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Your view of the essentially benign nature of Bengal tigers on the loose constitutes more wishful thinking than accuracy. Tigers are the largest of the big cats, and if they are hungry the following morning a child or children at a bus stop would be easy pickings. Animals have natural instincts. You seem to be confusing species which have been domesticated for thousands of years with feral species. And even the domesticated species still have instincts which can be unpredictable - every so often we read in the news about dogs which have attacked and killed someone.
Any police force in the world would have reacted the same way, not with "senseless" violence but with puposeful and justifiable violence. If you can sleep securely at night in your bed, it is because rough men somewhere are trained and ready to do violence on your behalf. That is the way the world is. That is reality.
It's funny how the organized animal protection and advocacy groups are all against allowing private individuals to keep large feral animals. Of course human safety is one big reason, but it is not fair to the animals either, as tragically illustrated here. You can dig up some examples where things worked out O.K., but that doesn't change the reality.
It won't let me rep you again, but every word you wrote is true...
BTW, the reason the 'animal rights' groups don't want private individuals to keep and breed wild and feral animals - or even tame and virtually harmless ones, and especially not ones for food - is not because they particularly give a rat's left leg about what could happen to other sinful, barbaric humans or their progeny, but because they truly and honestly believe that all animals should be allowed to run free and unmolested, just like nature intended. I particularly liked Tom Clancy's (fictional, alas) solution to these rabid 'animal rights' folks at the end of one of his novels - take those people, drop them in the truly wild (he used the Brazilian rain forest) with nothing but the shirts on their backs, and see how their free wild animals, ravenous insects, and loving Ma Nature really treats them - just before they die.
Waitaminit -
Ya'll were throwing pork chops and I wasn't invited? Some friends you are!
Next time I'll gitcha both with a long pack of saltines!
Mmmm ... I used to live on Saltines when I was trying to get to my fighting weight.
Quote:
PS I prefer the .38 at my bed, altho DH has a nice .357. That should delay 'em long enough for one of us to get to the shotguns.
Good range, granted, but I like to work up-close and personal.
Quote:
I particularly liked Tom Clancy's (fictional, alas) solution to these rabid 'animal rights' folks at the end of one of his novels - take those people, drop them in the truly wild (he used the Brazilian rain forest) with nothing but the shirts on their backs, and see how their free wild animals, ravenous insects, and loving Ma Nature really treats them - just before they die.
Have you read his non-fiction stuff? Pretty impressive.
As an author and a reader I enjoyed his Jack Ryan stuff immensely, but I've never forgotten that he (Clancy) is Papa Hawk - as right-wing as they come.
There's a new documentary on TV - not sure what channel or even what the name of it was - but it concerned people who keep large, inately wild animals as pets. "Fatal Attractions" or something like that ...
Anyway, they had some interesting tales about a woman who raised a chimp from birth, treated him as a human, dressed him up in cute little outfits, brought him to the park so he could play on the swings (and yes, also the monkey bars!) ... he was her "child".
One day a female friend of hers was visiting, and for no apparent reason Junior literally ripped her face off. When police got there, he almost ripped the door off of the police car. He was shot multiple times, kept going until he got back to his "bedroom", then finally died.
Sigfried and Roy - raised the big cats, lived with them, considered them family - sudden attack because the cat got nervous.
Many, many cases like this. People forget that these are WILD animals, that you never erase their wild instincts - you just cover them up with anthropomorphism and cute little baby names. You NEVER really know what's on their mind.
My ladyfriend has a big Black Lab - sweetest little girl in the world. When I roughhouse with her, I can see a marked return to her wild nature; in fact, she sank her teeth into my arm a few weeks ago when we were playing. Not her fault at all - she's just being a dog.
Same with the cats - they get excited chasing the feather, they run up my leg and leave blood trails and bite marks. They're just obeying their true nature.
I used to have a big ol' tomcat that I rescued from the street. Another mellow, happy cat. Problem was, he'd be sitting on your lap, you'd be watching TV, idly stroking him, he'd be purring - then suddenly sink all 18 claws and however many teeth into you and take off into hiding for a few hours. Then he'd reappear and jump up on your lap again, purring like an Evinrude. You just can't predict what animals will do.
