Speaking of Term Limits: If the US Presidency has term limits, then the US Congress should have term limits. It is a natural fact that the longer someone is in power, the more power they can potentially develop. Let's say that each Senator can only have two terms, eight years maximum. This equals the President. Let's say that each Representative can only have four terms, eight years maximum. This equals the President. It all works out nicely.
But, stay with me, there are many other benefits: If one only can spend, at most, eight years in office, one has to have another way to make a living...like live in the real world so he/she can identify with the rest of us. If they have to have another way to make a living, they have to know how to 'make money', rather than 'take money'. For years we have been creating monsters for ourselves by taking uneducated college graduates who major in politics and have never had to make a living. All they have learned to do is bribe us, the people, with our own money, to keep them in office. With term limits, political office isn't a career, it is a short term, duty, calling.
With term limits, the office isn't so valuable that individuals or groups would be willing to pay millions of dollars to get and hold the office. Who would dump millions of dollars into a job that only lasts eight years?
With term limits, who would dump thousands of dollars into deep investigations into opponents' pasts or lie, cheat and steal to win and hold for only eight years. Maybe this would help clean up politics a bit.
With term limits, special interest groups would be stimied in bribing our representatives. No one person would be available long enough in office to make a huge difference. If we churn our reps, we keep them a moving target.
With term limits, we go a long way in getting rid of 'seniority.' Where, in the Constitution is the concept of 'seniority'? Seniority makes your representative more powerful than mine. Aren't we supposed to have equal representation? Get term limits and get rid of seniority.
With term limits, we would reduce the 'ruling elitism' that we have allowed to develop in our Congress. They think...they 'know'... they are better, smarter, and more deserving than the rest of us. They vote themselves big pay raises in the dark of night because they know we would be displeased. They scorn us. They vote themselves huge retirements for minimum service. They scorn us. They vote themselves health coverage that is better than the rest of us have. They scorn us. They have manufactured an ideal world for themselves with our money: different/better wages, different/better retirement, different/better benefits from the rest of us who have to pay for it. Who died and made them rulers? We elected them to serve us. Demand term limits. If they won't vote it, we have the ballot. Turn each one out aftethe maximum of eight years. Don't let them buy us and our freedom as they bankrupt us to pay for their luxuries or bankrupt us through their pure incompetence. Get experienced, competent people to spend a few years really serving their country and then let them go home. This was our forefathers' dream.
In a forum, I asked my representative a question, a few years ago: "You initially campaigned for term limits. That is why I voted to put you in Washington. Now you have been there ten years and you are still hoping to keep the office. What happened to you and term limits?" His answer: "Oh, you just don't understand how difficult it is to learn your way around things in Washington. One has to be there a long time to learn the ropes and get things done." No, he doesn't understand that I understand...it's because we have left people up there too long that they have been able to make it difficult to learn how to get things done. We have created old coots with seniority that our new reps have to kiss their ring. We have allowed them to make all kinds of 'rules' that circumvent the will of the people. We have allowed them time to create paper mountains that no one can understand and rat runs that only rats know how to run. And, speaking of getting things done: What is the Federal government supposed to do? Pretty simple, really. They are supposed to protect us from our enemies. They are supposed to defend our borders. And, probably, they should look after interstate highways and transportation. For the rest of it, we have individual and states' rights. We are local. We know our needs. The Federal government should stop collecting money from us to pad the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats while giving a small part of it back to us in services they decide we need.
If we keep our representatives rotating frequently, we might have the checks and balances we need to account for money and programs.
If we force term limits, we'll go a long way to curbing our Federal government's spending huge sums of money bribing us to keep them in office. Right now it appears they would bankrupt our country to save their jobs.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Email response to SP-Md September 2009, posted December 2009
Dear SP, I think I will try to respond to your thoughts one at a time. I don’t claim to have any hard and fast answers to your concerns but I will give you a look into the minds of some of us who raise and care for animals on a commercial basis.
SP: “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, kill, use for entertainment or experiment on.”
DT: Yes, they are. There are two main ways of trying to explain life on earth:
Science and Religion.
