November 13, 2012
Joseph DiDomizio
President and CEO
Hudson Group
Dear Mr. DiDomizio,
On behalf of PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] and our more than 3 million members and supporters, I am writing to ask you to keep hunting magazines sold at your stores out of the reach and view of minors by displaying them alongside adult publications such as Playboy and Penthouse. We also urge you to refuse to sell these magazines to anyone under 18 years of age. Hunting magazines present killing as fun and exciting and encourage violent behavior in young people . . .
These publications recklessly promote killing without explaining the devastating consequences. The stress that hunted animals suffer from being pursued compromises their natural feeding habits, making it hard for them to store the fat and energy that they need to survive the winter. Hunting also disrupts migration and hibernation patterns. For animals like wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting can devastate not only entire families but entire communities. And many animals who are shot with a bullet or an arrow flee injured—only to die slow, agonizing deaths from blood loss, shock, starvation, gangrene, or attacks by predators.
Like other forms of casual or thrill violence, hunting spawns a dangerous desensitization to the suffering of others. According to published reports, many of the young people who have opened fire on their schoolmates—including 16-year-old Andrew Golden who, along with an accomplice, killed five people at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark., and 17-year-old T.J. Lane, who killed three people at Chardon High School in Cleveland earlier this year, had first expressed their bloodlust by hunting animals. Not every hunter will kill a human, of course, but in this era of escalating violence, it is irresponsible and downright dangerous to allow kids access to magazines that promote killing for “fun.”
Your British counterpart, W.H. Smith, has already implemented an age restriction on the sale of hunting magazines, and we urge you to follow suit. Please protect animals and impressionable children by keeping hunting magazines out of young people’s reach and sight—just as you would with pornography. Thank you. I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President
PETA
Reply? FOAD seems appropriate.
+1. Even though I’m a vegetarian every time PETA makes an announcement or takes actions like this I’m tempted to get my hunting license. Killing something in PETA’s honor seems so appropriate.
My local radio station has a PETA fishing tourney every year, the allowable fishing area is pretty well limited to viewing distance from PETA’s waterfront, built on protected marshland (after lots of lobbying and hefty fees), headquarters building in Norfolk, VA. Good times, lol.
That is one pissed off bear.
You’d be pissed too if a cowboy rode off on your lunch.
I thought the horse stole the bears lunch this picture is so confusing
Nope the cowboy is riding off on the bears lunch and the horse is telling the cowboy:”get off of me you lardass”!
Now we know the truth!
On a side note I wonder if we could get the PETA organization disbanded for attempting to cause grevious bodily harm due to all the wild animals that will now overrun the countryside and urban areas. Maybe throw in a few hundred charges of negligence to lengthen their stay in a Federal Greybar Hotel!!
That is a LOT of spit coming out of the mouth of that Grizz (it dont look like fun for the dude, bear, or horse either). I am no fan of ‘trophy’ hunting as you are taking out the alpha males who replentish the herd where natural predators take out the weak, sick, and old. Leave the endangered, alpha males, and predators alone if you hunt and dont leave anything to waste.
Dear PETA, GFY!!!
PETA –
Grizzly bears are your friend.
This picture subjugates and demeans horses.
I think they misspelled “PITA.”
Hymmmn, this Anti-Hunting Post, is Very, “One -Sided”!…. Being a “Sportsman”, Hunter, Fisherman; since “Childhood”, [fishing, hand catching, turtles, frogs, snakes, anything, i could!….] learning about them, and releasing, after a short while, “Unharmed”!…. This, i learned from friends!….And Conservation, [ie. taking only what you can eat!….]. Not Killing, just for “Sport”, i learned from my Subscriptions, to “Out Door Life”, and the many Hunting, Fishing Magazines, i purchased, from, about the age of 10!…. [Teaching myself, the ethics, and ways, to hunt Game, from Ethical Hunters, Posting Articles, in these Magazines!!!].