Couldn't rep you again, so I will thank you here for the excellent examples which also support the point I was trying to make with the other poster. I do remember those cases (both the chimp and the tiger show) from the news at the time they happened. Neither the chimp nor its human owner was well served in the long run by their relationship; they both ended up suffering for it. Some people just insist on being naive and hopelessly romantic about certain things. Only trained professionals in a professional (zoo or research) setting should be dealing directly with animals such as chimps. They could still get hurt, but they know more about the risks and how to mitigate them.
Couldn't rep you again, so I will thank you here for the excellent examples which also support the point I was trying to make with the other poster. I do remember those cases (both the chimp and the tiger show) from the news at the time they happened. Neither the chimp nor its human owner was well served in the long run by their relationship; they both ended up suffering for it. Some people just insist on being naive and hopelessly romantic about certain things. Only trained professionals in a professional (zoo or research) setting should be dealing directly with animals such as chimps. They could still get hurt, but they know more about the risks and how to mitigate them.
You know what the scariest part of the whole show was? When the interviewer asked the chimp's owner if she'd do it all again with another chimp.
She immediately and passionately said "Yes!".
PS: I found out it's on Animal Planet, and it's a series.
It won't let me rep you again, but every word you wrote is true...
BTW, the reason the 'animal rights' groups don't want private individuals to keep and breed wild and feral animals - or even tame and virtually harmless ones, and especially not ones for food - is not because they particularly give a rat's left leg about what could happen to other sinful, barbaric humans or their progeny, but because they truly and honestly believe that all animals should be allowed to run free and unmolested, just like nature intended. I particularly liked Tom Clancy's (fictional, alas) solution to these rabid 'animal rights' folks at the end of one of his novels - take those people, drop them in the truly wild (he used the Brazilian rain forest) with nothing but the shirts on their backs, and see how their free wild animals, ravenous insects, and loving Ma Nature really treats them - just before they die.
Again you go insulting people by calling them "rabid". Yes, people think that you should not keep wild animals as pets - there is a reason why some animals are called "domesticated" and some are called "wild". I for one believe that by law nobody should be allowed to keep a wild animal as a pet. Furthermore, concentration camps (we call zoos) should be closed down too. You wouldn't want your child on display all day long would you? No matter how pretty the display is...
I wonder how your typical blood-thirsty rabid macho man "conservationist" (haha!) hunter who hides behind the barrel of his/her rifle would fare without the said rifle in the same rainforest....Would he be the top predator dog and would he be so dominant as he is over the deer or the wolf when he is all armed and covered up in artificial scents and cammo clothing or when he is essentially target practicing by shooting wolves out of a helicopter?
I wonder how your typical blood-thirsty rabid macho man "conservationist" (haha!) hunter who hides behind the barrel of his/her rifle would fare without the said rifle in the same rainforest....Would he be the top predator dog and would he be so dominant as he is over the deer or the wolf when he is all armed and covered up in artificial scents and cammo clothing or when he is essentially target practicing by shooting wolves out of a helicopter?
Again, get off your high horse.
As has been proven again and again, a real disconnect with reality is prevelent among the animal rightists.
Man has been the apex preditor for several thousand years, firearms have only been around for a few hundred. This means that man was dominant for a long time before rifles were available. There are a group of folks in Montana who are very adept using one of the most primitive weapons around, the Atl-atl which is basically a light spear thrown with a throwing stick, similar to what the Aboriginies in Austrilia used.
There are annual competitions called Mammoth Hunts held around various locations in the state every year. Some are held at old buffalo jumps where paleo indians killed buffalo for 10,000 years in North America. Lots of fun. You attempt to "kill" a mammoth with your atl-atl, (a picture on a pile of bales of hay), and show you have the skill to hunt like your ancestors.
In fact, there has been a push in the legislature to legalize hunting with them as our paleolitic ancestors did.
If you don't like spears, bows and arrows are fairly easy for a skilled outdoorsman to make and use.
It has never been about the weapon, it has always been about the skill and inginuity of the "typical blood-thirsty rabid macho man "conservationist" (haha!) hunter".
So much for no name calling or stereotyping or civility on the boards Hmmm ogend??
The hunters I know spend countless hours in the field, not just hunting, but making waterholes, doing game counts for the Fish and Game, attending hearings of the wildlife board or legislature on fish and game issues.
They testify for habitat aquisitions, limits on take, license restrictions, they also work to make sure that real biology not emotional claptrap are used to balance the numbers of the herds to the carrying capacity of the land.
