this is where i must correct many issues surrounding the current state of hunting in the United States as well as its true goal that i have found out over twenty years of being in the hunting culture of the South. here in Kentucky (and it's not that much different from states like Texas, Alabama, or Tennessee, with regards to participation and culture) hunting is a very popular belief, often times cited as part of the Christian faith itself, and yes, Christianity in the form of Conservative Baptist and Catholicism are predominantly heavy in this area. i cannot even travel in what is often called 'the middle of nowhere' without seeing at least a half dozen churches on my way. the two are often used together, as is the case with Christian Bowhunters, and even religion is used to promote or defend deer hunting against the new term used for animal rights advocates, the 'anti's'.
hunting is pretty much 90% of the culture in Owensboro, situated on the river in Daviess County, Kentucky, only a few miles away from Rockport, Indiana via the Ohio River bridge. twenty years ago, hunting was still a controversy among the population, and the number of active hunters was a mere 25%, of our 50,000 people, and not many were comfortable revealing themselves as hunters among the public, afraid of opposition or insults from animal lovers, who, while non-vegan themselves, saw hunting as unnecessarily cruel and obsolete practice in the 20th Century then (after all, there are plenty of animals already dying on farms for food, right?). today, however, hunting in Owensboro is as popular as video games were during the first time the Nintendo Entertainment Systed was released in 1985. kids even say it's better than playing video game shooters 'because it's real!'. while in 1998, the idea of giving a child a gun, especially given the Columbine Massacre, was taboo. today, however, it is standard practice to teach kids to handle guns, shoot benign herbivores, and then pose with their kill and the picture framed in a wooden picture frame saying on it, 'Baby's first deer!' or 'Grandpa's little deer slayer'
getting back to the issue regarding animal rights, because of figures like Ted Nugent, the recent onslaught of 'ethical' slaughter/farming, a new movement known as the 'Ethical hunters' are showing up. teaching kids, promoting hunting as sustainable, fair, more humane than factory farming, or even considered population control and therefore being responsible for the fact we even HAVE wildlife at all. hunting is oftentimes linked with environmentalism and conservation and even groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, Defenders of Wildlife support hunting, citing again, sources paid by hunting organizations, as proof that hunting 'works' and keeps animals from starving to death. animal advocates even make claims, again, same sources, that hunting only makes up "5% of the population of the United States Population and is in sharp decline" (quote source: In Defense of Animals)
5 percent? that's a bit low if you ask me, given how that would hardly cover the state of Kentucky, much less the rest of the Southern United States, where hunting is pretty rampant lately. that figure may have made since in the 1970s when people seemed active against hunting in animal rights groups, and when hunting was still overall, taboo in many areas, derided as animal cruelty and unnecessary due to 'modern' farming in the here and now. however, twenty years have passed since i started fighting hunting (and getting beaten occasionally, and even being jailed once for a day when i wouldn't shut my mouth near a hunter who walked into a store chiming in how he bagged his prize buck) and i have seen hunting getting more and more popular, and the number of active hunters is rising dramatically. that 5% figure is no longer valid, and is taken from the fish and game services themselves, who want the average public concerned at least for animal welfare, to believe hunting isn't worth worrying about. in fact, i have also witnessed first-hand, even moving many times living in a travel trailer, to many woods, and seeing the deer population also in sharp decline, not hunters, as is popularly stated on animal groups and even stated by activists themselves.
A recent event was the culling of deer in Shawnee Park, back when i first joined Facebook in late 2008. the park's goal was eliminating the entire herd, and amidst opposition from animal groups, it was still done, and the entire park lost the entire deer population, with only pictures of the aftermath being lines of bodies stacked side by side. if hunting was about management and keeping wildlife around, why eliminate an entire herd in a park?
another recent event, this one only a day old or so, was the elimination by helicopter of the Wedge Wolf pack, again, the entire pack was killed. not managed, or as is the popular repeated quote by those buying the hunting propaganda, force-bred to satisfy hunting blood lust. the fact is, that hunting has but one goal, one i have learned by being in the culture, having a blue-collar lifestyle myself, to where i blend in with the people that i have learned a few of their dark secrets undercover. that goal is the total extinction of large or invasive to 'human progress' wild animals, namely animals like deer, wolves, bears, cougars, and many other species, for hopes of using the land for free-range cattle farms, subdivisions, human school and shopping districts, and so on. hunting has no plans to save wildlife, they want you and every other citizen concerned with the cruelty to believe they are the reason wildlife still exist. the fact is, the Wedge pack was extincted in their local area due to complaints from, yes, surprise, cattle farmers. the BLM is doing similar with horses, with cruel roundups and killings and using cattle land need as the reason. hunting is more a threat in my opinion than any factory farm for this one reason alone--one can always breed more cattle, pigs, sheep, horses, and the like. but when rhinos, deer, bears, and many other wonderful, innocent species are eliminated by hunters, you cannot breed more. when they're gone, they're gone. right here i witness the ever-increasing destruction of our entire whitetail deer herd, and the ironic surprise of three more free-range cattle farms being built right where the deer once stood, and were recently hauled away by private game wardens via convoys of ATVs, golf carts, and pickup trucks. anyone who thinks hunting isn't trying to remove wildlife and make them extinct hasn't been following the trail of extinct animals due to hunters. such as the passenger pigeon and American Bison in the state of Kentucky (and they're rare anywhere else). anyone who thinks hunting isn't trying to eradicate wildlife has never had the hot breath of hunters drilling into you their hatred of 'the rats with horns' or 'overgrown goats' they call deer. anyone who thinks hunting has no plans to extinct the wildlife has never seen how the DNR and Defenders of Wildlife, even Obama himself, supported the delisting of wolves from the only protection they had, being on the Endangered Species list. and if not to plan their extinction, what else explains removing a threatened species from that list? i urge everyone to make a stand, to put hunting in more focus in attempt to ban it. and be consistant, head-strong, and continue to make your state representatives aware that hunting is not something we want in our world.