My Dad, worked 2 jobs, [most my Growing to an Adult life], and, was Not, a Hunter, but did, some ocean fishing, which, he did share with me!…. Therefore, the Majority of my learning, i taught myself!
Becoming Disabled, from a Drunk Driver, i lost the use of my Major Arm [left], at 23!…. Retraining , myself, to shoot, and do everything, with my non-dominant arm, [single handed]; i got heavily, into Deer Hunting!…. A “Climbing ,Tree Stand” [Tree Lounge]. Also, being disabled, i was Allowed, to use a “Cross Bow”!…[which i perfected!…]. Only shooting, when i was positive, it’d “Drop” the Animal, in it’s “Tracks”!….
However, a few times, i had to track, them!.. once for 4 hours, finding this 8 point, in the freezing thigh deep waters, of December!…[I walked in, pulled it out, and up a 7 foot enbankment, Single, “Frozen -Handed”!…]. Than “Gutting”, him, for the 1 mile hump, back to my car!…. [another 9 pointer, i tracked, 2 days. eventually finding in a Bedding Area, Dead!…. i Dressed him, and tagged, and registered him! “This”, too, i learned, from “Hunting Magazines”!….. “Ethical Hunting, Techniques!…. [You shoot it, You kill it quickly, and dress it out, to eat!.].
So, Non Hunting Advocates, I Totally Disagree, with your theory, on how Hunting Magazines, promote Usless, Slaughter of Animals!…[More Deer, and Wild pigs, Now, than Ever!….]. “Cull” these Creatures, for their own good, and for food!… We should Teach our kids, to Hunt & Fish, the Right way!…. {P.E.T.A., to Me, is an Accronymn, for, “People Eating, Tastey Animals”!…}. I’m Sorry, if this “Offends Anyone!… But, So does the post i read, above, offends Me!….
“Disabally Yours”,
Captain George
410-903-6148 [cell]
P.S. Please, Forward my Comments, to “Tracy Reimann”
Executive Vice President, of P.E.T.A. ; Also, i was a
“Volunteer”, Diver & Exhibit Guide, with the Baltimore
Aquarium, from 1985- 2005!… Call the Volunteer Office
[410] 576-3886, for Confirmation, and Credibility!…
I have subscribed to field and stream, and outdoor life since I was 8 years old, I am a ducks unlimeted member, an avid bowhunter, and small game hunter, I plan on starting duck hunting next year, also I fish as much as posible on hard water and wet water, I am only 16 years old and if PETA got this impemented somehow, it would make it incredibly hard to learn new ways of hunting and fishing for me.
I’ll mail you every issue if they are successful.
Nous Defions
True being under the age of 18 it would make it hard for me to. I like any kind of hunting and fishing. I’m suscribed to Field and Stream and I am a member of Duckaholics Anonymous.
Dear PETA:
FOAD.
Kthxbai
P.S. I think you have a new follower. Her name is Katniss, and she loves to yell your name. ” Oh, PETA!”
Thank you, Tracy Reiman, for your contribution to the pussification, I mean protection, of American children.
Dear PETA,
First off get your freaking facts straight. Come here to Jonesboro Ar and talk to the survivors and families.
Next go back to where you came from and beat yourself senseless with a large zucchini!!!
Rinse and Repeat!!
Have a nice day you bunch of dumbass chucklef&$s!!!
Yes because the only reason for Hunting is casual or thrill violence. You know, many hunters including myself hunt for self-sufficiency and sustenance. I take no pleasure in the kill, but it is a necessary skill to have and far better than buying mass-produced meat.
I find thrill hunting or TROPHY hunting to be morally abhorrent. Killing should not be done in the name of fun, but harvesting meat through hunting cannot be equated with the disgusting practice of trophy hunting. My whole family (and every person with whom I hunt) follows the rule that anything you kill, you eat.
Jason,
I like your attitude about hunting. If I ever go hunting and decide to continue doing it I would not trophy hunt.