Science: If you look through the prism of Science, you see humans as a link in an evolutionary chain of life development from single cell organisms to plants, animals, birds and on to the vast complexities of the human, whale, or porpoise brain. All this DNA is tremendously similar. For example, the reproductive organs of plants and humans are amazingly similar.
The rule of nature is to be born, survive to reproduce, and die. You can start with the single cell organism which feeds on organic or inorganic compounds in the water and go to plants which feed on organic and inorganic compounds on land. Much of plant food is the nutrients in the soil from dead animals and plants. Some plants even kill and eat insects and animals. From plants, you go on to have more complicated organisms that feed on plants. You are familiar with the food chain, to be sure. The higher up the food chain, the more complicated the food source. Stalking, killing, and eating is the survival part of the equation. Since I do not distinguish between higher and lower forms of life and their right to exist, I hold that a plant or an animal has an equal right to live, kill to eat and survive, reproduce and die. Since I, also, as part of this food chain, have a right to live, survive to reproduce, and die, then I have a right to do what I need to do to survive. I have the right to act naturally.
I have to eat to survive. If I eat a plant, let’s say, corn or wheat, I am eating that plant’s seeds. A plant’s seed is a plant’s embryo. Thus, I am eating a plant’s embryo when I eat a plant’s seed. If I eat a chicken’s egg, I am eating the chicken’s embryo. Actually, this gives me, personally, more concern than eating a steak off a mature animal. Through this prism of looking at life, all nature is designed to eat or be eaten to survive and reproduce. I don’t see any way around not killing if I, or most anything in nature, is to survive. It is the universal design. Perhaps it isn’t pretty. It doesn’t sound as nice as “I would like for all living things to love each other and get along in peace.” But it is the facts. How we conduct ourselves in the face of these facts is what gives us some grace in living our lives.
Religion. If you look through the Christian, Muslim, Jewish prism you find the oldest documents saying that God made mankind master and caretaker over the plants and beasts of the earth. God even demanded sacrifices of plants and animals to meet his own needs. Hindus and Buddhists have various degrees of celebrating the sanctity of plants and animals. Some don’t kill sacred cows. Some don’t tread on insects or even breathe them into their lungs accidentally. But these same priests eat to survive or they wouldn’t have gotten old enough to preach to the rest of us. Somebody has to harvest their food. Maybe they, personally, don’t do it, but someone does. Does that make the harvester less than the consumer? I don’t think so. It just makes the consumer more remote.
Perhaps these priests only drink milk, but then they deprive the cow’s offspring of nourishing milk as God designed the species. And, using milk for survival demands that mankind corral the cow and milk it. Statistically, the majority of mankind is lactose intolerant as adults so where does that leave us?
Not dominating and harvesting plants and animals leaves us very hungry and very dead: And, very remote in our thinking, about how life on earth actually works.
SP: “They are living breathing beings, each with their own individual personalities. They deserve our respect and kindness.” DT: I agree.
SP: “Trophy Hunting is one worst possible thing you can do to animals. You are looking for the strongest, most desirable animal to kill with your high powered gun or bow.”
DT: Trophy hunting or hunting is part of the universal design of stalk, kill, and eat to survive. We allow trophy hunting for a portion of our mature males whether for meat or for sport or for both. The meat is always consumed. By the way, hunting as a sport is practicing our ancient rituals of survival. There are those people who believe we may need them again someday.
Mature males that are hunted for their trophies have already bred to reproduce and from the time of their best trophy rack, they will go downhill until they die. The income from their harvest can provide a home for the rest of the herd. For example, when we first started raising exotics on our ranch, we purchased some excess animals that were going to be put down. We purchased 10 large, mature male Scimitar Horned Oryx antelope. Hunters took two of them for the meat and trophies. We found the meat to be excellent and marketable. We thought the species could pay for a safe home for itself. In its native home of Chad, Africa, it has been killed off by violent people who, because of revolution, got hold of jeeps and machine guns and drove into the desert and mowed down great herds for sport. Because the animals were wild and humans were able to encroach on their public breeding grounds, they were vulnerable with no one to protect them and they could not protect themselves by having their own land.
With the money we got for the trophy males, we purchased four breeding females and started a herd. By the way, the 8 other males died of old age on our ranch…actually, one got struck by lightning. At one time our ranch had the largest herd of Scimitar Oryx in the world-over 300 head. The Oryx paid for their space by allowing us to harvest excess animals to live on other ranches, to harvest some for meat, and to take several trophies a year. Some gave their lives so the rest could have a happy, safe home.
Right now we are fighting a battle to keep the Scimitar Horned Oryx alive. Because it has been wiped out in its native country, it is on the World’s Endangered Species List. Years ago, with wisdom, the US Fish and Wildlife Department issued a USA exception for Scimitar Horned Oryx, Dama Gazelle, and Addax. This exception allowed ranchers and collectors in the United States to freely buy, breed, raise, sell, harvest and trade these species. US ranchers have provided a safe and managed environment for these species and they have reproduced beautifully and fully. There are now thousands in this country and some are being transported back to repopulate their homelands.
Regrettably, a couple of Animal Rights groups, this summer, brought suit to stop the US Exception. If these Animal Rights groups are allowed to prevail, we ranchers can no longer afford to raise and protect these magnificent animals and they will become extinct everywhere.
If we have to limit managed harvests of the animals or justify every decision we make about their care, we cannot afford to provide a home for them…meaning, they cannot provide a home for themselves. Sad but true, what mankind can use is what survives in our crowded world today. Example: There are lots of cattle, sheep, and goats because they provide food and fiber for mankind. There are lots of catfish now because humans can raise and eat them.
Also on our ranch, we have 350 Axis Deer which we harvest for live sale to other ranches, harvest for meat, and take a few trophies a year. We invented humane ways to capture these wild animals so they could be moved to other ranches and reproduce. In our county alone, where 25 years ago there were no Axis Deer, there are now over 6,000. In their native India, we can’t even get a good count of how many there are left. They have been devastated by poaching because they are in wildlife preserves that depend on philanthropic or government support which comes and goes. If some of their natural increase were sold to hungry people, the people wouldn’t have to break into the preserve to feed their families. People could even raise them like we do. Then there would be more Axis Deer and children would not be starving either.
When we have hunters on our place, we always have a guide with them to tell them which animals to harvest and how to do it. We insist on a good clean shot with a high powered rifle. The animal is not chased. First, if the animal is stressed, the meat is not good. If the animal is wounded, we have not done our job. This animal is destined to die and we try to make the death proud. For myself, when I have taken a meat animal, I have done what they say the American Indians used to do: I praise the animal for its beauty and thank it for providing meat for my survival. In my mind, I think the animal also thanks me for providing a protected home for his family. He understands the law of the wild: That some will live and some will die.
SP: “I ask you to please stop letting people hunt all the diverse species on your land.”
DT: I hope by now that you will reconsider this request. In essence, we ‘hunt’ in the act of harvesting our animals for live sale to other ranches, for sale as meat, and for sale as trophies. Using the money from harvesting our excess animals, we provide a home to all the diverse species you mention we have on our land. We couldn’t provide a home for all the diverse species if they didn’t help us pay for it. We even provide a home to the Barasingha Deer which has been on the Endangered Species List for quite a few years with no US exception. We can’t harvest them as freely as we can our other species so they can’t pay for a home for themselves. We can only afford to run about 35 of these beautiful animals and we do it out of charity. I love them but I call them ‘freeloaders’ because the Axis Deer, Black Buck Antelope, and Scimitar Horned Oryx have to give their lives to provide a home for the Barasingha. I’m sure the Barasingha aren’t proud of that. But there you go; silly laws prevent an animal from reproducing to its capacity.
SP: “Animals do not belong to us;”
DT: Fortunately or unfortunately, they do belong to us. And we belong to them. We have a symbiotic relationship. They depend on us and we depend on them.
SP: “they are sentient beings who need to be treated as such.”
DT: Yes, we believe that they have a right to as much wild, open space as we can afford to give them; they have a right to choose their own mates; they have a right to be respected in the way we harvest them. We recognize that we have to be careful and respectful when we harvest them because they will kill us if we panic them. I love the way they demand our respect.
