Sierra Club Hypocricy Regarding Support of Hunting - Paul Watson

[Annces]

John Muir Betrayed
By Captain Paul Watson
(From Committee to Abolish Sports Hunting Newsletter, Summer 2006)

Whom when I asked from what place he came,
And how he might, himself he did eclipse,
The Shepherd of the Ocean by Name,
And said he came far from the main-sea deep.

Edmund Spenser A.C.E. 1590


On April 21st, 2006 on John Muir’s 168th birthday, I resigned as a National Director of the Sierra Club in protest of the Club’s sponsoring of a contest entitled, “Why I like to Hunt.” The contest offered a hunting trip to Alaska as the first prize.

This is now the 21st Century, yet the Sierra Club is encouraging behavior today that John Muir condemned in the 19th Century. They are doing that by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on hunter outreach programs.

Throughout his life, John Muir supported rights for wildlife. You can read his philosophy in the pages of A Thousand Mile Walk, Mountains of California, or The Cruise of the Corwin. His other writings also include passages that defend wildlife and condemn the overlordship of men over beast.

It was this philosophy that brought me to the Sierra Club in 1968 and it was why I became a member. I joined an organization with a legacy and a tradition of respect for wildlife and nature, an organization that appealed to hikers, bird-watchers, naturalists and climbers, not those who profess to love nature with a gun.

I joined the Sierra Club of John Muir, David Brower and Ansel Adams, not the modern day aberration of Carl Pope.

In 1867, two years after the close of the Civil War, John Muir walked from Indiana to Florida in order to observe both flora and fauna. Arriving in Florida, he was shocked by the totally callous regard of people for alligators: “Many good people believe that alligators were created by the Devil, thus accounting for their all-consuming appetite and ugliness. But doubtless these creatures are happy and fill the place assigned them by the great Creator of us all. Fierce and cruel they appear to us, but beautiful in the eyes of god. They, also, are his children, for He hears their cries, cares for them tenderly, and provides their daily bread.”

Muir suggested that all creatures are brothers and equal in the eyes of their creator. Several pages later in A Thousand Mile Walk, Muir expresses his views on man’s domination over the animal world even more strongly:

“Let a Christian hunter go to the Lord’s woods and kill his well-kept beasts, or wild Indians, and it is well; but let an enterprising specimen of these proper, predestined victims go to houses and fields and kill the most worthless person of the vertical godlike killers, —oh! that is horribly unorthodox, and on the part of the Indians, atrocious murder!

Well, I have precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of civilized man, and if a war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathize with the bears.”

In the latter part of the 1800s, Muir wrote: “Now, it never seems to occur to these far-seeing teachers that Nature’s object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?

And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos?

The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.”

John Muir defended rights for animals. He believed that not only did wildlife have an equal right to live with humans on this planet but that it had a great deal to teach us if we would only attempt to open up channels of communication.

What is amazing is that Muir lived at a time when there were far fewer people and many more animals and much more wilderness, yet he had the vision to see the consequences of human arrogance. He was advocating rights for animals and for wilderness a century before these ideas evolved into a movement.

Muir recalled a time when he encountered sheep hunters during a hike up Mount Shasta where he observed a kill:

He wrote: “We went up to the ewe, She was still breathing, but helpless. Her eye was remarkably mild and gentle, and called out sympathy as if she were human. Poor woman-sheep!”

He also wrote: Hunters slaughter wildlife without any thought of the interdependence of all life. On board the Corwin, white hunters approached three polar bears valiantly trying to make an escape over the ice-floes:

“The first one overtaken was killed instantly at the second shot, which passed through the brain. The other two were fired at by five fun, fur, and fame seekers, with heavy breech-loading rifles, about forty times ere they were killed. From four to six bullets passed through their necks and shoulders before the last through the brain put an end to their agony... It was prolonged, bloody agony, as clumsily and heartlessly inflicted as it could well be, except in the case of the first, which never knew what hurt him.”

