Snowflakes in Hell

Last month, we brought up the topic of pigeon shoots, which is a sport which is still practiced in Pennsylvania.  Though I would not take part in a pigeon shoot myself (I have enough trouble hitting clay birds, let alone real ones), I have no problem with the sport.  You see, pigeons are vermin.  In urban and suburban environments, they are trapped and killed, or poisoned, because they are filthy and spread disease.  Poisoning is less humane than shooting them.

This weekend Jeff Soyer wrote a post that was unfavorable toward pigeon shoots.  Bitter immediately took exception to it, pointing out that the sport might be politically incorrect, the tactic that HSUS is using pigeon shoots and dove hunting for is exactly the same tactic anti-gunners have used to go after assault weapons.  As Countertop pointed out in the comments, the proposed ban on pigeon shoots would also have the unintended (intended on the part of HSUS) consequence of banning dog training.

I will be honest here, I think HSUS will succeed in destroying hunting in North America. Why?  Because hunters show a complete willingness to throw other hunters off the lifeboat when the animal rights nut-jobs come knocking, because they personally don’t participate in their sport and don’t think highly of it.  I will agree that pigeon shoots aren’t the best public face of our sport, and I kind of wish the people who organize these things would stop.  But I’m not going to join HSUS in calling for it to be outlawed.  Apply all the shame and social pressure you want, but I’m not going to stand with HSUS on destroying any type of hunting or shooting.  They have an agenda, and a tactic.  Their tactic is to divide and conquer.  It’s the same tactic the Brady Campaign and VPC used with shooters when they went after assault rifles.  It didn’t work with shooters.  I don’t see any indication why it’s not going to work with hunters.  You’re going to lose your sport guys, and you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

They came first for the pigeon shooters, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a pigeon shooter.

Then they came for the dove hunters, and I didn’t speak up, because I don’t hunt dove.

Then they came for the bear hunters, and I said not a word, for I do not hunt bear.

Then they came for the deer hunters.  I am a deer hunter, but when they came, there weren’t enough hunters left to speak up.

Join or die.

This editorial from the Allentown Morning Call demands that pigeon shoots be outlawed in Pennsylvania:

There is opposition to these bills from some who fear that any restriction on one’s use of guns — or bow and arrow — might lead to greater restrictions of the Second Amendment. And so, the bills languish in committees. We have no quarrel with those who wish to hunt game animals in the wild. But a pigeon shoot is not hunting.

Well, except that later in the article, it’s pretty obvious that you’ve been talking to the Humane Society of the United States:

The state’s best-known pigeon shoot was in Hegins Township, Schuylkill County, where the Fred Coleman Memorial Pigeon Shoot began in 1933 as a means of giving prizes and raising money to feed hungry citizens and to support local charities. The spectacle died a natural death there, but according to the Humane Society, 22 others were held here last year. Though most are not widely publicized they are just as objectionable.

And yes, they do have an agenda to ban hunting in the United States.  Now, I should make my biases clear here: I hate pigeons.  I think they are basically rats with wings, and I don’t have much sympathy for them.  That said, I personally would not particularly want to attend a pigeon shoot, unless it was on the SEPTA platform at 30th Street Station in Philly.  As to whether it should be illegal, well, if the HSUS is the one pushing it, I’ll oppose.  They have an agenda, and Pennsylvania sportsmen, even the vast majority who do not shoot trap with live birds instead of clay birds, should be skeptical of their motives and goals.  HSUS has followed the path of the anti-gun movement and taken a divide and conquer strategy to outlaw hunting piecemeal.  They are no friends of hunters.  They were instrumental in getting a ban on dove hunting passed in Michigan.  An overall ban, not just on using them in trap shooting.  Even if you wanted to hunt doves in Michigan because dove is tasty, now you can’t, thanks to HSUS.

The LA Times has <sarcasm>a remarkably pro hunting piece</sarcasm>, describing how difficult it will be to enforce California’s lead ammo ban, and suggests the fact that the bullets being expensive, and gas prices, might end up just making hunters give up the sport, which would be the “condor’s best friend.”

No mention of the billions of dollars that hunters pour into conservation efforts that will end up being lost if the largest state in the union manages to effectively extinguish hunting within its borders.

Dave Hardy explains in detail the Department of Interior listing the Polar Bear as a threatened species.  Bitter managed a quickie interview at the Annual Meeting with Darren LaSorte, Manager of Hunting Policy for the National Rifle Association.