Trophy hunting is fine as long as the meat goes to a soup-kitchen or charity. “Harvesting” implies that the animal is some passive entity like an apple to be picked. Now that’s truly disrespectful to nature’s delectable and majestic creatures!
“One does not hunt to kill. One kills to hunt.”
— I read that somewhere recently.
“For animals like wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting can devastate not only entire families but entire communities.”
— Wolves are human beings too with full legal and moral rights. Just because they do not speak a human language or look like people doesn’t mean they can be murdered for their meat and fur. They too should not be required to show an ID when voting.
“many of the young people who have opened fire on their schoolmates…had first expressed their bloodlust by hunting animals”
— Most violent ‘young people’ who have assaulted and murdered others are raised in modern ‘single mother families’ err make that ‘single mother led living units’, attend public schools, and whose single mother voted for the more liberal candidate. Therefore, we must ban single females having children, ban young people from attending public schools, and ban single women from voting which only helps create an increasingly dysfunctional modern society.
Dear PETA,
Instead of making up complete bull crap, why don’t you get off of your high horse and go do something productive. First off, hunting is necessary for population control because there aren’t enough predators in some states. Take deer for example, there are places where if they weren’t hunted, you would have a lot more people dying from deer collisions every year along with the deer.
I wonder if you are as nuts as you sound in your letter or if you are that much of a liar. There is no desensitization in regards to violence, that is a flat out lie. Also, there is no proof that animals feel stress when hunting that possesses all of the consequence you detail.
I think you are complete hypocrites calling for hunting magazines to be treated similar to pornography when you make advertisements that are similar to pornography all of the time. You guys sicken me because you stick your nose in my area. I invite you to leave the hunting community alone.
They are nuts. They hate the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile because it encourages people to eat meat.
For those not familiar with the Hudson Group.
“The Hudson Group is an East Rutherford, New Jersey, based retailer which operates a chain of newsstands, bookstores, fast food restaurants, and other retail stores chiefly at airports and train stations in the United States. The company’s holdings includes Hudson News, the world’s largest operator of airport newsstands.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Group#Locations
I don’t think this person has ever seen a buck in the rut. Mating so hard the hair on the inside of his legs gets rubbed.
Do you know how many millions of acres of prime wildlife habitat have been DESTROYED forever – simply to feed those greedy PETA-type vegans and vegetarians? It takes hundreds of acres every year to feed one vegan, since vegetable products are sorely lacking in calorie content. All of those acres of vegetable cropland used to be wildlife habitat, back when we wonderful native Americans lived as hunter-gatherers. We lived in harmony with nature, sharing in the spirit lives of our animal brethren and sistren – by killing them and then eating their tasty meat!
Shame, shame on all you selfish, habitat destroying vegans/vegetarians!!! Please help save the planet from your evil, habitat-destroying farmland by ceasing to eat. Vegetables have rights, too!
And if you PETA members drive any kind of motor vehicle, including an electric golf-cart, you are mass-murderers by your own standards: on a nice hot summer day, go count the numbers of innocent insects you have crushed to death with your windshield by driving outside. KILLERS! SAVE THE BUGS! NO CARS FOR PETA MEMBERS!
/s/ IdahoPete
Retired President, People Eating Tasty Animals
Dont forget the millions of fuzzy bunnies that are chopped up by harvesters while harvesting those bitter vittles.
And does anyone believe that carrots don’t scream when they are untimely ripped from Mother Earth’s womb?
Oh, the agony of the vegetables.
I’m watching a documentary by three younger guys of a husband-wife couple in their 50’s living in the far NE of Alaska who are hunters and trappers. It is very good. The man relies upon the shotgun for defense of the homestead against bears.
Surviving Alone in Alaska
http://www.youtube.com/user/vice?v=Iq0rZn8HFmQ
I think I get Tracy Reiman a 2 year subscription to Field and Stream and have it sent to her office.
PETA has three million members? Hm… do squirrels and bacteria get a discount?
Obviously, if they have 3 million members. What morons.
PETA is just a symptom of a greater social change occurring in the West destroying the social structure, and common-sense thinking and acting.
Winston Churchill who predicted the dangers of Hitler and Fascism far earlier than others warned:
“The women’s … movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to (take control) it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands.”
In the West, masculine values have been mostly replaced with feminine values the past forty years regardless of the actual sex of the political leadership. Once again, people are ignoring, denying, and hiding from the facts and the big picture that is evolving right in front of them.
I feel they need to save squirrels that live in cities first…They are run over with cars trucks, and buses, not to mention brutalized by young children of single mothers and vegan families. They are sent to there death from exterminators who where hired by people like the PETA folks because they cause some problems with there electrical and phone lines from chewing through the isolation. Please don’t forget about those squirrels that are poisoned every years by the fertilizer that is placed on the lawns in front and back of homes just so a grass or weed (point of view) grows green but never get’s to it’s full potential because it is torchered every weekend by the owner of the house as they mutilate the grass by cutting it so it stays less then 4″‘s long. I agree with many of the other posters here, PETA, you need to go home and fix your destructive ways FIRST! Before you go and tell someone else that they are wrong; You need to first be educated in the history of the land and the history of conservation and take with a grain of salt some professor who hasn’t left his lab in 60 yrs that the world is a bad place and its your job to fix it. Why don’t you spend your time and money on something that needs help like the starving children right here in the USA, or the homeless, or help improve our failing educational systems (funny how most murders are being done by college age and down children ). Don’t you think that would be a better cause they attempting to change something that is part of our past, present, and future, no matter what you and your organization tries to do??? For the sake of our country, our homes, and our children grow up and become the adults and do what really needs to be done, or is that just to much work for you. Work that requires you to get out from in-front of your computers and stop spouting half thought out conjectures… Really.?.?.?
PETA seems to love restrictions since to join PETA, you need to be under their maximum IQ restriction.
All i know is that if i was wearing 5,000$ fur jacket and somebody spilled blood on me, they would get a snakeskin boot toe in the nut sack (that extends also to the androgynous “new age” women that swing both ways like a pendulum).
About 10 years ago a friend and I were walking near Watertower Place in Chicago’s Gold Coast, out of the corner of my eye. I noticed some douche bag wearing one of those stupid bright colored Bob Marley style wool caps, moving towards her. He was frantically chewing what I was sure of is, a big wad of gum that was about to stuck on her full length fur coat. As P.E.T.A. boy was going for his wad of gum he got a opened hand slap across the face followed quickley with my right knee being slammed in to his groin. Again that was 10 years ago and I still feel just a good about it today as I did back then.
I feel good just reading your story.
Dear PETA,
I will not apologize for hunting. Be it either by evolution or intelligent design, I noted that I have canines. Therefore, whatever caused my existence also designed me to eat meat, which animals are made of. Therefore, the deer shot today will be made into venison sausage, hot sticks, steaks, and hamburger. My family and I will enjoy this free – range, organic meat as we have been for years.
Sincerely,
Accur81
PETA is prejudice. They only like cute furry animals. Doesn’t it sand for People Eating Tasty Animals.
It did, but they sued the guy that had the url http://www.peta.com. The idiots in the jury actually sided with these people and stole the guys intellectual property.
As a person of Asian descent, I am happy to state that no one in my family or my ethnic circle would be stupid enough to support PI err, PETA. Neither are we stupid enough to believe that like Playboy or Penthouse, putting said magazine publications on the top of the newsstand will actually do jack about preventing young people from getting their hands on it if they wanted it, whenever they wanted it. Hence we believe that your effort to badger this company is being done simply to waste time and resources for everyone in order to achieve absolutely nothing. So if this is an example of your thought process, then it speaks volumes about the rest of your espoused ideas. Excuse my french, but FOAD.
“Despite its mission to advocate for “total animal liberation,” government documents obtained through public records requests indicate that each year “PETA kills thousands of animals at its headquarters.