Shortly afterwards the bodies were hoisted aboard the ship and skinned to be taken home “to show angelic sweethearts the evidence of pluck and daring.”

Similar procedures were carried out with walruses by the great white hunters from San Francisco: “These magnificent animals,” Muir writes in the Cruise of the Corwin “ are killed often times for their tusks alone, like buffaloes for their tongues, ostriches for their feathers, or for mere sport and exercise. In nothing does man, with his grand notions of heaven and charity, show forth his innate, low-bred, wild animalism more clearly than in his treatment of his brother beasts. From the shepherd with his lambs to the red handed hunter, it is the same; no recognition of rights - only murder in one form or another.”

This voyage to the Arctic in 1881 taught Muir much about his fellow man.

Muir’s meetings with Theodore Roosevelt led to the creation of the National Parks in the United States, but this did not prevent Muir from engaging in lively debates with Roosevelt over the ethics of hunting, even calling Roosevelt’s love of trophy hunting “childish.”

Muir openly referred to hunting as the “murder business.”

Yet the Sierra Club founded by John Muir today features pictures of smiling Sierra Club staff posing with their recently slaughtered trophy animals.

I think it is incredibly disrespectful for Carl Pope and the staff of the Sierra Club to use the web pages of the Club as a gloat and boast statement for their conquests over wildlife. Are these people so emotionally inadequate or immature that they need to flaunt their perversion to the entire Sierra Club membership? Do we really need to see them posing with big smiles with freshly slaughtered animals? What purpose does this page serve other than as a perverse vanity page? Is the object to recruit hunters and turn off animal lovers?

And to actually host a contest to promote hunting with an all expense lethal kill thrill in Alaska as a prize, this is akin to spitting on John Muir’s grave.

The Sierra Club was founded by John Muir to respect wilderness and to honor nature. It is amazingly hypocritical for the Sierra Club to be posting this pro-slaughter blasphemy on the same website where the words of John Muir proclaim that hunting is the “murder business.” It shows their antipathy for the sentiment and will of the noble founder.



http://www.all-creatures.org/cash/cc2006-su-john.html






In Praise of Paul Watson
By Jim Robertson, Wildlife Photographer

I applaud Captain Paul Watson for taking a stand for the animals and resigning from his position on the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club because of their sleeping with the enemy—pandering to “sportsmen” by holding a “Why I Hunt” essay contest.

Praising hunters for the good things they might do for wildlife habitat, while ignoring the lethal results of their ‘primal passions’ is like admiring pedophilic priests for the good they might do for choirboys, while glossing over their predatory behavior and ignoring the impacts on their victims. Hunters may not have sex with the animals they covet, but like child molesters, they prey on the defenseless and like serial killers, they leave their victims physically wounded or dead.

To actively court their membership in an environmental group, while ignoring their deviant desires, is like disregarding Ted Bundy’s crimes against women just because he volunteered some of his time on a rape crisis hotline. Several nurses turned serial killer have used their intimate proximity to their patients to their own advantage, satisfying their lust for power by snuffing out the life of their helpless, bedridden victims. Perhaps, like hunters, these killers believe they are doing a good thing by taking matters in hand and thinning the herd. But their underlying motives are self-serving and they should no more be considered humanitarians than hunters should be considered true environmentalists.

How is the Sierra Club going to divorce itself from this unholy alliance when hunters in Washington, Oregon, Idaho or Alaska call for a contest hunt on coyotes or a cull on cougars, wolves or grizzlies that are taking too many of “their” deer, elk, moose or caribou?


http://www.all-creatures.org/cash/cc2006-su-inpraise.html

[Crazy Dave]

1. I've been a member for less than two years but....

...I've seen about 50/50 of good versus bad. Someone once told me but I haven't been able to confirm it, that they were donated a very nice piece of real estate along a marsh to keep protected and preserved but instead sold it for millions two years later to a developer. Again, that's non-confirmed but from someone I trust as being informed and credible.
My experience so far, I give what I can when I can but recently they've hired telemarketing companies to get you to set up automatic monthly payments and so on. I was getting three calls a day and I kept telling them to quit bothering me and that I wasn't interested. The last caller told me, "the best way for you to quit getting these annoying calls is to just go ahead and sign up", my reply was "No, the best way for me is not to renew my membership the next time it's due!"