SP: “Animals do feel pain, and as you probably know, not every kill is quick; some animals endure slow painful deaths.”
DT: We avoid slow painful deaths. As I said, it does not allow the animal to die with fullest respect and it taints the meat.
SP: “You can see the pain in their eyes and hear it in the screams.”
I personally have not seen pain in our animal’s eyes nor heard them scream. I have heard a baby rabbit scream when my cat caught and killed it. I have heard a goat scream before its throat was cut. In the old days, when we ran cattle, sheep, and goats, we harvested our own meat for our own use; the old way…we bled out the animal by cutting its throat. Now I would shoot it in the head quickly and then bleed it out.
SP: “It has been proven by science that animals do feel pain like how we feel pain and some animals might even feel more pain then us. It has been proven that animals do have emotions and very distinct personalities.”
DT: My science book is investigating a theory that at the moment an animal is trapped and in a kill grip, it does not feel pain. A chemical is released that numbs the brain so, in nature, the death is less painful. I give you the case, on the Discovery Channel, where the lion is slowly choking the wildebeest while the rest of the pride starts eating on it. The eyes of the wildebeest look wild but numb to me. I like to believe it is so. Maybe sometime science can tell us for sure. I’ve read where a man, who was in the death grip of a bear, felt a great peace come over him and no feeling of pain, just before he was rescued.
They say that when a whitetail deer tries to jump a fence and gets its leg caught, it is able to die -- to will itself to die -- rather than suffer a long, desperate death hanging upside down, unable to eat or drink or escape.
Our government publications say that grass has a mechanism where it expects to be eaten by two-thirds and does not suffer until eaten down to the roots where it cannot recover.I do not argue that the nature of life is suffering and the avoidance thereof. Is that the ‘pursuit of happiness’? I think that our animals are happy because their lives are quite unthreatened. On the savannas of India and Africa, where they come from, they spend their lives looking over their shoulders for predators. Our predation is limited to certain times of the year and we don’t usually sneak up on them. We lure them into a pen and then into a dark shed where they become calm and we sort them. Then we lure them into a trailer for transport to their new home on another ranch or transport to a government meat plant where they are shot in the head in the trailer: They die before they know to feel fear. As to their being hunted: They are usually standing still, looking at us from a distance, wondering what we are up to, like they used to watch the lion and the tiger. They are not fearful, they are watchful. With the long range of our high powered rifle, they die without fear or pain. Sometimes we do our venison harvests that way, too, with a government meat inspector and processing unit present.
SP: “If you have ever had a dog or any other pet you know that they have there own lives and thoughts.”
DT: I believe we all do. I think plants do, too. Did you ever read about the invention of the spineless prickly pear cactus? The great botanist, Luther Burbank, had a theory that the cactus grew spines to protect itself from being eaten. (There we go again: eat or be eaten.) He believed that if the cactus felt safe, it would not have to grow spines. For twenty years, he kept a cactus in a safe environment and talked to it daily. (He was the original ‘talk to plants’ guy.) Each year, the cactus grew fewer and fewer spines until it became spineless. True story. Read his manuscripts. Burbank, California, is named after him.
SP: “Even if they do not have the full range of emotions that humans have, wouldn’t you rather treat them like they do and later find out they only have some of the emotions humans have, then to just treat them like they do not have any emotions then find out that they do have all the emotions humans have? I would rather be safe then sorry. Wouldn’t you?”
DT: Yes, I would.
SP: “All the animals that you allow people to hunt on your property have their own lives, even if you don’t think much of their lives, it is still their life!”
DT: I think very much of their lives. That is why I am in the business of perpetuating their lives and increasing their numbers on this planet. Our working game ranch and others like us have done more to save and increase deer and antelope populations than nature or any other man-designed programs.
SP: “Even if you think you are doing population control or that the animals are in an overabundance it still doesn’t give you the right to end their lives.”