The Humane Society of the United States, unlke PETA, who are mostly a joke, is a very smart anti-hunting group.  Look at this bill proposed by Senator Lautenberg:

Today, U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced legislation that would prevent importing and confining exotic animals for the purpose of hunting.  This type of hunting, commonly known as “canned hunting,” is a brutal practice of placing an animal in an enclosure that severely limits its ability to escape.

Sounds like they are putting the animal in a cage so you can shoot it, right?  Well, no.  They are putting the animal on a preserve, and the preserve has a fence that delineates the property.  Doesn’t matter if you have 10,000 acres.  It’s a canned hunt, and it’s evil and cruel.  HSUS will mislead the public on this the same way the Brady Campaign misleads the public on the gun issue.  Hunters need to wake up.  Particularly hunters in New Jersey, which is getting perilously close to banning hunting altogether.

I also have to say that if the people of New Jersey choose to keep that fossil Lautenberg around, they are nuts.  Rob Andrews is no friend of ours, but saying he’d be a step up is a bit of an understatement.

Greg says he’d never eat it.  I’m more open to the idea if it tasted good.  If I couldn’t distinguish bacon that didn’t used to oink from bacon that did, I wouldn’t care too much, especially if it were more economical than farming.  I will give PETA credit on this one, it’s research that I have no problem with, because if you can grow a filet mignon, you can probably grow a kidney or a liver too, and that will help a lot of people.

New Jersey is a long ways down the slippery slope, thanks to people like, this who now see their goal of banning all hunting and gun ownership within political reach:

Hunting makes an unnecessary contribution to a world already plagued by too much violence and suffering.Wildlife and the outdoors can and should be experienced through activities such as camping, hiking and wildlife watching; ways to get close to nature without having to cause suffering and death.

Joe Miele, President, Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting
Maywood, NJ

Anti-hunting forces in New Jersey were dealt a pretty significant blow in New Jersey’s last election, but they aren’t going away.  Joe Meile and his ilk are not biologists, they do not understand the role hunters play in conservation and wilflife management efforts.   He also, apparently, isn’t above telling people from Mississippi how they ought to be living their lives.  People like this need to be vigorously opposed.

It looks like there are plans afoot to make both Lehigh and Northampton counties “shotgun only” for hunting:

Currently, the restriction on rifle hunting applies only in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. However, a proposal on the agenda for the commission’s Tuesday business meeting would prohibit deer hunting with a rifle throughout Wildlife Management Unit 5C, which also would be significantly expanded to include the Reading area and all of Lehigh and Northampton counties except a small sliver adjacent to the Blue Mountain.

If the measure is adopted, the only rifles that would remain legal for hunting use in the territory would be less powerful .22-caliber rimfires, which could be used for small game such as squirrels or furbearers such as foxes and coyotes.

I guess the PGC decided the study that showed shotgun hunting isn’t any safer was without merit.

According to PETA:

 PETA researched which states are doing the best job meeting their prison inmates’ hunger for meatless meals, and the results are in: Pennsylvania has placed third on PETA’s list of the Top 10 Vegetarian-Friendly State Prison Systems.

Prison food has traditionally gotten a bad rap, but you won’t hear many complaints from vegetarians and vegans who are serving time in Pennsylvania. The soy barbecue, mock Salisbury steak, mock meatballs, tofu cacciatore, and tofu scramble have inmates asking for seconds.

This is one area I can agree with PETA on.  Meat is expensive.  I say mock meatballs and mock salsbury steak is  fine for the prison population if it save the state money and makes live in prison just a little more unbearable.   I say we move to number one on this list!

Looks like Countertop had a good weekend.  It was pretty chilly in Connecticut this weekend, but nothing like that.

Ahab links to an editorial calling for us to recognize the “plight” of deer, and not make sport of it.  While I would not try to pass myself off as a wildlife biologist (most of whom are paid for by hunters) I’m pretty sure the plight of the deer pretty much revolves around eating, running away from shit, and humping other deer.   We have a word for things that don’t do anything except eat, run and hump: food.

Well, strictly speaking it’s true.  But that’s not to say a Kalashnikov can’t get the job done.  The 7.62×39mm Soviet round will kill deer just fine.

Ahab doesn’t think the EU should be butting into the sovereign affairs of certain countries to regulate hunting.   I agree, but with the caveat that it does sound like Malta isn’t engaging in sound wildlife management practices here.

The devil, you say

This is from the comments, but I thought it warranted highlighting in a separate post.