The phone hasn't rang for three days :)

[Kolesar]

3. You should not put unsubstantiated stories like this out in the public

That kind of talk could become "common knowledge". Then again, maybe that is what those who came up with the story want--to slander an environmental organization.

I am quite sure that you did not get phoned three times a day, either.

[Annces]

6. Are you a member of the Sierra Club

It sounds like you are. Furthermore, the point of the article is about the Sierra Club promoting hunting, not about inner politics.

[Kolesar]

13. Since 1989. Are you?

Personally, I don't have a problem with tasteful hunters who don't poach and who take clean shots to accomplish quick kills. Nature in the United States is out of balance and the hunters serve the purpose now. Having 25 million deer in the US is big problem. They are destroying the understory flowers and ruining the succession of plant life. Animal life, too, for that matter.

[Annces]

19. No I am not a member

And I feel hunting should be abolished. We have no right to kill animals unless it is for our own survival. And hunters do not keep nature in balance. They kill all kinds of animals that are perfectly able to self regulate their own populations. Deer populations are completely mismanaged due partly to trying to please hunters desire to kill bucks. Blood lust has no place in conservation.

[SteveM]

46. We ALL kill Annces...

I kill by hunting -- the direct method.
Others kill by buying meat under cellophane -- the "agent" method.
Still others kill by eating vegetables grown in a blown-out ecology -- the "extirpation" method.

Which kind are you?

The main reason for over-population of deer is the spread of suburbia and big ag. With huge tracks of land given over to a smorgasbord of crops and the break-up of wooded areas by suburban development, deer have multiplied massively. They are creatures of the edge; that is, the more intrusion into deer habitat, the more deer since intrusion creates more "edge."

Your decrees and edicts not withstanding, I will converse on this, thank you.

[Crazy Dave]

7. You say that with no proof

My caller ID and wife says otherwise.

The prior mentioned incident is what concerns me and I'm considering deleting that. I have no reason nor do I want to lie about something I'm a member of and what would be my gain from it? Get a grip.

[Kolesar]

17. Excuse me

I overreacted. A good solution for the solicitation is to ask them not to call back. Or go into club leadership. The chapter and group leaders don't get the phone solicitation.

My impression is that a lot of people don't have the time or the patience to organize environmental efforts and that they are happy to donate if they can help the club accomplish something.

These environmental campaigns run up costs like postage and travel. Environnmental Justice runs up costs for litigation.

[Crazy Dave]

20. No problem

I would almost guarantee that the people calling are not even members themselves, just pushy sales people that get so much for each commitment they get. One of my group leaders who has been a member since the 60's probably knows some higher ups that can tell these telemarketers to lighten up. I'll mention it to him on our next outing. I wanted to post the number that has been calling so often but it has been deleted. The name that kept showing up was "S.D. & A." and the nerve of the last guy to say "sign up and we'll quit calling" was further proof that he was more than likely a contracted phone solicitor than a fellow member.

[Kolesar]

2. Paul Watson led a dysfunctional caucus with the anti-immigration Sierra Club board members

And here, in this self promoting diatribe, he is trying to hype the pathetic moment of his leaving the Sierra Club Board of Directors for all it is worth. Note that he did not leave the board until the anti-immigration debaucle had played out and that his term was over anyway. Watson would not have been reelected to the board.

Watson sullies his record of accomplishment by picking at this scab.

[Annces]

5. I don't know about the anti-immigration you refer to

However what he writes is not self-serving. He has always been anti-hunting. He started out that way as a child.

