Clubbing Raccoons, Possums; Running Down Deer With Cars - "Thrill Kill Poaching" Latest Trend

[hatrack]

Deer, elk and even raccoons have a new type of predator to worry about: Poachers who kill increasingly for the thrill of it. Scott Talbott, an assistant division chief with Wyoming's Fish and Game Department, calls it "wanton destruction" that goes beyond shooting.

Poachers run down deer with cars or snowmobiles, and chase raccoons, then beat them to death with clubs. They also shoot deer, elk and antelope, sometimes removing valuable antlers but often leaving the carcass to rot on the ground, Talbott and other wildlife officials said. "It's thrill killing — people just going out and killing stuff," Talbott said. "We have seen a significant increase of that in Wyoming. It's disturbing."

In Wisconsin, state wildlife officials are teaming with researchers from University of Wisconsin-Green Bay to study the trend, which they said has emerged in recent years. The thrill killing usually involves youths ages 14 to 23, who gather in groups with the intent of killing as many animals as possible, said Chuck Horn of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. "These are cases where they're just looking for something to do," Horn said. "It seems like in some of these cases kids are looking for instant gratification, like a video game."

Last April, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wardens apprehended a group of 15 youths, five of them juveniles, who were running down raccoons, muskrats and possums, then clubbing them to death with spiked clubs and baseball bats, Horn said. "Basically it was anything slow enough they could chase on foot," Horn said. "This group's sole intent was to do what they call 'coon bashing.' " Randy Stark, head conservation warden in Wisconsin and president of the National Association of Conservation Law Enforcement Chiefs, said that a recent membership survey showed an increase in thrill killing of wildlife. "People are just shooting the game with no intention of using it," he said.

EDIT

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-01-26-wildlife-thrill-killing_N.htm

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Makes me want to get a Sherman Tank and do a little "Thrill KILLER Poaching.."

It would seem to me that it would be doing the human race a BIG favor to eliminate those specimens....especially before they reproduce!!!

[jwirr]

2. Agreed. I have never heard of anything so childish. I hope this is not

nationwide.

[left coaster]

5. childish? No. Psychopathic, more like.. nt

[BrklynLiberal]

20. Definitely scary as hell, and needs to be stopped...

[Nihil]

25. I suspect a few fatal "hunting accidents" might reduce the popularity of such "sport".

And yes, I do mean that I prefer that such people (youths or not)
are killed in preference to allowing them to indulge their cruel
psychopathic desires.

:grr:

[TheWraith]

3. I have trouble believing this.

It sounds more like the creation of an urban legend than something that's really plausible. Running down deer in cars is dangerous, and in a snowmobile it's almost suicidal. Not to mention it's a lot easier said than done to chase down a raccoon, and those things are fierce when cornered.

[hatrack]

4. Read "Death All Day" by Richard Rhodes

I think it's highly believable, given human nature.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. If people can "hunt" penned animals via remote camera, they are capable of ANYTHING!!

I know YOU will agree HATRACK


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x16765

[TheWraith]

14. Human nature has nothing to do with it.

What's described simply does not sound at all plausible to me.

[hatrack]

17. Human nature, sadly, has everything to do with it . . .

You didn't grow up in the country, I take it.

[TheWraith]

18. I've never lived anywhere BUT the country.

Once again--the laws of physics say that running down a deer with a snowmobile is not plausible. Nor is deliberately hitting deer with cars multiple times. One deer strike can trash a normal car.

[hatrack]

19. "Running down" - not "running over" - chasing an animal until it is exhausted

nt

[bhikkhu]

30. I've heard enough stories to believe it myself

A friend of mine has run down coyotes with his snowmobile, and enjoys telling the stories. Perhaps he was only successful once or twice, but I get the impression that running down animals is a basic thing snowmobilers do out there.

The notion that a hunter would kill a deer or elk for its antlers is hardly a new one; most will bring the animal in and have it butchered, but if you hear hunters talk there's generally no apology for just taking the antlers or the head if the rest is inconvenient.

The notion of animals being divided into good vs varmint is also still common enough. The good animals are the ones you hunt for food, while varmints (squirrels, hawks, badgers, coyotes, cats, bears, etc) are sometimes portrayed as just screwing up the forest and the good animal's habitat. They're almost all protected, but some hunters still brag about how they'd just shoot this or that animal if they came across it anyway.

The only thing thats surprising and discouraging in the article is that its young people...

on edit: read the first part of John Muir's "Boyhood and youth". He talks about fanning out into the forest with his buddies and shooting and killing every animal they came across, twisting the heads off into a bag. At the end of the day they'd empty their bags and see who got the most.

[Dover]

7. I guess I'm relieved that the main thing restless youths do around

here is smash mailboxes.

So what is at the heart of this problem? I think one issue is that they
don't see their own value let alone that of an animal. Or perhaps a better way to put it is they don't feel empowered in their lives or creatively/constructively engaged and project those feelings onto innocent and powerless animals. This may be particularly true for rural
kids, or perhaps they just act out in ways that are more particular to their
environment.

Why are young people such easy targets for enlistment by the military, gangs and terrorist groups?

[elocs]

8. Near where I live in WI we've had guys run deer to death with snowmobiles.

For years I have seen people who will try and hit any animal that happens to be in the road. I've seen squirrels run over in city parks where the speed limit is only 15 mph.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. I have actually seen teen age boys run off the shoulder of a road to kill a raccoon. It was all I

could do not to follow them and ram my car into theirs.