Thankfully, Philly Chefs for Choice are striking back against the crazed bunch of zealots who would love nothing more than to take away more and more of our choices. In an event called “Philly Foie For Five,” about 20 Philly restaurants will offer foie gras dishes for just $5. The event goes from October 1st to October 7th. (More info at www.artisanfarmers.org )

The event is designed to expose more people to foie gras. If no one speaks against the minority activists, we will lose the right to eat foie gras. And the slope is slippery. Veal may go next. Then chicken. These activists aren’t going to stop until they have us all eating legumes and liking it. The final strike, if it were up to these activists, truly would be an end to meat-eating.

There are only three foie gras farms in the United States. We aren’t talking about “agri-business” here. We’re talking about small farms producing a small amount of product. But this is why foie gras has become an easy target for the minority zealots in Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin, and many states. In many situations, property owners have been targeted with vandalism and threats have been made against the lives of their families. Protesting is one thing, terrorism is quite another.

Ultimately, business owners are punished by these people for running their businesses legally, in the way they see fit. They lose customers to the screaming hordes (who wants to walk through a screaming band of zealots for lunch?) and lose more when they are forced to give in and take foie gras off the menu. Business owners lose thousands of dollars just fighting these people off. Commerce suffers in cities where these activists attack.

Those who talk about the cruelty of the foie gras process are sadly misinformed. They are putting humans in the place of the animals. By this logic, we should be horrified that the poor things stand around in the winter without shoes and socks.

That is the basic misconception exploited by animal rights organizations, that ducks are like people. Yes, a tube in the throat is not comfortable for humans. Neither is swallowing whole, spiny wriggling fish, which many species of ducks delight in.

In the same way, an enlarged liver in water fowl is a normal process, not a disease process. In fact, most birds have the same mechanism. Have you ever seen fat hummingbirds? Yet they sure take on a lot of sugar water before they migrate. The extra energy is stored in an enlarged liver.

For the activists and others not well-informed on the issue, foie gras production has been carefully examined by animal welfare advocates who have determined it to be humane. Unfortunately, these activists (or terrorists, if you will) are uneducated and ignorant of the truth. They may even know the facts but chose to ignore them out of zealotry for their cause.

Those who wish to know more about foie gras production, there are two articles at the bottom of the first page of www.artisanfarmers.org that discuss the animal welfare aspects of it. For some additional perspective, see: http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/sep05/050901q.asp

Actually, even for people it’s not all that uncomfortable to have a tube down your throat.  Endoscopes are typically done while the patient is awake, sometimes with drugs to suppress the gag reflex.  Birds don’t have gag reflexes, and many young are fed through regurgitation by the parent its young’s mouth.

What a shocker this article is:

According to McNally, their tactics have ranged from chants and name-calling (addressing individuals as “duck rapists”) to firing bullhorns directly in her face. Other restaurant owners have taken foie gras items off their menus, but so far, McNally hasn’t backed down. “We don’t believe that, overall, we should be told what to eat,” she says.

As we talked on the drive, it became clear that there is more at issue than animal welfare — the way McNally sees it, her business is at stake as well. London has 70 outdoor seats that she needs to turn over at least twice a night to make payroll. “With the bullhorns and the screaming, you can’t sit there and dine,” she says. “That’s taking money away from the waiter and from us.”

Everyone has a right to free speech, but that doesn’t cross into disrupting your neighborhood such that your neighbors “quiet enjoyment” is disrupted.  The Philadelphia Police should be allowed to arrest these people for disturbing the peace.

Turns out that maybe Foie Gras isn’t as cruel as the animal rights psychos are making it out to be:

McNally and I arrived at the farm around noon and met Izzay Yanay, co-owner of Hudson Valley. A former member of the Israeli Defense Force, Yanay projects an intense, almost defiant pride when showing off his farm. “Make them come — all of them,” he says. He’s entertained roughly two tours a week for the past 20 years, hosting chefs and journalists alike. He promises unrestricted access and encourages me to take pictures.

Dr. Lawrence Bartholf, a practicing livestock veterinarian who operates independent of the farm, accompanies us. Bartholf often chaperones Hudson Valley tours to answer questions related to the birds’ physiology “It’s one thing to use facts to argue a point,” he says. “But when [protesters] use outright lies and distortions and half-truths, that’s where I draw the line.”

Leftist activists using outright lies, distortions and half-truths?  Nah…. you don’t say?  What a pity Philadelphia City Council is buying this crap, instead of arresting these people.