[Kolesar]

8. Southern Poverty Law Center carefully followed the anti-immigration hate groups trying to take over

...the board with Paul Watson fully in collusion:

http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_print.jsp?id=927

Saving the Sierra Club

Jan. 20, 2004 -- Brian Willoughby, senior writer/editor of Tolerance.org, interviewed Mark Potok, editor of Intelligence Report about recent events involving the Sierra Club, including what some are calling a "hostile takeover" by anti-immigrant forces. To raise awareness about the attempted takeover, Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, has announced his candidacy for the board.
Tolerance.org: How long has anti-immigration activist John Tanton been targeting the Sierra Club with his anti-immigration campaign?

Mark Potok: At least since 1986. That's when Tanton — who is probably the leading anti-immigration activist in the United States — first wrote about infiltrating the Sierra Club in a secret memo leaked to the press two years later. In the memo, Tanton wrote, "The Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club."

And it's quite possible that the idea came to Tanton earlier, since he headed up the Club's National Population Committee between 1971 and 1975 and established his first immigration restriction organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in 1979. (Read The Puppeteer, an Intelligence Report story on John Tanton.)

Last fall, the journal that Tanton publishes — The Social Contract, which is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group — called for immigration restrictionists to join the Club in time to vote in the board elections in early 2004. Tanton is a friend and ally of Ben Zuckerman, who is a current Club board member and a key leader in the battle to get the Club to adopt a platform calling for reduced immigration.


Tolerance.org: Has the current political climate — heightened patriotism combined with increasingly strict laws targeting foreign-born residents, citizens and visitors — played any role in the resurfacing of this campaign?

Mark Potok: The current climate may well give some traction to the anti-immigration activists that they would not have had otherwise. However, many of those involved in the current attempted takeover have been trying to push the Club in this direction at least since 1996, when they first proposed passing an anti-immigration plank.

The current Sierra Club position is neutral on immigration into the United States, although the Club does work to slow the rate of global population growth by supporting the improvement of women's reproductive education and health, especially in the developing world, where such strategies have been proven to work in reducing family size. The Club has said, in effect, that population is an issue that must be addressed globally, by reducing incentives for migration and by education about family size and birth control, not by simply trying to restrict U.S. immigration.

What happened in the 1990s was that Ben Zuckerman and others organized a group called Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization (it is now known only by its acronym, SUSPS). The group's goal was to convince the Sierra Club to take a position in favor of limiting U.S. immigration.

Although the SUSPS-supported measure was ultimately defeated in a 60%-40% membership vote in 1998, SUSPS was not deterred. In 1999, the group began backing anti-immigration candidates for the Club's board. Although SUSPS-endorsed candidate Paul Watson failed to win election in 1999, within a few years SUSPS began to succeed.

In 2002, Zuckerman (who had joined the board of his ally Watson's Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2000) was elected to the Sierra Club board. In 2003, two more SUSPS-backed candidates — Paul Watson and Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette — joined Zuckerman on the Club board.

Now, in the 2004 election, SUSPS is backing six more candidates in a bid to win control of the board. The most prominent among them are Dick Lamm, Frank Morris and David Pimentel.

...article continues...

[Annces]

21. Well that is a whole other subject

Why not counter what Paul Watson is writing about instead of his character. And I just bet that Sierra club is lobbied heavily by the gun industry and hunting industry who have big money.

[Kolesar]

32. Watson was ineffectual promoting animal rights in his term on the Sierra Club board

I was reading the magazines and newsletters. There certainly was no great campaign or even "messaging" on animal rights.

I have been following Watson's career for a long time. I remember reading his interview in Outside. That led me to read his book "Sea Shepherd" which I took out of the local library.

I resent the way that he is trying to bash the Sierra Club only in order to get a tiny bit of publicity and to raise some funds.

[Bridget Burke]

43. I'd wondered why such a fearless eco-warrior was "taking on" the Sierra Club.

Thanks for the link. He's trying to settle an old score.

The loathsome racists at VDARE supported Watson's bid to turn the Sierra Club into an anti-immigration organization.

A war is being waged for the soul of the Sierra Club, the nation's premier environmental group. True conservationists, who want to preserve America's resources and natural heritage, have been working within the organization's democratic framework to return the 110-year-old group to policy positions that promote population sanity, foreign and domestic.

That means immigration reduction – which the Club’s liberal leaders explicitly eschewed in 1996.

The members have elected three outstanding immigration realists to the Board of Directors (15 total, with five chosen annually for three-year terms). They are: UCLA Prof. Ben Zuckerman (elected 2002); Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette; Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson (both elected in 2003). All are serious environmentalists of many years standing and worthy heirs to the tradition of Sierra Club founder John Muir.

www.vdare.com/walker/long_march.htm

He lost & is still bitter.

Yes, overpopulation is a problem. A Global problem.

[Kolesar]

44. A PBS show reported how northern provinces of India are growing by the 100s of millions

The solution to this escapes me. The people have a tradition of raising the largest family that they can so that they have security in their older years when they are too aged or disabled to provide for themselves. Due to better medicine and availability of food, the mortality rate has dropped tremendously, so *every* family keeps getting *a lot* larger.

We and they will eventually reach the limit of what resources can provide and then there is going to be mass mortality in some countries.

My impression is that India has such a weak government that they cannot perform an adequate population-reduction program.

[Crazy Dave]

45. I think that when we reach our limit here we'll start another war....

...to secure another country's resources as our own. It's already happening.

[Kolesar]

47. How about Asia, soon to have half the world's population, though?

I cannot see them getting any needed resources by storming and adjacent country.

[Crazy Dave]

48. I can't speak for Asia

I just know how our nation and it's leaders operate. Remember, Americans consider it a God given right to drive big monster automobiles, have cheap gasoline, live in 5,000 sq. ft. plus homes and buy cheap stuff at Wal-Mart no matter who gets killed or exploited for it.

[Bridget Burke]

54. This PBS link to Indian Population tells a slightly different tale...

India's population has more than doubled since its family-planning policy went into effect in the 1950s, and current projections predict that India will overtake China's position as most populous nation by 2050. However, India's total fertility rate has declined by more than 40 percent since the 1960s, and today the average number of children per woman is around three.

The country's most recent approach to population issues focuses on the advancement of women economically, academically, and socially, as independent women are more likely to have small families. This is a change from the darker days of India's population policy. In the 1970s, the government declared a population "state of emergency," began implementing forced sterilizations in the nation's poorest regions, and even rewarded medical workers who performed the most operations. The national focus on sterilization hindered women's acceptance of family planning, as many considered birth control an all-or-nothing proposition and chose to forgo it entirely.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/campaigns.html

Yes, the Indian government is "weaker" than China's. Also more humane. Whatever the details, world population is a serious issue. As is energy use by the less crowded countries.

Paul Watson's attempt to turn the Sierra Club into the Keep the Mexicans Out Club failed, fortunately. Since he's made a reputation as a Fearless Eco Warrior, one wonders why he doesn't oppose the Evil Hunters more directly.

[Kolesar]

63. I saw a tape of the 2004 broadcast

The story was an interesting play between growing countries and Japan, which has a steeply-falling birthrate.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/about.html

In the first hour, "The People Paradox," NOVA investigates three countries where social and economic forces have produced starkly different population profiles. In India, women still bear an average of three to four children. Within a few decades the country will overtake China as the world's most populous nation. NOVA interviews a young Indian woman who nearly died delivering her eighth baby. Three of her children have died, and another pregnancy may jeopardize her life. Nevertheless, her husband and mother-in-law want her to try for another son—a highly prized asset in traditional Indian culture.

While India's population pyramid has the classic shape of a triangle resting on a wide base—with large numbers of youth at the bottom and a small number of elderly at the top—Japan's population pyramid is shifting to look like a triangle standing on its head. There are now more people over 60 than under 20 in Japan.
...more...