[juno jones]

10. Damn we just frove out on Wisconsin county road DD

got fucked up in some field listened to Led Zep and drove home drunk.

Sure we were bored, but it never occured to even the most trigger-happy hunters amongst us to kill things for fun.

Kids who killed things, like Roger 'the Dodger' who killed his dog while tripping on spraypaint or Ricky 'One Nut" who would sexually abuse farm animals were given a wide berth and shunned socially.

Something is very fucked up in the national psyche these days.

[glitch]

11. They see psychopathology didn't hurt Bush/Cheney's careers.

And yes they are psychopaths.

[Hawkowl]

12. This is new?

I have a hard time believing that all of today's so called "hunters" aren't simply out for thrill killing. No respect for nature, or their fellow animals.

These youths are simply a play group yielding their interpretation of "Lord of the Flies". It is simply the nature of homo sapiens and the world will be shorn of us soon enough.

[Mojorabbit]

29. That is baloney

My freezer is filled with game.

[Lochloosa]

13. In the South it's called dinner.

[Tumbulu]

15. When all the kids watch is violence on video and tv

what does one expect?

Also, I watch roosters and rams fighting all the time on my farm, there is something innate in male young animals causing some of them to want to fight, attack each other and me sometimes. But the hens and the ewes rarely fight and if they do it is over very quickly. Nothing like rams and roosters, who fight to the death.

So, it is imo something innate in the young male exaggerated by our cultural desire to make money at any cost ( allowing media makers to use violent images to sell their products) which activates some biological trigger that increases anti social and psychotic behavior.

[rbixby]

16. I hit a deer with my car about 2 weeks ago

And it certainly wasn't thrilling. I don't get it. I'm sure it was thrilling to the body shop that repaired the $5000 worth of damage though.

[FedUpWithIt All]

21. It seems like the grey area of empathy is diappearing.

Humanity seems to be moving to the poles IMHO.


Strange to observe.

[depakid]

22. In the Pacific Northwest last summer, young male hooligans were running down seabirds

along the beach. As in running over. Several were caught and prosecuted- yet incidents kept occurring.

In Victoria and Queensland in the past two weeks, there have been two Koala shoot with air rifles- same sort of deal.

[pscot]

23. Anyone surprised or shocked by this

really needs to get out more, or at least read a little history. Back in the late 17th century "fox tossing" was a popular form of recreation throughout the Hapsburg empire. Foxes and other small animals were captured and tossed up in the air with blankets until they were disoriented, then beaten to death with sticks by the children. The young enperor Leopold was particualarly fond of the sport. Cat butting, a ghastly business involving cats tied to poles, was another favorite that dated from the middle ages. One German Prince was so addicted to hawking that he killed more than 37,000 birds (he kept meticulous records) in 25 years.He had a hunting lodge built on a major crane flyway. Royal hunts were common. The deer were driven to a central locale and slaughtered by the gentry. A 1000 kills was reckoned a successful hunt. A favorite method was to end a drive at a lake. As the critters were driven into the water, they could be shot from boats, a great boon for the ladies and more sedentary sportsmen.

To bring this up to date, when Biggus Dickus and Fat Tony go pheasant hunting, the birds are planted. A gamekeeper tucks rhe bird's head under its wing, swings it back and forth then puts in cover. The bird stays put until Cheney practically steps on it. They can and do kill fifty a day that way. Each.

This is who we are, people. This is what we do, what we have always done. It's why we are virtually alone on the planet now.

[wtmusic]

24. There seems to be a positive correlation between this kind of thing

and unemployment. Too much time, not enough self-esteem.

[AlecBGreen]

26. these are the symptoms

of a very sick society :(

[Kablooie]

27. We need a special preserve for these guys where they can legally hunt and kill each other.

A real Battle Royale.

[freethought]

28. One only has to go on some of the

second-rate "You-Tube" like sites to see what they are talking about. For exampe, a deer gets hit by some brand of high-performance sports car and gets launched vertically into a tree and gets stuck up there.
This is just sick. What is with kids these days? Are they so saturated by violence in movies and TV that in order to get some sort of excitement they have to go out and run an animal down? I few years ago I was driving to my home in Maine and a porcupine came into my headlights. I swerved to avoid hitting it but it was too late. This bumbed me out to no end. The next day I found the carcass several yards from where I hit it. The porcupine had been able to crawl from the road, across several yards nearly to the woods. It had made tracks in the sand, so I know no person or animal had picked it up and moved it.

I am enthusiastic sports angler and former hunter. In my angling activities I have a simple rule, if you are not going to eat it then release it. Pretty simple. It came out of watching other kids fish, to which they sometimes hack off the fishes' tail with a jack knife and throw it back in the water to watch it struggle. I don't really hunt any more. Mainly because hunting was an activity I did with my father, and when he was in his 60s and 70s sitting on a deer stand in the cold early or mid-winter in Maine or Vermont lost its appeal. When he lost his interest, so did I. I had another simple rule when it came to hunting, some would call it the "one-shot priority". Make no mistake, in hunting one is out in Nature to kill something by unnatural means. Given that there is an obligation that should you have a target in sight, be sure of your target and use one well-placed shot to take your game cleanly and with minimal suffering. It seems basic common sense.

What happens when these kids get bored with animals? People perhaps?