Hm. While the clear-cut behind town goes on, and starving, misplaced predators have no home or food for winter, I've noticed many missing-small-pet posters around town. Coincidence? Really?
In Seattle, at a ghost-hunting club dinner, I met a clean hunter. He told me what one mountain-lion hunter said he did with the "cats" he shot out of trees (oh, how brave.).
"He said he just uses the skin to train his dogs."
Before you wonder WTF? remember that's how an entire resource industry works. As it comes to its end, as the resources die and fail, the resource pays for the machines to rip out the resource, to pay for the machines, to kill the forest, to pay for the system, to....
These moron hunters are hunting for FUN. For AMUSEMENT. They're like their fellows, the catch-and-release fishers. They torment and kill animals for the fun of it. Not because they're hungry, or need food. And then, when the resources or animals are unbalanced and trying to find a way to survive, they strike out at them and accuse them of infringing on human lives.
There are even books about an "attacking" ocean, as though the seas that let us breathe are some kind of enemy. Everybody is our enemy in our eyes, as though we're run by some kind of space-clearing bacteria that took over our brains. We seem to need to live in a desert with only a few tame animals and plants around us. We live in horror that the world might be different than we want it to be. We're Douglas Adams's Cricket Robots. The end of one of the books says we all have to work together to "control the planet." Can you see the coming cliff we're going to all go off of?
The Clean Hunter told me he and his friends went out for spike bucks or elk, because they taste good and have tender meat. When they get one, they quarter the animal among the four of them.
And then he said, "But I can't help it. I kill quick, with a neck shot, but I always feel guilty."
I told him he needed to thank and respect the animal, and that would help. I told him the native peoples of the Southwest would hang turquoise in the antlers of their deer brothers, whom they considered members of generous peoples who fed the humans. Perhaps having a ceremony of ritual thanks for the animal who had died to feed and clothe him and his friends and their families would help? The Makah considered the whale they brought in to be a Great Lady, coming to Feed The People, and they welcomed Her with ceremony, gratitude and even grief for Her sacrifice.
The young man told me Clean Hunters have a word for trophy dorks, with their megastore equipment. They called them "Cabelas," after the stores and catalogs. Cabelas just hunt for anything with horns. The Clean Hunter, when I explained that big antlers meant "My daughters are good milkers," and asked if it was a good idea to shoot the biggest, strongest herd bull, just to get off on it, said it was not.
Then I told him the Cabelas, and the people who thought the environment was there to rape, would take it all away from the Clean Hunters if they got the chance. They'd move on to something else to destroy, and leave the Clean with nothing. I told him he'd have to be active socially to stop it.
He admitted he just wanted to hunt and relax in the woods, but he got the point - if we don't all join politics and become activists, if the Good People do nothing - the Good People will lose.
I hope he thinks about it, and does something about it. Because if he doesn't, he won't have any more venison or elk to eat or share or respect.
The developers are next.
Lastly, here's an article that puts together what I've been saying for a couple years. If somebody uses the phrase "job creation," they're up to no good.