[NotGivingUp]

4. Paul Watson's letter brought tears to my eyes.

I will never be a member of the Sierra Club again.

[SteveM]

59. Use your dues saved to purchase an old copy of The Yearling...

by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It reveals the REAL tears when animals are made into something they aren't. Better yet, see the movie (1946, MGM). The boy who plays Jody shows some real tears; something Hollywood probably wouldn't allow, now.

I also read the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten. His take on talking animals is not totally anti-hunting (unlike Disney's distortion) and is certainly knowledgeable concerning Red Deer in Europe. (No, it wasn't about whitetail deer in the U.S.). He should be knowledgeable. He hunted deer and had his own preserve just outside of Vienna.

[jody]

9. I've been a Sierra member for decades and I'm delighted that hunting groups are finally discovering

they have lots in common with various environmental groups. I'm also happy when environmental groups find common ground with hunting groups.

IMO we need both groups to protect our environment from the continual threat of business interests that would rape and pillage our national lands, about 1/3 of the U.S.

[DeSwiss]

10. Now that's the most sensible thing I've read. n/t

[Crazy Dave]

11. I'm fairly new and....

...like yourself not only do we need to protect the environment and our interests but we cannot always deny nor prevent legitimate and legal progress therefore it is in the Sierra Club's interest to work and communicate with others on the other side. Friendly diplomacy works better and is cheaper than lengthy court battles.

[Squatch]

14. The Sierra Club and Ted Nugent are two extremes of a broad spectrum

While organizations that promote use tempered with stewardship and conservation of our natural resources, such as Trout Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation speak to the bulk of outdoorspeople.

I left the Sierra Club about 5 years ago when I realized that the membership at large was only interested in viewing the wilds from afar and not actually immersing oneself in the natural world. I found their ideas of wildland and wildlife stewardship at odds with what I want my life experiences to be. Namely, I want to be able to walk, hunt, and otherwise enjoy our natural resources as humans have been doing for millenia.

[Crazy Dave]

23. I'm of the Native American mindset

Perfect examples of hunters and careful about the land that they were habitants of. Most of what I've read has been that they considered themselves as equals amongst all the creatures who inhabited the same land as they.

[Squatch]

26. I'm of the "I love venison" mindset

and make no distinction between beef packaged for sale in the supermarket and a sufficiently-old deer in the woods.

[Crazy Dave]

28. I'm also of a sincere and civil mindset

Your's is the argue and provoke type.

[Squatch]

29. No, I'm discussing your poorly raised points.

I excavated a buffalo jump outside of Dillon, Montana. For all the times I heard "Native Americans used every bit of the animal", they sure did leave a ton of bones, teeth, and garbage.

Archaeological evidence contradicts the claim that Native Americans were just a bunch of people taking only what they needed. Quite the opposite, from my own personal observation.

[Crazy Dave]

34. Well those are opinions from things I've read

Does it make you feel better to argue with someone who may have a wrong opinion rather than explain to them why they're in error? I don't have a problem with somebody discussing they're opinions with me and especially correcting me if I'm wrong and if I know of something different I share it with them rather than act like a juvenile. I find what you finally manged to share pretty interesting but rather than discuss it you just want to play because you're bored or got nothing better to do.

[Kolesar]

36. Dave said that the native Americans were not trophy hunters

He did not say that they don't waste body parts or leave bones and garbage about.

[Squatch]

38. I'm sure these animals will agree:

I'm sure the bald eagles they killed for those beautiful headdresses tasted wonderful, seeing as how they weren't taken as trophies.

[Kolesar]

39. did you check out this?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1494752&mesg_id=1495275

[Squatch]

41. Letter submitted.

[Kolesar]

42. thank you very much

I was in Wyoming last month and finally saw wolves. Yippee

[TX-RAT]

49. were not trophy hunters

Your definition of a trophy hunter please?

[Kolesar]

65. You're going to have to ask Dave

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1494752#1495495

[TX-RAT]

67. sorry!

