What a treat. I have just made my morning cup of coffee and opened my computer and voila! My favorite source of hunting and fishing classics, SPORTING CLASSICS DAILY, has the following account of a bow-hunter in Colorado taking this very large moose.
When I had finished reading it, I thought of a document I had reviewed only two days ago. It was titled, Defenders of Wildlife, Livestock and Wolves, A Guide to Nonlethal Tools and Methods to Reduce Conflicts.
The document was simply nonsense written by an “unmanaged wolves everywhere by any means possible” urban fantasy interest group, called the “defenders” of wildlife. Full disclosure; the “Defenders” are led by the former Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service under President Clinton. She oversaw the US Fish and Wildlife Service when $45 to 60 Million in Excise Taxes intended by law for state fish and wildlife programs was “stolen”, “diverted”, “misallocated” (take your pick) to put federal wolves into Yellowstone to infest (the correct word) the Upper Rocky Mountain States and, as they are doing, spread outward from sea to shining sea. Her hand-picked protégé at the time was a former Democrat Congressional staff director held over by the Bush Administration (?) and who has served without distinction as Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service under President Obama. Neither is on my Christmas Card List. But I digress.
The “Nonlethal Tools” in “Defenders” propaganda piece were and are silly placeboes intended for urban contributors to “Defenders”, federal politicians and bureaucrats that enable wolves, and state politicians and bureaucrats that imagine being federal politicians and bureaucrats when they grow up. Wolves outwit each and every one as time and their bellies allow. Ranchers, sheepherders and dog owners (I know, I know dogs aren’t livestock but wolves kill them all from hunting dogs and pets to watchdogs and herding dogs at routinely high rates and at times in extreme concentrations just as they do with moose/elk calves or sheep or Angus calves) know by now (one would hope) that all the fladry, electric fences, exotic dog breeds, tank tranches (I made that one up) in the world are just like the promises of “compensation”. That is to say, to quote Oscar Wilde, “a tissue of lies”. Like the wolves themselves, the costs, losses and demands of time of the “Nonlethal Methods” are all intended to eliminate ranching just like owls, woodpeckers and Wilderness et al are eliminating timber management and the wood industry in this country.
Just as there were never “enough” wolf damage compensation dollars to begin with, and only a fool that believes that government could or would “provide” compensation forever could imagine that “compensation” would ever be available after all the initial hulabaloo over wolf damage to a handful (I speak here like an urban commuter reading a newspaper in a subway) of rural rednecks “living in wolf country that should just wise up and move into the city and find work like the rest of us”; “Nonlethal” control of a “Lethal” damage creator like wolves is an even dumber concept than “compensation”.
My “review” of the document was simply sarcastic. I have been doing this sort of work for years and the bureaucratic lies and maneuvers coupled with the romance science purchased by racketeer bureaucrats and plotters like the “Defenders” from reprobate “scientists” and professors has become an endless minuet that simply goes round and round. They just keep changing the rules as they go along:
- “But that is a subspecies”; “Yes but a judge over there said we could List ‘Distinct Population Segments’ if we want”.
- “But you are taking private property without compensation”; “Yes but we can do that under the regulation we wrote for the law and the judge selected by “Defenders”.
- “But you have been meeting and planning secretly with the Defenders”: “That is allowed since we named them our official ‘Compensation’ Czar”.
- And on and on…
Treating any of this as honest and amenable to justice and truth is both silly and pointless. It reminds me of the time I was playing a “shoot-em-up” game with my young grandson and some Ninjago sci-fi models in his basement. He finally got me cornered and “shot” my guy. When he said, “I got you grandpa”; I said, “No you didn’t”. As he looked at me like I was cheating I quickly said, “I put a ‘force field around him, just before you shot”. Despite the fact that I had just made this up at that instant, the poor little nipper wrinkled his face and said, “Oh No!” – and we went on playing until his Mom told us to come and eat.
When I moved back to Minnesota 8 years ago, I had planned to put in for a moose hunting license. When I got here, I discovered that the number of moose licenses was declining precipitously each tear. Looking into it, I soon found that the drop in the moose population and moose hunting permits mirrored the increase and spread of dense protected wolf packs in Minnesota. Shortly after my arrival, moose hunting was closed because of a lack of moose. I do not expect to see it ever re-open.
To this day the (one of the most) respected State DNR’s (Minnesota) protests continuously that it is global warming and NOT wolf predation that wiped out Minnesota moose hunting. That is a lie.
I mention this because Colorado is in the midst of a drive by the “Defenders” and all their allies (HSUS, NWF, PETA, AWI, et al) to release and maintain wolves in Colorado. If they do; it is bye, bye moose and most deer hunting. Think of that as you read this article. No more such articles. No more license dollars for wildlife. No more family traditions and generational cultural activities. No more Cabela’s or Bass Pro retailers. No more hunting paraphernalia manufacturers. No more motel/restaurant/bar/gas station/grocery/etc. business in small towns in the fall. No more guiding employment. No more locker/butcher business in the fall.
Could Colorado be so stupid as to release and maintain wolves even just based on the Minnesota moose model alone; let alone the Yellowstone Elk model, the cattle/sheep models, the huge loss of dogs model, the European model, the Asian model, the disease information model, or the human attacks and deaths model? Well, Minnesota moose hunters went quietly into the night without even a whimper and they still speak in hushed tones about State DNR bureaucrats and the tripe they put every year on the front page of the Minneapolis paper in January about all the money that they are spending (a measure of progress?) on moose and how there is so much more we must learn about global warming and plant changes and, oh yes, how they need more money and personnel before Minnesota is populated with monkeys in palm trees and pythons in the fetid swamps surely coming to Minnesota. For my money, I suggest they put a “force field” around it.
The front cover of that “Defenders” propaganda piece shows a young (?) lady riding her horse amongst a herd of Angus in a mountain-ringed pasture. She is hatless and wearing spotless tan, fringed chaps that match her “top?” and her moccasins or boots and her hair for that matter. She gazes off into the distance as her dog follows the horse (probably safer that way) in grass that is belly-deep on the cows. It is truly the rural fantasy that sells so well to urban contributors and paints an image of all those politicians, bureaucrats and bureaucracies doing Gaia’s (I hope that doesn’t offend anyone) work.
When I was a kid, a common disparagement of another guy that acted like he knew all about cowboys and other manly things when he was in fact just putting up a front, was that he was a “Drugstore Cowboy”. Glenn Campbell had a hit song about the glitter and lights that hid another faux “Cowboy”; it was called “A Rhinestone Cowboy”. I submit that the “Defenders” and all their wolf enablers are just like that young woman on the cover of that “Nonlethal Methods” propaganda piece: a bunch of Drugstore Cowgirls.
We (ranchers, hunters, dog owners, parents, etc.) are being ruled here by Drugstore Cowgirls and like Minnesota moose hunters, we are too busy, too docile or too uncaring to do anything about it. “We have met the enemy and he is US!”
All you have to do is put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to see the whole picture.
Jim Beers
18 February 2016
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