DT: I believe that our deer and antelope are greatly threatened on this planet unless we find a human use for them. They are certainly not in over-abundance. Axis Deer, Black Buck and Scimitar Horned Oryx populations in their native countries are greatly reduced. People have invaded their habitat and wiped it out. Observe the Koala Bear. Many, many species on this planet no longer have the option of living their lives in the wild of millenniums gone by.
SP: “The only reason they seem to be over populated is entirely our fault, we get rid of their natural predators because we see them as being pests or we buy their habitat and put domestic animals there.”
DT: We have reclaimed domestic animal lands for wildlife. By adopting some of the methods that allowed domestic animals to thrive on this planet, we have reclaimed lands for wild animals.
SP, I thank you for listening to our side. I hope you can tell that we love animals, too. We think that what we are doing gives our beautiful, wild animals a chance in this world. They live as naturally as possible on wide open, beautiful grass lands. Instead of lions or tigers as their predators, we are their kinder, gentler predators and use that predation to save their species. DeerTalk
Dear SP, I think I will try to respond to your thoughts one at a time. I don’t claim to have any hard and fast answers to your concerns but I will give you a look into the minds of some of us who raise and care for animals on a commercial basis.
SP: “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, kill, use for entertainment or experiment on.”
DT: Yes, they are. There are two main ways of trying to explain life on earth:
Science and Religion.
Science: If you look through the prism of Science, you see humans as a link in an evolutionary chain of life development from single cell organisms to plants, animals, birds and on to the vast complexities of the human, whale, or porpoise brain. All this DNA is tremendously similar. For example, the reproductive organs of plants and humans are amazingly similar.
The rule of nature is to be born, survive to reproduce, and die. You can start with the single cell organism which feeds on organic or inorganic compounds in the water and go to plants which feed on organic and inorganic compounds on land. Much of plant food is the nutrients in the soil from dead animals and plants. Some plants even kill and eat insects and animals. From plants, you go on to have more complicated organisms that feed on plants. You are familiar with the food chain, to be sure. The higher up the food chain, the more complicated the food source. Stalking, killing, and eating is the survival part of the equation. Since I do not distinguish between higher and lower forms of life and their right to exist, I hold that a plant or an animal has an equal right to live, kill to eat and survive, reproduce and die. Since I, also, as part of this food chain, have a right to live, survive to reproduce, and die, then I have a right to do what I need to do to survive. I have the right to act naturally.
I have to eat to survive. If I eat a plant, let’s say, corn or wheat, I am eating that plant’s seeds. A plant’s seed is a plant’s embryo. Thus, I am eating a plant’s embryo when I eat a plant’s seed. If I eat a chicken’s egg, I am eating the chicken’s embryo. Actually, this gives me, personally, more concern than eating a steak off a mature animal. Through this prism of looking at life, all nature is designed to eat or be eaten to survive and reproduce. I don’t see any way around not killing if I, or most anything in nature, is to survive. It is the universal design. Perhaps it isn’t pretty. It doesn’t sound as nice as “I would like for all living things to love each other and get along in peace.” But it is the facts. How we conduct ourselves in the face of these facts is what gives us some grace in living our lives.
Religion. If you look through the Christian, Muslim, Jewish prism you find the oldest documents saying that God made mankind master and caretaker over the plants and beasts of the earth. God even demanded sacrifices of plants and animals to meet his own needs. Hindus and Buddhists have various degrees of celebrating the sanctity of plants and animals. Some don’t kill sacred cows. Some don’t tread on insects or even breathe them into their lungs accidentally. But these same priests eat to survive or they wouldn’t have gotten old enough to preach to the rest of us. Somebody has to harvest their food. Maybe they, personally, don’t do it, but someone does. Does that make the harvester less than the consumer? I don’t think so. It just makes the consumer more remote.
Perhaps these priests only drink milk, but then they deprive the cow’s offspring of nourishing milk as God designed the species. And, using milk for survival demands that mankind corral the cow and milk it. Statistically, the majority of mankind is lactose intolerant as adults so where does that leave us?
Not dominating and harvesting plants and animals leaves us very hungry and very dead: And, very remote in our thinking, about how life on earth actually works.