[SteveM]

57. A note on "trophy" hunting. While I agree that the obsession to get

big horns has little effect on population control (except indirectly by the funds paid being plowed back into well-managed lands, public and private), there is little to be concerned about as to the detrimental effects on population control of deer. John Wootters in Hunting Trophy Deer, Winchester Press, 1977, points out that large antlered deer are few in number and have already spread their seed promiscuously during their lives. Consequently, they have become genetically spent and cannot re-produce any longer. They DO continue to consume a large portion of their habitat to the detriment of other deer and wildlife.

In fact, shooting smaller, younger "non-trophy" bucks, he points out, is far more detrimental since these deer have no chance to add to the "pool." He advocates trophy hunting, doe hunting (the best hunting strategy to stem overpopulation)and the killing of "spike" bucks, since research shows the latter to be of inferior genetic make-up.

As for me, I've never had a chance at a "trophy." But I have shot numerous does and a spike or two. Also, I have taken an Axis, an exotic from India that now roams the Nueces River Valley of Texas and elsewhere in the Hill Country. The meat of this animals contains .01% fat, making it "legally" fat-free.

[Enthusiast]

12. Yeah, hunters are serial killers.

We are not vegans. We will not adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. I eat venison that my son shoots. I will continue to eat venison. It is my food.

Anti hunters are like children, in my eyes, they have a Walt Disney concept of hunting and animals. Human beings have always been predators. Antis know virtually nothing of hunting.

Without properly cared for wildlife habitat, hunting could not continue. Hunters, through hunting fees and dollars spent on hunting, protect this habitat. Without this critical habitat, wildlife would be finished. Habitat protection is the single most important aspect of protecting wildlife. Anti hunters do not have the numbers and resources to protect critical habitat. Only hunters can protect the habitat.

[Squatch]

15. As a hunter, myself, this statement is patently false:

"Only hunters can protect the habitat."

[Crazy Dave]

16. Welcome to DU Enthusiast

There are good hunters and bad hunters. Some respect and appreciate nature and the environment more than others who only kill and destroy. The native Americans were a perfect example of the way hunting should be done.

[Squatch]

24. How do you know?

Were you alive to witness Native American hunting practices?

[Crazy Dave]

27. Obviously no and if you're only trying to start a flame-war

What I've read myself is that they hunted only to sustain themselves and make clothing. Not to give a trophy or prize to whoever killed the biggest or the most buffalo in one day or have a big deer head mounted as a decoration in their tipi, stuff like that. But like you say...I wasn't there, were you?

[Squatch]

30. Checklist for posting in GD:

1) Thick skin

That is all.

[Crazy Dave]

35. How about an age limit

Keep the little kids playing on mommy's computer off.

[Annces]

22. Antis know nothing of hunting

That is complete nonsense. Watson himself was raised around hunters and obviously Muir knew all about hunters. I have hunters in my family and I read about hunting, so you are using a false argument.

Hunters are of low mentality about caring for life IMO.

[Squatch]

25. How was your synthetic protein slurry this morning?

[SteveM]

51. You are deeply prejudiced AND wrong.

In many states, the respective park systems are funded chiefly by monies raised by hunting and fishing licenses. In some states, like Texas, over $100,0000,000 is raised each year in this manner; but only 20-25% go back into the maintenance of parks and wildlife management areas. The rest goes into the "general fund," schools, public works, etc.

That probably doesn't matter to you. Your approach is to demonize and stereotype a group of people and work from there. I'd like to see how much money Humane Society U.S.A. spends out of its $l00 mill. on the care of sick & injured animals or even for setting aside lands to protect wildlife. Pennies on the dollars when compared with groups like Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, etc. The re-introduction of elk into the upper South and eastern portions of this country -- going on right now -- is through the efforts of these groups, not through the Paul Watson's of the world.

Contempt breeds prohibition which breeds contempt...

