I love animals. Especially the tasty ones.
I make such statements to boil the blood of the enviroweenies. They have neither logic nor a sense of humor. Irking PETA is about as easy as shooting, well . . . you follow. I don’t even have to speak to annoy a liberal. All I have to do post a picture of my Remington pump-action .870 shotgun. Said shotgun has been taken on many a dove and duck hunt. I also point my Winchester .243 at hogs regularly. One day I hope to shoot a deer. Of these animals — dove, duck, deer, hogs — I only hate the hogs. If you met a feral hog, you would too.
This is why the current Hollywood distraction non-drama over Jennifer Lawrence expressing her opinion about PETA amuses me greatly. (Nolte’s got it covered on the Bigs.) The PETA enviroweenies cannot fathom how I can both love nature/animals and be a hunter, so I’ll try to break it down.
1. It starts with my belief in God and how God is in control of all. I love nature because it proclaims God’s power and imagination. Intelligent Design for the win!
2. God’s Book both A) makes a distinction between mankind and animals and B) allows for the eating of animals.
3. Hunting is good for the environment. It’s part of nature’s balance in animal populations. Deer would overrun North America if not for deer season. I also hunt predator species to protect the deer from dying out. Feral hogs are causing billions of dollars of damage to farmland. You know, farmland, where we grow food for people.
4. In general, hunters care enough to follow the rules. Sure, there are bad seeds in every group, but hunters pay their taxes to hunt (licenses), follow the rules (following the seasons and limits), and voluntarily work to preserve and conserve natural habitats (see Ducks Unlimited for one example).
The last thing I want to do is injure a beautiful buck and then have to stomp miles through the woods to find it. I shoot to kill instantly because it’s humane. PETA is the hypocrite. They claim to protect all animals and then euthanize thousands every year. So tell the hunters, PETA, is killing animals wrong or not? Or is it only wrong when it’s politically convenient for you to call it wrong?
I hunt because I love the challenge. Animals have better senses than us. They can see you, smell you, and hear you before you’ll ever know they are there. I love getting up early, sitting still for hours listening to the world wake up, hoping, waiting and watching for an animal to come. It’s peaceful. There’s no city noise, no distractions; just a sunrise or sunset.
I don’t relish the death of anything. It’s a fact of life that eventually all living things die. If you don’t want to hunt, I respect your choice not to. In fact, I won’t even ask you to pay for my ammo because Americans shouldn’t be forced to fund things they don’t believe in. But it’s my 2nd Amendment right to own arms, it’s lawful for me to hunt in the state of Texas given I follow their rules, and if I think PETA is a bunch of weenie hypocrites. It’s also my 1st amendment right to believe that and say so! I’ll even support the rights of actors to voice their opinions from any end of the political spectrum — from Adam Baldwin to Alec Baldwin.
I’m just glad to know after America goes bankrupt and our civilization collapses, I’ll still be able to eat meat. Pass the A1.
Excellent piece. Liberal in truth hate nature. They want to be overrun and unmanageable. And then when a bear or deer wanders up to their house they freak out.
And a week after I wrote this, PETA gave Obama a pass for eating dog. since he was a kid. It’s their inconsistencies that bother me.
Also apparently a pass for signing a law that legalized the slaughter of horses for HUMAN consumption. He promised during his campaign to completely ban the slaughter of horses for any reason (something I don’t support, there are humane reasons to put a horse down), but instead did the extreme opposite.
FYI, steak is vegetarian: processed corn in a stay fresh package on legs. Guilt-free eating.
Good piece.
I have little patience with PETA. They’re generally completely irrational and as you point out they simply cannot understand how anyone can love and appreciate nature and also be a hunter.
Its not about killing for “thrills”, its not a “bloodsport” as they seem to imagine. Hunting something, especially if you’re up to the challenge of actually going out and tracking it down, getting in as close as possible without it seeing or hearing you (and that is very tough and takes a lot of personal discipline), is about testing yourself against Nature itself and seeing how you measure up. An trust me, about the time you turn around and find yourself face to snout with a bear, you figure out humans might have guns but that don’t always count for much.
JD is right, without hunters animal populations would soon overrun us. Worse, without hunters deer populations would soon be so large they’d start starving to death, which is a lot worse way to die than being shot. But my guess is most of PETA have this horrible image in their head they can’t get around and instead just go “EWWWWWWW” a lot. Whatever, they can do that, just wish they’d leave me along about it.
Twenty-six years ago the state (NC) along with the National Geographic Society (of which I’m also a member) worked to reintroduce red wolves here, today there is a small population of about 100 along the coast we worked very hard to get going, bringing them back from extinction (they were extinct here with only a few in Tx). Where was PETA then? I don’t recall anyone from PETA camping out in swampy coastal lowlands, hiking and tracking them for months at a time to make sure the wolves did okay and were getting established. PETA likes to pretend to care about animals, but when it comes to getting your hands dirty and doing the real work of protecting and managing species, much less bringing one back from extinction… suddenly they’re… busy.
To be fair to Adam Baldwin, he considers himself a Constitutional centrist. I respect him all the same
Perhaps Democrats don’t want us to be able to obtain food ourselves. Perhaps Democrats want people dependant on food stamps instead of being able to go and get their own, tasty backstraps. I stand with you for the right of Americans to remain pioneers, to remain self-sufficient, to be able to live off the land, and to be able to enjoy the fruits of our own land.
Recently, my nephew was trying to convince me that we had to “kill” the vegetable to be able to eat it. Is he learning this in school? Will we all be forced to survive on chemically-created fake foods?
I, also, love nature and believe in hunting. In addition to your points, if we, in Michigan, did not harvest some of the deer population each year, it would just mean that more would die a slow death of starvation in the winter. The forests can provide enough for a certain amount of deer. The rest starve. I do believe in the humanity of a quick death to a slow one. Finally, the last deer I shot had already been hit by a car and was experiencing a slow, multi-day death. My shot was surely more humane than the motorist who hit a deer and did not track it (easy, since both the deer’s back legs were broken) and put it out of its misery.
Yeah I couldn’t find a place to slip in the $$ damage that animal/car collisions costs. Hitting a hog or deer will destroy a car. so if populations get out of control (which Hogs are), then there are more vehicle accidents.
First things first: I hate PETA. hate hate hate. Their marketing campaigns are incredibly sexist and their militant protesting is distracting and doesn’t accomplish a thing.
That being said, something needs to change in regards to how we get our meat. Factory farms are responsible for tons and tons of pollution and cause animals to get sick because they are literally standing in their own filth most of the time. I’ve driven past the stockyards in Bakersfield…. it’s disgusting. And keeping thousands and thousands of animals penned up in a close confined space, and needing to clip off beaks of chickens, and the way that the animals are slaughtered…. it’s inhumane. There needs to be a lot more regulation.
I think that hunting the way you describe is miles more humane than what goes on in your typical American slaughterhouse. plus everything else you outlined.
Well if we had a Department of Labor or a Department of Agriculture that actually did something about those corporate farms something might change. Instead they target family farms with new regulations that would actually force small farms out of business and encourage more corporate farms. Apparently part of the “liberal” agenda, since its been Democrat admins that have pushed things in that direction with legislation.
90% of all farms in the US are owned by families or individuals. 75% of them make $100,000 or less per year. Corporate “factory” farms make up only 3% of all agricultural farming in the US. Those numbers come from the Department of Agriculture itself.