SP: “They are living breathing beings, each with their own individual personalities. They deserve our respect and kindness.” DT: I agree.
SP: “Trophy Hunting is one worst possible thing you can do to animals. You are looking for the strongest, most desirable animal to kill with your high powered gun or bow.”
DT: Trophy hunting or hunting is part of the universal design of stalk, kill, and eat to survive. We allow trophy hunting for a portion of our mature males whether for meat or for sport or for both. The meat is always consumed. By the way, hunting as a sport is practicing our ancient rituals of survival. There are those people who believe we may need them again someday.
Mature males that are hunted for their trophies have already bred to reproduce and from the time of their best trophy rack, they will go downhill until they die. The income from their harvest can provide a home for the rest of the herd. For example, when we first started raising exotics on our ranch, we purchased some excess animals that were going to be put down. We purchased 10 large, mature male Scimitar Horned Oryx antelope. Hunters took two of them for the meat and trophies. We found the meat to be excellent and marketable. We thought the species could pay for a safe home for itself. In its native home of Chad, Africa, it has been killed off by violent people who, because of revolution, got hold of jeeps and machine guns and drove into the desert and mowed down great herds for sport. Because the animals were wild and humans were able to encroach on their public breeding grounds, they were vulnerable with no one to protect them and they could not protect themselves by having their own land.
With the money we got for the trophy males, we purchased four breeding females and started a herd. By the way, the 8 other males died of old age on our ranch…actually, one got struck by lightning. At one time our ranch had the largest herd of Scimitar Oryx in the world-over 300 head. The Oryx paid for their space by allowing us to harvest excess animals to live on other ranches, to harvest some for meat, and to take several trophies a year. Some gave their lives so the rest could have a happy, safe home.
Right now we are fighting a battle to keep the Scimitar Horned Oryx alive. Because it has been wiped out in its native country, it is on the World’s Endangered Species List. Years ago, with wisdom, the US Fish and Wildlife Department issued a USA exception for Scimitar Horned Oryx, Dama Gazelle, and Addax. This exception allowed ranchers and collectors in the United States to freely buy, breed, raise, sell, harvest and trade these species. US ranchers have provided a safe and managed environment for these species and they have reproduced beautifully and fully. There are now thousands in this country and some are being transported back to repopulate their homelands.
Regrettably, a couple of Animal Rights groups, this summer, brought suit to stop the US Exception. If these Animal Rights groups are allowed to prevail, we ranchers can no longer afford to raise and protect these magnificent animals and they will become extinct everywhere.
If we have to limit managed harvests of the animals or justify every decision we make about their care, we cannot afford to provide a home for them…meaning, they cannot provide a home for themselves. Sad but true, what mankind can use is what survives in our crowded world today. Example: There are lots of cattle, sheep, and goats because they provide food and fiber for mankind. There are lots of catfish now because humans can raise and eat them.
Also on our ranch, we have 350 Axis Deer which we harvest for live sale to other ranches, harvest for meat, and take a few trophies a year. We invented humane ways to capture these wild animals so they could be moved to other ranches and reproduce. In our county alone, where 25 years ago there were no Axis Deer, there are now over 6,000. In their native India, we can’t even get a good count of how many there are left. They have been devastated by poaching because they are in wildlife preserves that depend on philanthropic or government support which comes and goes. If some of their natural increase were sold to hungry people, the people wouldn’t have to break into the preserve to feed their families. People could even raise them like we do. Then there would be more Axis Deer and children would not be starving either.
When we have hunters on our place, we always have a guide with them to tell them which animals to harvest and how to do it. We insist on a good clean shot with a high powered rifle. The animal is not chased. First, if the animal is stressed, the meat is not good. If the animal is wounded, we have not done our job. This animal is destined to die and we try to make the death proud. For myself, when I have taken a meat animal, I have done what they say the American Indians used to do: I praise the animal for its beauty and thank it for providing meat for my survival. In my mind, I think the animal also thanks me for providing a protected home for his family. He understands the law of the wild: That some will live and some will die.
SP: “I ask you to please stop letting people hunt all the diverse species on your land.”