They try to assist the authorities to find ways to minimise diseases that may be transmitted from domestic stock to wild stock, or from wild animals to domestic.
They work to remove unnecessary restrictions on hunting animals that have recovered populations to make funds available for biologists and researchers to aquire land specific for those animals and to study them and make their populations stronger.
The hunting clubs donate time and money for habitat restoration and work to rehabilitate lands damaged by any number of reasons so that it once again will support wildlife. They lobby congress and the legislature to pass laws benificial to wildlife and hunters, and they provide first hand experience of game densities and sightings of animals the fish and game use to monitor the health of wildlife.
Currently, there is a debate in Montana about reintroducing buffalo to some areas. This would be a wild population, and yes, one that could be hunted on a limited basis.
Many hunters are working with agricultural people to set standards where the bufffalo could be placed on land owned by the Fish and Game Dept, or Indian Reservations or other wildlife management areas, but have fences or obsticals put up to protect domestic stock and property as buffalo are huge animals, and dangerous, plus they can and do carry brucellosis which is a disease that causes ungulates to abort their calves and fawns.
There are slob hunters that match the distasteful discription put forth by ogend, but that is a very small minority as most hunters treasure the wildlife and the traditions of hunting. The self reliance, providing meat for the family by skill and stealth.
The feelings a hunter gets in the field when hunting link us to our predicessors all the way back to the first person to tie a sharpend rock to a stick and bring home a mastidon to feed his tribe are unequaled by any other feeling of pride, self reliance and success because the outcome is 100% because of your skill and ability. You don't depend on anyone else in the field, it is just you and the prey animal.
This is why average harvests of some animals like elk are less than 1 animal per 4 hunters on average. It isn't easy.
Perhaps hunting is not a "necessity" to feed ones family these days, but in my case, if I can take an elk, that means I have one more calf to sell to buy other necessities. I raise cattle so I have a dependable source of meat for my family, but I hunt to suppliment our diet, and to provide the money I pay for a license and help the herds by keeping the numbers within the carrying capacity of the habitat. As a plus, the meat is far better to eat health wise than whatever it is that comes processed out of little white styrofom containers.
When animals overpopulate they starve and get disease. There have been severe die offs of deer and pronghorn antelope here because of Blue Tounge and Epizoodic hemmorigic feaver in part because the population densities became too great. The populations are recovering, but a lot of that is because the of the work the hunters and in concert the landowners do to keep habitat available for the animals. The animals are a resource and have value. When there is no value either as food, monitarilly through services of guided outfitters or trespass fees charged by landowners for hunter access, or psycological through the enjoyment of pursuing game or watching it, then nobody cares if they live or die, and the numbers plummet.
Simplistic insulting rhetoric is never a solution to any problem. Education, getting the facts and having the abilty to reason while working in concert with others does solve problems, and that is one of the reasons outdoorsmen and women can survive when others fail in a situation where it matters.
If you put a group of seasoned hunters in a wilderness situation with no weapons, don't be surprised if you find them well fed and doing quite well in no time.
And I would like to commend seveal of the posters on this board, SC Granny, SifuPhil, Escort Rider, Manwithnoname on some very well written and thought out posts. Can't rep you, but your work has not gone unnoticed
Last edited by MTSilvertip; 10-21-2011 at 08:30 AM..
As has been proven again and again, a real disconnect with reality is prevelent among the animal rightists.
Man has been the apex preditor for several thousand years, firearms have only been around for a few hundred. This means that man was dominant for a long time before rifles were available. There are a group of folks in Montana who are very adept using one of the most primitive weapons around, the Atl-atl which is basically a light spear thrown with a throwing stick, similar to what the Aboriginies in Austrilia used.
There are annual competitions called Mammoth Hunts held around various locations in the state every year. Some are held at old buffalo jumps where paleo indians killed buffalo for 10,000 years in North America. Lots of fun. You attempt to "kill" a mammoth with your atl-atl, (a picture on a pile of bales of hay), and show you have the skill to hunt like your ancestors.
In fact, there has been a push in the legislature to legalize hunting with them as our paleolitic ancestors did.
If you don't like spears, bows and arrows are fairly easy for a skilled outdoorsman to make and use.
It has never been about the weapon, it has always been about the skill and inginuity of the "typical blood-thirsty rabid macho man "conservationist" (haha!) hunter".
So much for no name calling or stereotyping or civility on the boards Hmmm ogend??
