by Mark Chesnut - Friday, September 13, 2024
While we haven’t mentioned it in a few months, make no mistake: So-called animal rights groups continue to fight—both behind closed doors and out in the open—to end hunting in the United States by turning nonhunters against the hunting lifestyle.
A great example is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ recent strategy of targeting hunting and hunters after a mass murder at a Georgia high school. “Suspected Georgia School Shooter Killed a Deer First,” the headline read, accompanied by a picture of the young man posing with a small buck back in 2022.
The story then attempted to make the case that kids who hunt are more likely to commit mass murder, although there’s no evidence anywhere to suggest that’s even remotely true. Still, that didn’t stop PETA.
“Sandy Hook Promise includes cruelty to animals on its list of ‘10 Critical Warning Signs of Violence,’ and research shows that approximately 43% of school shooters first committed acts of cruelty against animals—so animal abusers potentially pose a serious threat to communities at large,” the story stated.
Of course, hunting is only “abuse to animals” to animal rights groups like PETA and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), who believe animals should have the same rights as people. They won’t even listen to the critical facts about wildlife conservation, sustained harvest and species management, as they’re too busy trying to equate a rat to a child.
Of course, it’s not just animal rights groups who are trying to paint hunters as somehow dangerous to the American public. We reported recently how a recent Princeton “study” purported to show a connection between the first three weeks of deer season and “firearm violence” in rural counties. While nothing more than a trash study, it was regurgitated time and time again in the so-called “mainstream” media.
Your first urge might be to say: “Big deal. There are only a few people out there trying to put an end to hunting.” Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.
The top 10 anti-hunting organizations alone (and there are many more) boast a combined 31 million members, have nearly 7,000 employees and generate $1.1 billion annually. HSUS and PETA alone account for 19 million members—roughly 4 million more members than America has hunters.
Of course, both PETA and the HSUS are vehemently anti-hunting. The PETA website’s hunting section states: “Hunting might have been necessary for human survival in prehistoric times, but today most hunters stalk and kill animals merely for the thrill of it, not out of necessity. This unnecessary, violent form of ‘entertainment’ rips animal families apart and leaves countless animals orphaned or badly injured when hunters miss their targets.”
It is not just animal rights groups dead set on ending our way of life. The ongoing war on meat is another front on the war on hunting. that is being fought by a some of the same people and also by a completely different bunch of activists. In fact, just last spring, PETA released a television commercial targeting the eating of meat in conjunction with the season finale of an HBO series.
“The horrors portrayed in ‘The Last of Us’ are imaginary, but as Greta Thunberg has made clear, kids will face a truly dire future if we continue pumping greenhouse gasses from meat and dairy production into the atmosphere,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a released statement. “No parent wants to doom their children to an inhospitable planet, which is why PETA is urging them to feed them vegan before it’s too late.”
The strategy of the animal rights extremists is this: Any animal use equals abuse. As this NRA website has tracked, they want to end meat-eating and apply the same emotional anti-meat strategy to hunters that they do to farmers and ranchers.
PETA even provides interested people with a vegan starter kit so they can do their part in putting farmers and ranchers out of business, despite the group killing more than 45,000 pets at its Virginia shelter over the past several years.
As hunters, we must realize that the war on farming and ranching is, by its very nature, a war on hunting. After all, with the vast majority of land in the United States under private control, farmers and ranchers hold the key to properties accessed each year by millions upon millions of hunters pursuing a variety of game species.
If those farmers and ranchers are forced out of business, it’s hard to imagine the devastating effect that could have on hunter access to private lands. And greatly reduced hunting would mean less hands-on wildlife conservation and dwindling funding for wildlife management through reduced sales of licenses and tags.
Even Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democrat presidential nominee, has targeted eating meat in the past. According to a report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), “During her failed 2020 Democratic presidential bid, Vice President Harris said she believed the federal government should play a heavy role in restricting Americans’ red meat consumption to combat climate change.”
It’s tempting to ignore these anti-hunting groups in order to try to maintain our sanity in today’s crazy world. But as we head into the fall hunting seasons, it’s important to keep this issue on our radars since anti-hunting organizations will certainly continue to keep hunters in their crosshairs.