According to records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA has killed more than 25,000 animals (mostly dogs and cats) at its headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia.”
“New Documents: PETA Killed a Near Record-Breaking 95 Percent of Adoptable Dogs and Cats in its Care During 2011
Hypocritical Animal Rights Group Brings Pet Death Toll To 27,751
Despite its $37.4 million budget, PETA employees make little effort to find homes for the thousands of animals they kill every year.”
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/
“According to PETA’s own filings, in 2004 PETA killed 86.3 percent of the animals entrusted to its care — a number that’s rising, not falling. Meanwhile, the SPCA in PETA’s home town (Norfolk, Va.) was able to find loving homes for 73 percent of the animals put in its care.”
http://www.thisistrue.com/peta.html
“PeTA is the foremost group in the animal rights movement. Understand there is a critical difference between animal rights and animal welfare. Animal welfare activists work toward ensuring the humane treatment of animals used by humans for whatever reason. Animal rights activists work toward eliminating all use of animals by people, whether for food, clothing, critical medical research, or the enjoyment of pets, and they often use violence and intimidation to acomplish these goals.”
“Arson, property destruction, burglary and theft are ‘acceptable crimes’ when used for the animal cause.”
(Alex Pacheco, chairman of PETA, New York Times interview)
The philosophy of PeTA and other animal rights groups can be summed up in this: They do not love animals, they hate humans.”
“quotes from Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of PeTA:”
“For one thing, we would no longer allow breeding… as the surplus of cats and dogs declined, eventually companion animals would be phased out…We would no longer allow…pet shops” (Harper’s Magazine, Aug 1988)
“Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation.” (Washingtonian Magazine, Aug. 1986)
“I am not a morose person, but I would rather not be here. I don’t have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I wouldn’t be harming anything. All I can do-all you can do-while you are alive is try to reduce the amount of damage you do by being alive.” (Washington Post, Nov. 13, 1983)”
http://www.arbreptiles.com/extremists.shtml
The mindset of PETA reminds me of the unbalanced extremism of Andrea Dworkin.
The pussification of America continues at an astounding rate.
It sure does. Pussified men are easier for government and modern womyn to control and dispose.
Men are lectured by many from Obama to social-conservative feminists to ‘man-up’ get married, have kids, and be dutiful providers (non-hunters) and protectors (without guns) until disposed of and then told they must accept the new financial ball and chain assigned to them.
Did I just miss the post or is PETA missing the obvious fault in their argument??
Everything to do with hunting and the FandS magazine is available online!!
Now everyone knows that anything you want just about is available online. So how is PETA going to stop that?? Kids nowadays, for the most part, can access about any site they want. And for the most part parents are either unaware or don’t care what the kiddies are looking at online!!
Where I live you can get your first hunting permit at the age of 10. If you can hunt at 10, why can’t you further educate yourself on the subject at 10? Do they expect to change hunting laws?
Of course this won’t even go anywhere, but I’m still mad.
Also for any of those interested, on the Youtube’s there is an episode of “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit” that goes over the corruption/hypocrisies/evils of peta. It’s an informative/enjoyable watch.
Dear PETA,
You don’t eat meat, and I accept that as your choice. However, I have a piece of meat you can suck, lick, and caress.
Yours truly,
إبليس
If this does happen there goes my Field and Stream, American Rifleman, and my Bowhunting magazine. Hunting does not encourage killing as fun. Being under the age of 18 and being the man of the house I hunt to put meat on the table.
If this does happen there goes my Field and Stream, American Rifleman, and my Bowhunting magazine. Hunting is not senseless killing. Being under the age of 18 and being the man of the house I hunt to put meat on the table.
If this does happen there goes my Field and Stream and my Bowhunting magazine. Hunting is not senseless killing. Being under the age of 18 and being the man of the house I hunt to put meat on the table.