[RebelOne]

31. I am an anti-hunter and I know a hell of a lot about hunting.

I am also a vegetarian. And I have been a copy-editor for hunting and fishing magazines for the past 10 years, so I am quite knowledgeable about hunting. The wildlife is managed by the state DNRs for hunters and hunting. They only give a shit about habitat protection because it benefits the wildlife, which benefits the hunters.

[Squatch]

33. "...because it benefits the wildlife,"

And, you are against programs that benefit wildlife because?..... :shrug:

[Bridget Burke]

40. Surely, you WERE a copy editor for hunting & fishing magazines.

Nobody with your opinions could honorably continue to accept their money.

[TX-RAT]

50. I agree.

[SteveM]

52. You have a problem with habitat protection or the METHOD of protection?

[TX-RAT]

55. The wildlife is managed by the state DNRs

The wildlife in TX are managed by the landowners, and thats the way i like it. They haven't set one foot on my property in 25 years, and never will as far as I'm concerned.

[qdemn7]

58. I say bullshit...

WHICH magazines did you copy-edit? :puke:

[Kolesar]

18. Wyoming government wants to kill all the wolves outside of the national parks--take action by Aug 6

www.defendersofwildlife.org
https://secure2.convio.net/dow/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr011=94oob6r9r1.app25a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=789

[NorthernSpy]

37. Muir ate meat his whole life, and accepted hunting for food...

He was a lover and defender of nature -- not an animal rights activist per se or a vegetarian. His words on indiscriminate, thrill-kill hunting would be readily endorsed by most hunters today.

[SteveM]

53. So did Thoreau.

[Enthusiast]

60. In Muir's day there were few restrictions

In Muir's day there were few restrictions on hunting, like bag limits and seasons. Our wildlife had been virtually extinguished from unregulated market hunting. People in parts of the East, like in Ohio, where I live, grew up with the belief that deer were some exotic species that lived elsewhere. Now, nearly every Ohio driver I know, has met deer close up and personal on the grill of their car. Muir certainly wouldn't have objected to hunting in this age of too many deer and too few hunters. And do not give me shit about how we killed all the predators, human beings are predators, the very best predators.

[qdemn7]

56. We didn't get to be the dominant life-form

On the planet, sitting in the shade, snacking on leaves, singing "Kumbaya, My Lord." We got it by hunting. Humans are omnivores. Those people that don't want to eat meat, fine that's their choice. But they can keep their fundie-like mentality the fuck out of my life. I find their proselytizing as offensive as some Evangelical trying to save my soul.

[Enthusiast]

61. Excellent post, qdemm7..............

Fundi-like, I like that. There is no way anti hunting zealots are going to stop hunting. Instead of wasting their energy trying to stop hunting they should be promoting safe and humane hunting. Actually they should come over to my house and have a charcoal grilled deer burger and a beer. I could teach you how to shoot my 12 gauge slug gun. Life would be far more interesting.

Can you imagine a single closed season in a state like Wisconsin or Michigan. Why, the deer herd would more than double in one year. Tell you what, I wouldn't want to drive in Ohio if there were an additional 1,000,000 deer.

[TX-RAT]

62. From the hunting culture, to the grocery culture.

Some refuse to believe hunting is a natural borne instinct.

[Kolesar]

64. The Sierra Club has accomplished habitat protection by accomodating hunters

That is the point of this thread. The Sierra Club has reached out to local people who could exert pressure to stop gas drilling on undeveloped habitat on federal land in western states. The relationship the club has with hunters is golden.

Paul Watson was an aberration who got onto the board of the club by deceiving the voting members of what his intentions were. We were expecting the skipper of Sea Shepherd, and what we got was a scheming deal maker who would sell out the club eventually.

[EstimatedProphet]

66. How thoughtful to call for a ban on hunting without providing an alternative to the problems

So, get rid of hunting. What happens when the mammal populations explode afterwards? What's the plan to fix that? Or is that going to be up to someone else to work out?