The hunters I know spend countless hours in the field, not just hunting, but making waterholes, doing game counts for the Fish and Game, attending hearings of the wildlife board or legislature on fish and game issues.
They testify for habitat aquisitions, limits on take, license restrictions, they also work to make sure that real biology not emotional claptrap are used to balance the numbers of the herds to the carrying capacity of the land.
They try to assist the authorities to find ways to minimise diseases that may be transmitted from domestic stock to wild stock, or from wild animals to domestic.
They work to remove unnecessary restrictions on hunting animals that have recovered populations to make funds available for biologists and researchers to aquire land specific for those animals and to study them and make their populations stronger.
The hunting clubs donate time and money for habitat restoration and work to rehabilitate lands damaged by any number of reasons so that it once again will support wildlife. They lobby congress and the legislature to pass laws benificial to wildlife and hunters, and they provide first hand experience of game densities and sightings of animals the fish and game use to monitor the health of wildlife.
Currently, there is a debate in Montana about reintroducing buffalo to some areas. This would be a wild population, and yes, one that could be hunted on a limited basis.
Many hunters are working with agricultural people to set standards where the bufffalo could be placed on land owned by the Fish and Game Dept, or Indian Reservations or other wildlife management areas, but have fences or obsticals put up to protect domestic stock and property as buffalo are huge animals, and dangerous, plus they can and do carry brucellosis which is a disease that causes ungulates to abort their calves and fawns.
There are slob hunters that match the distasteful discription put forth by ogend, but that is a very small minority as most hunters treasure the wildlife and the traditions of hunting. The self reliance, providing meat for the family by skill and stealth.
The feelings a hunter gets in the field when hunting link us to our predicessors all the way back to the first person to tie a sharpend rock to a stick and bring home a mastidon to feed his tribe are unequaled by any other feeling of pride, self reliance and success because the outcome is 100% because of your skill and ability. You don't depend on anyone else in the field, it is just you and the prey animal.
This is why average harvests of some animals like elk are less than 1 animal per 4 hunters on average. It isn't easy.
Perhaps hunting is not a "necessity" to feed ones family these days, but in my case, if I can take an elk, that means I have one more calf to sell to buy other necessities. I raise cattle so I have a dependable source of meat for my family, but I hunt to suppliment our diet, and to provide the money I pay for a license and help the herds by keeping the numbers within the carrying capacity of the habitat. As a plus, the meat is far better to eat health wise than whatever it is that comes processed out of little white styrofom containers.
When animals overpopulate they starve and get disease. There have been severe die offs of deer and pronghorn antelope here because of Blue Tounge and Epizoodic hemmorigic feaver in part because the population densities became too great. The populations are recovering, but a lot of that is because the of the work the hunters and in concert the landowners do to keep habitat available for the animals. The animals are a resource and have value. When there is no value either as food, monitarilly through services of guided outfitters or trespass fees charged by landowners for hunter access, or psycological through the enjoyment of pursuing game or watching it, then nobody cares if they live or die, and the numbers plummet.
Simplistic insulting rhetoric is never a solution to any problem. Education, getting the facts and having the abilty to reason while working in concert with others does solve problems, and that is one of the reasons outdoorsmen and women can survive when others fail in a situation where it matters.
If you put a group of seasoned hunters in a wilderness situation with no weapons, don't be surprised if you find them well fed and doing quite well in no time.
And I would like to commend seveal of the posters on this board, SC Granny, SifuPhil, Escort Rider, Manwithnoname on some very well written and thought out posts. Can't rep you, but your work has not gone unnoticed
OK.
Let's go through all of the points you make above:
1. Groups hunting around with spears, bows and arrows. That's great! But, how do you explain the multi-billion dollar hunting industry selling anything from deer stands (where you sit and pluck the deer fed 500 yards away by the deer corn you put up), or cammo clothes or special scents or all sorts of gizmos used to make it easier? How do you explain the caged hunts occurring regularly in Texas where there are multiple ranches that basically allow you to shoot an animal after it has been released from the cage? How do you explain ranches where animals are bread specially to be shot by the so called "hunters"?
2. Name calling: Funny how you picked up on my exaggerated description of today's hunter but you neglected to react to SCGranny's "rabid animal rights people" line and the paragraph where she basically stereotypes everyone in that supposed group.