Not only is it trite, its flat out wrong on many things. The natural state of an animal is to die a slow agonizing death by starvation or injury, until they get taken by a predator. Hunting actually decreases the suffering of animals in general by killing the target swiftly while decreasing the competition for resources amongst the rest of the population. Come to Travis county and I will show you some suffering by an animal population because it isn’t being hunted. If PETA used any actual data, and not just misplaced sentimentality, they would be advocating on behalf of the hunting community, not against it.
: [The numerals in brackets correspond to my notes and reactions below.]
November 13, 2012
Joseph DiDomizio
President and CEO
Hudson Group
Dear Mr. DiDomizio,
On behalf of PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] and our more than 3 million members and supporters, I am writing to ask you to keep hunting magazines sold at your stores out of the reach and view of minors by displaying them alongside adult publications such as Playboy and Penthouse. We also urge you to refuse to sell these magazines to anyone under 18 years of age. Hunting magazines present killing as fun and exciting and encourage violent behavior in young people . . .[1]
These publications recklessly promote killing without explaining the devastating consequences.[2] The stress that hunted animals suffer from being pursued compromises their natural feeding habits, making it hard for them to store the fat and energy that they need to survive the winter.[3] Hunting also disrupts migration and hibernation patterns.[4] For animals like wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting can devastate not only entire families but entire communities.[5] And many animals who are shot with a bullet or an arrow flee injured—only to die slow, agonizing deaths from blood loss, shock, starvation, gangrene, or attacks by predators.[6]
Like other forms of casual or thrill violence, hunting spawns a dangerous desensitization to the suffering of others.[7] According to published reports, many of the young people who have opened fire on their schoolmates—including 16-year-old Andrew Golden who, along with an accomplice, killed five people at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark., and 17-year-old T.J. Lane, who killed three people at Chardon High School in Cleveland earlier this year, had first expressed their bloodlust by hunting animals.[8] Not every hunter will kill a human, of course, but in this era of escalating violence, it is irresponsible and downright dangerous to allow kids access to magazines that promote killing for “fun.”[9]
Your British counterpart, W.H. Smith, has already implemented an age restriction on the sale of hunting magazines, and we urge you to follow suit.[10] Please protect animals[11] and impressionable children by keeping hunting magazines out of young people’s reach and sight—just as you would with pornography.[12] Thank you. I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President
PETA
[1] Anyone of any age who regards “killing as fun” is already, by definition, dangerously sociopathic or psychopathic or both, and devoid of either empathy or ethics. “Hunting,” on the other hand, is fun and is the activity portrayed as fun in hunting magazines. And hunting is, as Dr. Erich Fromm (social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, and behavioral scientist) points out, a fusion of pleasure and ethics: “In the act of hunting, a man becomes, however briefly, part of nature again. He returns to the natural state, becomes one with the animal, and is freed from the burden of his existential split; to be part of nature and to transcend it by virtue of his consciousness. In stalking the animal he and the animal become equals…”
[2] Again, hunting magazines celebrate hunting, not killing. To quote the Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset: “When one is hunting, the air has another, more exquisite feel as it glides over the skin or enters the lungs, the rocks acquire a more expressive physiognomy, and the vegetation becomes loaded with meaning. But all this is due to the fact that the hunter, while he advances or waits crouching, feels tied through the earth to the animal he pursues, whether the animal is in view, hidden, or absent…”
[3] On the contrary, prey animals have evolved to deal efficiently and effectively with being pursued, because that is, by definition, their natural state, and it has no effect on their ability to store fat and energy. In fact, an absence of natural stress by predation can be devastating to individual animals, entire species, and vast areas of critical ecosystems. You need look no further than the effects of over-population among whitetail deer in the east and Midwest for examples of what an absence of predators can do. Dr. James Swan (environmental psychologist, psychotherapist, and professor of socio-cultural anthropology) has pointed out that more deer are killed every year by automobiles than even existed in this country at the turn of the century; that more deer are killed every year by automobiles than are killed by hunters; and that over-population among mammalian and avian species has contributed to the spread of Lyme disease, bubonic plague, rabies, avian cholera, botulism, and tuberculosis, to say nothing of the spread of various species specific diseases. In Missouri, as I write this, deer herds are in the throes of a double infestation of both Blue Tongue and Chronic Wasting Disease. Unlike a bullet or an arrow, neither of those are quick or easy deaths. If you have any doubts about what overpopulation can do to an ecosystem, go on-line and look up aerial photographs of the devastation created to the tundra by snow geese around Churchill in Manitoba, Canada.
