Greetings C.A.S.H. Members,
Supporters, Wildlife Enthusiasts
and Detesters of “Sport” Hunting,
I hope spring has been treating you well and the current headline-grabbing cases of animal abuse haven’t been getting you down too far. As many of you may know, part of my job as President of the Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting is to keep tabs not only on hunting accidents, but also on sport hunting “successes.” That requires daily google-searches of keywords like “hunting,” “trapping” and “hunter,” as well as “hunting accidents.” This has led me to the news of the now-infamous case of cruelty inflicted upon a juvenile wolf in Wyoming, which you’ll read all about in my article, “Evil Must Be Exposed” in this issue of the Courier.
As I write this, Kristi Noem, the Governor of South Dakota, heads the short list of Donald Trump’s potential running mates. Let’s hope that by the time you read this, he will have thought the better of it and she’ll be out of the running for his Vice-Presidential pick, and this will all be a moot point. But judging by his track record of thinking the better of things, and doing what’s right for all, I’m not holding my breath. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a cabin far off in the woods away from media bombardment (which, unfortunately, I don’t so much anymore), you’ve no doubt been hearing ad nauseum about how Noem shot her young dog, “Cricket”, after he proved himself overly enthusiastic and supposedly “untrainable” during one of her many pheasant hunts. As she revealed in her autobiography, Noem followed that act of insensitivity by shooting one of her goats because it “smelled” (like a goat?). She wrote of these things, thinking it would make her appear more Vice Presidential—like her “country” background would help her as the second-in-command of the leaders of the free world.
These aren’t the only acts of animal abuse Kristi Noem has committed. Not only has she shot a laundry-list of domestic animals and wildlife from pheasants to bear, but as South Dakota’s Governor she is also responsible for the deaths of 240,000 raccoons, skunks, opossum, red fox, and badger since that state implemented a controversial bounty on any species who might have to stave off starvation by once in a while predating on a “game” bird’s eggs. (Although pheasants are beautiful animals too, they’re not even native to this continent—they were brought here so hunters like her could make “sport” of killing them.)
Politicians like Kristi Noem may well find that they’re shooting themselves in the foot when they tout animal-killing, hoping to gain some kind of credibility, and that they’re not speaking to the majority of Americans when they strut around with shotguns wearing orange vests and camouflage. When it comes to hunting, the average American has wised-up and is moving on.
Here’s to a future without lethal destruction of wildlife in the name of “management” or “recreation.” It’s time for such backward thinking to be left in the dust.
Jim
Jim Robertson
President, the Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting