A Wyoming hunter who reportedly ran over a gray wolf with a snowmobile, taped the creature’s mouth shut, took a picture with it inside a local bar and then shot it to death behind the tavern has ignited calls for stiffer penalties in such an egregious case of animal abuse.
Cody Roberts, 42, is at the center of the uproar after being ticketed and fined a couple of hundred dollars for illegally possessing the wolf while it was still alive – but so far going unpunished for the manner in which he is said to have killed the animal.
Meanwhile, Wyoming wildlife authorities have kept much of the case hidden under a veil of secrecy, arguing that records on wolves taken in the state are not matter of public record under laws there.
But the news outlet WyoFile.com reported that the laws only protect the privacy of people “legally taking a wolf” within the state and therefore may not apply in the case of Roberts, who stands accused of flagrantly and cruelly violating hunting ethics.
Funny that they keep calling him a hunter… hes not a hunter hes a psycho who get a stiffy from kicking something thats already down. A real hero /s
I mean, hiding in a tree, disguising your scent, scoping a dumb animal and shooting it with a rifle from a hundred yards away isn’t exactly a fair fight either. I agree there is a difference, I think there is just a lot of mythmaking about what is effectively using all of the gifts of civilization in order to trick a sub toddler intelligence deer that it’s not about to be murdered.
The criticism isn’t about a fair fight, it’s about the unnecessary cruelty in the treatment of the animal. An important part of hunting ethics is minimizing the suffering of the prey. Kills should be as quick and efficient as possible.
If hunting was about honoring a fair fight, we wouldn’t have lasted long as a species.
Well the world would certainly be a better place now if that were the case.
Idk, the other apocalypses without us were meteors and volcanos. At least ours has that solid narrative irony.
There’s no question the planet and all other life would be better off if we died out in the stone age. Climate change, PFAS, microplastics… We’re parasites to the planet (channeling my best Andrew Ryan impression there).
You’re not wrong, but I’ll say some devil’s s advocate stuff: hunting is a lot harder to get a successful kill than you make it out, deer are experts in their environment, they aren’t just bumbling around, and hunters usually honor the animals they kill reasonably well.
When I’ve hunted blacktail in the Pacific Northwest that’s certainly true. When I’ve hunted whitetail in the Midwest it was as if the deer also didn’t want to live in that hellhole lol
I don’t think dishonor is really the issue. I’m not a hunter, I’m actually vegan…but I like to think that most recreational game hunters are hunting responsibly and want to ensure as clean a kill as possible, and to put the animal down quickly if they don’t get that on the first shot.
It’s the poachers and irresponsible hunters they are aiming to stop. People hunting over their limit and without tags/permits. The point of the tags/permits/limits is to keep the population itself relatively healthy.
In a lot of regions, hunting is a necessity, if only because we’ve hunted down or driven out most of the game animals predators (like wolves). It’s a necessary evil in order to keep the wild population from overbreeding.
It is a cultural ritual and a challenge, but certainly not a “fight” in the sense of taking your chances one v. one. I don’t hunt. I find the idea of making myself incredibly uncomfortable solely for the opportunity to be the one who kills my meat animal to be distinctly unappealing. That said, I eat meat. I can’t do so and also condemn someone for being willing to kill an animal, even if I am eeshed out by the ones who seem to enjoy it too much.
I grew up around a lot of hunters, though, and to a one they all had chest-freezers full of venison, so in terms of expending vertebrate life they’re certainly no worse than I am. Even field crops involve some chance of killing vertebrates, though I don’t think it’s as many as some of my fellow omnivores like to imply (and hay for livestock feed seems to be the worst of it). I’m cognizant of the difference between killing to eat and tolerating rather less killing in order to eat.
Ironically, allowing hunting itself is probably one of the best ways (and certainly one of the oldest) to encourage conservation of wild spaces and the lives therein, and if properly regulated it can be maintained at a scale that I don’t think would be out of line with a fairly natural role for humans in the natural world. The world is messy, people have deeply held beliefs coming from vastly different frameworks and experiences, and finding the right balance is necessary to avoid even more tragic disasters.
Fuck this guy in Wyoming, though. Showing off and torturing a dying animal is cruelty for its own sake and I don’t think that’s a hard line to draw either. He sure as shit wouldn’t do that with a calf or deer (or maybe he would, but he’d find even fewer defenders).
No predatory animal is looking for a fair fight. Hell, if the fight is too fair the animal is likely to just choose different prey.
Literally what’s the difference besides some half baked idea of “honor” ?
You don’t know the difference between legal hunting and poaching / animal torture?
You think people killing for pleasure is okay so long as its sanctioned by thr government?
Here, I’ll help you. Legalized hunting is a program based on scientific wildlife population management. Why is this necessary, you ask? Because ignorant, irresponsible humans wiped out most of the natural predators which previously managed prey populations. Therefore, it becomes our modern responsibility to manage prey populations using our intelligence and highly developed ethical systems. If a population grows too large, they can change the way forests grow, which can alter the flows of rivers. There are countless unpredictable knock-on effects to consider. Invasive species like pigs destroy land, plants, and other animals, often endangered.
Examples you might consider are the wolves of Yellowstone and the sea otters of Puget Sound. Those are natural predators that were reintroduced to manage invasive over populations of deer and sea urchins respectively. In many areas of the world, it is unfortunately inadvisable to reintroduce natural predators such as wolves, bears, and large cats. Therefore the responsibility lies on humans to maintain herds scientifically. And yeah, probably the best people for that task would be volunteers who enjoy the hunt and don’t waste the remains of the animals they take, who respect their quarry and pride themselves on a swift and relatively painless kill.
Poaching is illegal for valid scientific reasons. Poachers do not respect limits and kill all they can. They kill often just for trophies to sell on the black market. This negatively affects populations that scientists are working to maintain. Consider when hunting was unregulated, and racist assholes did their best to wipe out the buffalo in order to starve the Native Americans. Animal torturers like this sick f#ck exhibit serial killer behavior and need to be managed by the justice system.
Finally, it sounds like you consider predation to be unethical. I’m not sure if you realize that predation is part of the natural order of things, and cannot be altered by any known means. Most prey animals in an unaltered environment will die in agony to tooth and claw. Most predators find killing pleasurable. Any that didn’t would go extinct. My pet housecat, for instance, cannot be given a vegan diet without slowly killing it, no matter how much I dislike buying animal products. Maybe you disagree with the concept of pets, hell, I don’t know. Then you have to deal with the massive feral cat population somehow, and they kill like 10 billion birds a year.
Besides complaining about the injustice of it, what alternative solutions do you have to offer the Real World? Humans happen to be animals – top predators who survived and evolved by hunting. You cannot get around that fact, but we can moderate ourselves and manage it responsibly through science and the law.
I’m all for things like population control and invasive species removal, but that doesn’t mean hunting for pleaser is perfectly fine because it serves that end.
Like I support compassionate euthanasia for people. That doesn’t mean I also support someone going into a hospice with rifle and shooting cancer patients.
Exactly! Ethics. That’s the difference between hunting and poaching / animal torture.
You think hunting is just killing for pleasure?
Just? No. Primarily? Yes.
Then so what?
Would you prefer the government to draft a bunch of untrained, unwilling vegans to go into the woods and manage invasive populations of prey animals? Perhaps the best people for the job would be volunteers who pay for something they consider a privilege? Then maybe the government could reinvest those fees into wilderness management programs? Like they do.
Despite your objections, that is the primary purpose of hunting.
Maybe you should ask Native Americans what they think about the honor and respect they hold for the animals they hunt. Which, you might want to consider, they consider a large part of their religious rites. Do you think they’d be offended to be compared to poachers, abusers, and torturers?
Okay, how many hunters in the US do you think are native American and hunting for food and fur, versus white Americans that go hunting primarily for the entertainment?
No, race is completely irrelevant. Ethics are all that matters. The point I was making with Native Americans was to remind you of a case where most people accept that hunting can be ethical. It was not to suggest that one race can do this but another can’t. You cannot separate enjoyment from hunting. It’s a natural feeling that developed over millions of years. If you do not enjoy hunting, you will not hunt. We don’t write laws to dictate how people feel. We we do it to regulate how people behave.
Instead of trying to trap me with another question, you might consider thinking about the questions I asked you.
Most of them hunt for all three. It would be rare to see someone not eat the animal or keep the hide. A deer has a lot of meat on it.