismissal of more creative and humane ways to deal with the deer population by saying that any of those notions would inevitably take money from human sufferers. even though your last attack i've cited was against n/a and not myself, i did take up their cause once they bowed out. you picked this fight with me, not the other way around. and if you can't handle sound retorts to your bully tactics, concede like a gentleman instead of sputtering like a retard.

i've read your posts, and i believe i comprehend your very myopic perspective on how the world improves, i just don't agree with you at all. i wonder if you have read and comprehended anything i have written above, i doubt it. i didn't post my thoughts to pick a fight but instead to present some balance to the ecologically ignorant perspectives posted by people like you.

(My "false conflict" is more accurately described as "I would rather spend money to make human beings' lives better than spend money to make animals' lives better"; even without the "unnecessary skirmishes" (which at this point have now become necessary; thanks GWB) I would divert the extra money freed up from that to humanitarian efforts, education efforts, human medical research and Social Security before I diverted money to find a way to sterilize deer in a non-painful manner. This is not because I want deer to suffer; this is because I really don't care at all that people shoot deer. It is a complete and total non-issue to me and, given everything that's wrong with the human condition let alone with life in the United States, I don't understand the mindset that prioritizes the suffering animals over the suffering of human beings.)

Perhaps the name of the author of this piece will sound familiar to some of you. She also wrote this book.