3. Hunter involvement in habitat issues. Sure, the things are structured in such a way that hunting licenses pay for preserves and parks and "wildlife management". When things are structured in such a way, it is "I paid so I have a say" type of a deal. Fund all of it through taxes and hunters will be just another group to ask, nothing more, nothing less. Backcountry horsemen of America also do work on trails, maintenance etc. So do a lot of other groups and societies. Fish and Wildlife? Please, a lot of the folks who work there hunt themselves.
4. Re-introduction of buffalo. Why buffalo and not wolves, bears, panthers etc.? What, deer and elk are not fun enough to kill now, we need something else?
5. Hunting as a link to our predecessors: if you are aching so much to be linked to your predecessors, why not move into a sod house with a newspaper wall and a rainy roof? That's just pretty recent history, cca early 1900s pioneers. I got no problem with you feeding your family with the elk you took but let's face it, today hunting is an industry, a sport (a bloody one) and ultimately it is population control because we just can't allow the natural predators to come back and take down the deer and elk and whatever else is a pray animal. Native people lived here long before European civilization and they respected the Earth and animals. They took them for food but mostly not as a sport (note the emphasis on "mostly"). European/western civilization has no respect for animals or Nature (I don't know if it is the Bible as root or whatever, at this point it does not matter) and the attitude is that not only are animals taken for food but also for fun. When you kill something for sport, it takes away the dignity of the kill. Anyways, the other side to the Western civilization is the conviction that Man is smarter than Nature and that Man can control Nature. However, every decade or so we learn that the stuff we did in the last decade was bad, deadly, wrong etc. Anyone remember DDT? Freon? List goes on and on. So, I really do not understand the arrogance displayed.
6. Animal overpopulation and starvation: That's Mother Nature taking course when Man has taken away all predators. I sincerely doubt that deer or elk would be overpopulating anything if wolves were around. The single largest motivation for the hunters to keep the habitat available for the deer is to hunt the deer. They are not doing it so that I can go hiking in it
True story: there is a ranch nearby to where I used to live. It is about 5500 acres and someone very wealthy bought it. The next thing they did was to fence it off and declare it a hunting-free zone. They are doing it to preserve all wildlife in their natural habitat. Well, guess what? A lot of your hunter buddies have tried to sue the guy (even though it is really a private property) since the ranch used to be open to hunters. The fences are high, the wildlife stays within the ranch, nobody gets hurt but people are just pissed off that they can't go and kill stuff anymore. If they were truly the conservationists that they say they are, they would have been happy for the move...
Anyways, finally: I agree that insulting rhetoric leads nowhere. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to react to insulting rhetoric on both sides. So when SCGranny starts talking about the "rabid animal rights people" in a stereotypical way that is offensive, I want to see a post from you asking her to stop
Obviously you cant let tigers sit on your lap, or pet them. I did feed the the wild animals like any other critters. The meanest of the whol bunch was the buffalo, there was a wild ram who rammed a stump that I put my coat on while planting fench posts.
At least twice the spider monkey turned up missing. He went into homes on both occasions and raided the kitchen cabinets and fridge. He would up getting a new homeout of the area.
The copters are quite effective,ask an big city cop. It is possible to evade the heat seeker, but assumes the prey as in a human knows what it is. The searchlight lights up and area like day.
But what has been missed from a survival perspective is.....
Terry Thompson was found dead, aaumed suicide. Maybe maybe not?
If he was murdered letting the animals loose be be a very good cover.
There was likely money, how much and what was the source, how much left?, passion in and estranged wife, conflict with the neigbhors. A recent felony conviction with a prison sentence. The guy had a trophy setup with the farm. What might he have had in the house in the way of serious valuables?
Who had he made very upset for any number of reasons? Who knows comments like the kind Dr Savage lost his TV show? Maybe Thompson threatened people? Would not be clear or certain that law enforcement is clean either? As in the inner city ghetto, there are characters who are career criminals, and cops who can be involved in felonies.
And it could be as it seems on the surface.
The rare cats could easily have found home with a global search, likely good ones. While truth is often stranger then fiction, and infact too strange even for a novel,this is a really weird situation I doubt where getting too many of the facts.
Let's try to stay on topic folks Viability of communes and communal living -- not animal rights, hunting, aberrant pet choices and the possible ramifications, etc. Thx
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Obviously you cant let tigers sit on your lap
Viability of communes and communal living -- not animal rights, hunting, aberrant pet choices and the possible ramifications, etc. Thx