[4] Loss of habitat has an extraordinary and devastating effect on migration, but hunting has virtually zero effect on the migration of any species, avian or mammalian. As for hibernation patterns, since hunting seasons and limitations (originally suggested, promoted, and encouraged in this country by hunters) forbid the taking of animals during critical parts of their annual life cycle, I have no idea what nonsense PETA is spouting here.
[5] Hunting for wolves in North America is strictly controlled and monitored and is used primarily as a control mechanism for nuisance animals. In Alaska and Canada, where sport hunting of wolves is allowed, the “devastation” of “families and entire communities” has been sooooo severe that the population has expanded greatly in both countries. In Alaska, year before last, there was the first documented case of a human (a school teacher out jogging near a town) killed by a wolf pack in North America in recorded history, an example of what can happen when hunting is restricted and wolves or other predators lose their fear of humans.
[6] All states have very strict laws requiring the hunter to make every conceivable effort to recover wounded game, and many states have a law stating that a wounded and lost animal fills the hunter’s tag just as if he had recovered the animal. It is why Ted Nugent had to plead guilty to poaching in Alaska. And remember, these laws—all hunting laws and regulations—were originally suggested and encouraged by hunters. In America, hunters were the ones who came up with—and got passed—the concept of a tax (the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1939) on any kind of hunting or fishing gear, a tax that has raised nearly four billion dollars earmarked exclusively for wildlife habitat and management research. As Dr. Swan has pointed out: “Since the days of Kublai Khan, hunters have placed certain restrictions on themselves, such as seasons, limits, and methods.” Recovery is one of those restrictions.
[7] Wrong again, PETA. Hunting, in fact, spawns a healthy understanding of nature and the natural cycles of life and death. James Swan again: “Learning about the reality of the food chain, that life feeds on other life, through first-hand experience, as in hunting, commonly leads hunters to develop a reverence for nature that leads them to perform acts of conservation.” And Ortega y Gasset again: “Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery, and thereby contains something of a religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, in the laws of nature.”
[8] & [9] Oh, please. Not even PETA could pass that one off without a caveat [9]. Dr. Melvin Konner, Emory University professor of psychiatry and anthropology, conducted a seven year study of the biological origins of human behavior that was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, which resulted in an award-winning book, The Tangled Wing, in which Konner concluded, “…there is little or no evidence, physiological or behavioral, to suggest that predatory aggression has much in common with intraspecies aggression.” In other words, to quote Dr. Swan again: “…ethical hunting is not associated with psychopathology or violence…”
[10] And if W. H. Smith jumped off a cliff…
[11] By all means, let us protect wildlife by leaving the management decisions about their welfare to Fish and Game scientists hired to do that very thing, and stop making nonsensical emotional appeals based on a complete disconnect from anything even approaching reality. Apart from the almost four billion dollars raised by the Pittman-Robertson Act, hunting and fishing licenses in America contribute roughly twenty percent of the revenues that keep state fish and game agencies solvent to protect the animals both hunters and non-hunters enjoy seeing. To take Africa as another example, Safari Club International, a hunting organization, has repeatedly shown that the hunting of a species transforms that species, in the eyes of local people, from a nuisance to be exterminated into a source of revenue to be preserved and protected. Beyond that, just the presence of hunters discourages poachers from decimating herds of wildlife.
[12] Pornography. As Associate Justice Potter Stewart famously observed, “Hard core pornography is hard to define, but I know it when I see it.” Tracy Reiman’s moronic letter qualifies as a good example.
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