DT: I hope by now that you will reconsider this request. In essence, we ‘hunt’ in the act of harvesting our animals for live sale to other ranches, for sale as meat, and for sale as trophies. Using the money from harvesting our excess animals, we provide a home to all the diverse species you mention we have on our land. We couldn’t provide a home for all the diverse species if they didn’t help us pay for it. We even provide a home to the Barasingha Deer which has been on the Endangered Species List for quite a few years with no US exception. We can’t harvest them as freely as we can our other species so they can’t pay for a home for themselves. We can only afford to run about 35 of these beautiful animals and we do it out of charity. I love them but I call them ‘freeloaders’ because the Axis Deer, Black Buck Antelope, and Scimitar Horned Oryx have to give their lives to provide a home for the Barasingha. I’m sure the Barasingha aren’t proud of that. But there you go; silly laws prevent an animal from reproducing to its capacity.
SP: “Animals do not belong to us;”
DT: Fortunately or unfortunately, they do belong to us. And we belong to them. We have a symbiotic relationship. They depend on us and we depend on them.
SP: “they are sentient beings who need to be treated as such.”
DT: Yes, we believe that they have a right to as much wild, open space as we can afford to give them; they have a right to choose their own mates; they have a right to be respected in the way we harvest them. We recognize that we have to be careful and respectful when we harvest them because they will kill us if we panic them. I love the way they demand our respect.
SP: “Animals do feel pain, and as you probably know, not every kill is quick; some animals endure slow painful deaths.”
DT: We avoid slow painful deaths. As I said, it does not allow the animal to die with fullest respect and it taints the meat.
SP: “You can see the pain in their eyes and hear it in the screams.”
I personally have not seen pain in our animal’s eyes nor heard them scream. I have heard a baby rabbit scream when my cat caught and killed it. I have heard a goat scream before its throat was cut. In the old days, when we ran cattle, sheep, and goats, we harvested our own meat for our own use; the old way…we bled out the animal by cutting its throat. Now I would shoot it in the head quickly and then bleed it out.
SP: “It has been proven by science that animals do feel pain like how we feel pain and some animals might even feel more pain then us. It has been proven that animals do have emotions and very distinct personalities.”
DT: My science book is investigating a theory that at the moment an animal is trapped and in a kill grip, it does not feel pain. A chemical is released that numbs the brain so, in nature, the death is less painful. I give you the case, on the Discovery Channel, where the lion is slowly choking the wildebeest while the rest of the pride starts eating on it. The eyes of the wildebeest look wild but numb to me. I like to believe it is so. Maybe sometime science can tell us for sure. I’ve read where a man, who was in the death grip of a bear, felt a great peace come over him and no feeling of pain, just before he was rescued.
They say that when a whitetail deer tries to jump a fence and gets its leg caught, it is able to die -- to will itself to die -- rather than suffer a long, desperate death hanging upside down, unable to eat or drink or escape.
Our government publications say that grass has a mechanism where it expects to be eaten by two-thirds and does not suffer until eaten down to the roots where it cannot recover.I do not argue that the nature of life is suffering and the avoidance thereof. Is that the ‘pursuit of happiness’? I think that our animals are happy because their lives are quite unthreatened. On the savannas of India and Africa, where they come from, they spend their lives looking over their shoulders for predators. Our predation is limited to certain times of the year and we don’t usually sneak up on them. We lure them into a pen and then into a dark shed where they become calm and we sort them. Then we lure them into a trailer for transport to their new home on another ranch or transport to a government meat plant where they are shot in the head in the trailer: They die before they know to feel fear. As to their being hunted: They are usually standing still, looking at us from a distance, wondering what we are up to, like they used to watch the lion and the tiger. They are not fearful, they are watchful. With the long range of our high powered rifle, they die without fear or pain. Sometimes we do our venison harvests that way, too, with a government meat inspector and processing unit present.
SP: “If you have ever had a dog or any other pet you know that they have there own lives and thoughts.”