I think it’s safe to say that the California Condor is a species that’s poorly adapted to life on this planet, and they probably would have gone extinct regardless of what humans did.   Especially when you read stuff like this:

At the time of human settlement of the Americas, the California Condor was widespread across North America. However, climate changes associated with the end of the last ice age and the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna led to a subsequent reduction in range and population. Prehistorically, California Condors are known from Arizona,^[28] Nevada,^[29] New Mexico,^[30][31] and Texas.^[32]

In modern times, a wide variety of causes helped lead to the condor’s decline. The condor’s fickle mating habits and resulting low birth rate combined with a late age of sexual maturity make the bird vulnerable to loss of population.

Now they blame man, and Governor Schwarzenegger is faced with whether to agree to ban lead bullets in Condor habitat.  Here’s where I start getting offensive: let them go extinct already!  It’s pretty clear they were on their way toward that without any help from humans, and I don’t think we should go to extremes to prolong the inevitable.  Yep, sometimes I believe species should just be allowed to go extinct.  You can add Pandas to that list as well.

I’m glad Countertop is dedicated to helping me overcome my inherent issues with the idea of eating squirrel. Given that I seem to be collecting friends who view squirrels as delectable lunchables, I may have to give this a try at some point.

The subject of my very first post, Loretta, was a recent convert to the idea of eating squirrel. She had been converted to it by my friend Carrie, who I had previously been pursuing before Bitter.  She is the sister of a friend of mine, who also also speaks highly of dining on tree rat.

So we really have quite the squirrel eating happy family going on here at Snowflakes in Hell, so I will have to reconsider my belief that squirrels not fit for human consumption.

You have to love cooking a steak with a computer controlled laser.   Especially when you can spell this out:

See the entire project here.

Courtesy of Greg and Beth.

John Lott certainly hits on several of them. I’m definitely the hopeless suburban kid who was never exposed to it. I understand the importance of hunting for wildlife management, and certainly don’t have any problem with it, but I’m just not one. The barriers to entry for this sport are certainly rather high, wouldn’t you agree? And I don’t just mean the fees.

Looks like Countertop has found himself a friend.  I have to admit, the video he chose for an update was choice.

If  call your vegan movement “abolitionists”, the term for people who in the early to mid 19th century were dedicated to the ending of human slavery, your moral compass has wandered hopelessly off course.

According to SayUncle, the kid that shot the monster pig is getting hate mail from PETA types.   I have to wonder how many of them would have been happier if the hog had killed the kid.   I wonder how many of them know that was a very real possibility with a wild pig this large.

Well, no, but it looks like he could if he wanted to. Look at the size of the pig this kid killed with a friggin pistol. Holy Barbecue Batman!

Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie. But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

Seriously, my hat’s off to the kid.  I still can’t get over how big it looks.

With the pig finally dead in a creek bed on the 2,500-acre Lost Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve in Delta, trees had to be cut down and a backhoe brought in to bring Jamison’s prize out of the woods.

Manbearpig will kill us all!

One of the things Carrie’s family likes to do when they go to their ranch is shoot one of the wild pigs and have a pig roast. Unfortunatly for me, I was born and raised about 5 miles south of Philadelphia, and I’ve never cleaned and butchered an animal in my life. The idea does not repulse me, in fact, I think it’s something people should know how to do, but no one ever taught me, and none of the other women I’m going with have actually done this with a pig either, just watched it being done by other guys in the family.

I like the idea of the pig roast, but I’m afraid my suburban upbringing has never equipped me to deal with this circumstance, so it’s probably not going to go beyond the idea stage. I’d have to use one of my “terrorist rifles”, probably the PSL, since apparently these wild pigs are rather large, and I don’t have any non-military patterned rifles. But shooting it I can handle, it’s the turning it into dinner part I’m not familiar with. So for those of you who hunt, what’s the basic process once you have a dead animal?

My friend Andrew brings me this sad but vaguely amusing story from his home town of Helena, MT.

A young mulie buck survived a jump from the I-15 overpass above Helena’s Sixth Ward train depot onto a boxcar last week, but had to be destroyed after being further injured by a leap from the boxcar to the ground.

This is where it gets amusing:

“We decided that the only way to get him off of it was for it to jump on its own,” he noted. “We wanted to give it a chance.”

Loewen climbed atop the boxcar and the deer took a flying leap.

“He landed on all four feet,” Arnold said. “But then we could see that he also had a broken back leg, too.”

They decided that the buck stopped here, and shot it. The wardens transported the carcass to the wildlife center, where it was fed to the few bears that hadn’t yet gone into hibernation.

Gotta love Montana.