DT: I believe we all do. I think plants do, too. Did you ever read about the invention of the spineless prickly pear cactus? The great botanist, Luther Burbank, had a theory that the cactus grew spines to protect itself from being eaten. (There we go again: eat or be eaten.) He believed that if the cactus felt safe, it would not have to grow spines. For twenty years, he kept a cactus in a safe environment and talked to it daily. (He was the original ‘talk to plants’ guy.) Each year, the cactus grew fewer and fewer spines until it became spineless. True story. Read his manuscripts. Burbank, California, is named after him.
SP: “Even if they do not have the full range of emotions that humans have, wouldn’t you rather treat them like they do and later find out they only have some of the emotions humans have, then to just treat them like they do not have any emotions then find out that they do have all the emotions humans have? I would rather be safe then sorry. Wouldn’t you?”
DT: Yes, I would.
SP: “All the animals that you allow people to hunt on your property have their own lives, even if you don’t think much of their lives, it is still their life!”
DT: I think very much of their lives. That is why I am in the business of perpetuating their lives and increasing their numbers on this planet. Our working game ranch and others like us have done more to save and increase deer and antelope populations than nature or any other man-designed programs.
SP: “Even if you think you are doing population control or that the animals are in an overabundance it still doesn’t give you the right to end their lives.”
DT: I believe that our deer and antelope are greatly threatened on this planet unless we find a human use for them. They are certainly not in over-abundance. Axis Deer, Black Buck and Scimitar Horned Oryx populations in their native countries are greatly reduced. People have invaded their habitat and wiped it out. Observe the Koala Bear. Many, many species on this planet no longer have the option of living their lives in the wild of millenniums gone by.
SP: “The only reason they seem to be over populated is entirely our fault, we get rid of their natural predators because we see them as being pests or we buy their habitat and put domestic animals there.”
DT: We have reclaimed domestic animal lands for wildlife. By adopting some of the methods that allowed domestic animals to thrive on this planet, we have reclaimed lands for wild animals.
SP, I thank you for listening to our side. I hope you can tell that we love animals, too. We think that what we are doing gives our beautiful, wild animals a chance in this world. They live as naturally as possible on wide open, beautiful grass lands. Instead of lions or tigers as their predators, we are their kinder, gentler predators and use that predation to save their species. DeerTalk
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Deer Pleasure
Deer delight me. Let me count the ways. Soft brown coat. Dark, lustrous eyes. Waving white tail. Impatient stomping of one foot when curious or alarmed. Tiny babies, curled in the grass.
I am lucky enough be able to give a home to many deer of several species on more than 1,200 acres in Texas. In order for these deer to provide a home for themselves, they 'work' on the ranch. They give joy to visitors with their beauty and spirit; they reproduce so many can be sold to homes on other ranches; some give their lives for venison; and some old males give their lives for trophy fee income. It is an interesting phenomenon that the more venison people eat, the more acres will be devoted to raising deer and the more deer will be alive on this planet. For example, 25 years ago, there were no Axis Deer (native of India and semi-endangered there) in my county in central Texas. Now there are over 6,000. They are paying for a home for themselves so they have guaranteed their survival. And, their home is wonderful! Rolling hills of grass land with ever-green Live Oak trees and pecan tree motts (that's Texas for 'groves').
We'll share our deer stories and some recipes both here and on the website venison.com. Thanks for joining us!
I am lucky enough be able to give a home to many deer of several species on more than 1,200 acres in Texas. In order for these deer to provide a home for themselves, they 'work' on the ranch. They give joy to visitors with their beauty and spirit; they reproduce so many can be sold to homes on other ranches; some give their lives for venison; and some old males give their lives for trophy fee income. It is an interesting phenomenon that the more venison people eat, the more acres will be devoted to raising deer and the more deer will be alive on this planet. For example, 25 years ago, there were no Axis Deer (native of India and semi-endangered there) in my county in central Texas. Now there are over 6,000. They are paying for a home for themselves so they have guaranteed their survival. And, their home is wonderful! Rolling hills of grass land with ever-green Live Oak trees and pecan tree motts (that's Texas for 'groves').
We'll share our deer stories and some recipes both here and on the website venison.com. Thanks for joining us!
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