NOTE: The following is a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Times concerning a full-page picture ad. If this ad ran or runs in your paper, please consider copying or using this letter to tell the editor of your paper what you think of such propaganda. Thanks. Jim Beers
FUNNIES ON A5?
The full-page picture ad on (A5 of the 13 July of the Washington Times or whatever is appropriate to your paper) is a hoot.
While purporting to be sponsored by “over 190 organizations representing commercial and recreational fishermen” it is paid for by radical groups (National Environmental Trust, and the Marine Fish Conservation Network) whose ultimate goals are Marine Sanctuaries and No Fishing much like their landlubber counterparts’ goals of Wilderness Declarations and No Hunting.
The ad disingenuously invokes the President while attacking the Chairman of the House Resources Committee, Congressman Richard Pombo, whom the radicals have vowed to defeat. This ad, that probably appears nationwide, is one small part of the millions being funneled into schemes to effect this brave Congressman’s defeat. It reads, “TOSS BACK THE POMBO-FRANK BILL” because it will “increase over-fishing”. That is untrue. The proposed bill merely fulfills other legislation calling for the often vacillating Marine Fish Councils to set limits AT or BELOW levels identified by the best available science. There are no “loopholes”. Over-harvests automatically reduce future limits, as the goal for everyone (but these radicals) is the establishment and maintenance of perpetual and bountiful harvests for all fishermen and fish consumers. The two sponsors alone expose the lie. Pombo of California and Frank of Massachusetts are solid anchors on opposite ends of their Parties that come together not for political gain but for fishermen and fishing.
The perfidy of this ad and its’ sponsors is highlighted by the unintended comedy in the full-page picture itself. A vast expanse of water and a close-up “fisherman” in waders facing away from the camera with rod in hand says it all. Note the “fisherman’s” wader suspenders. While the right suspender is properly attached, the left suspender is buttoned on backwards (note the metal adjustor lock that all suspender-wearers know goes in the front) and twisted because the ad producer more than likely had just adjusted it (from the back) before telling the ad model where and how to stand for the photo. One wonders if there was a New York audition on Madison Avenue for the right “back and shaved head in a baseball cap” model to fulfill the notion of these radicals’ idea of a “fisherman”.
The picture is just as phony (as any one that has ever worn a tuxedo or waders recognizes instantly) as the sponsors and all their concern about “over-fishing” and “loopholes”. This is simply a portion of the camouflaged attacks against a Congressman brave enough to try and protect all of us that use renewable natural resources from these groups that would take it all away from us and our descendants. Next time I suggest you run their ad on the funny pages where it belongs.
Jim Beers
13 July 2006
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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.
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Mr. Beers,
I think it's just adorable that you crafted a little metaphor around the word "bait" to open your "honest answer". It was a bit awkward, but A+ for effort!
A lot of what was said is idealistic, unsupported fluff that I shan't bother responding to.
I must respond, however, to the pro-hunting propaganda you thought you'd just throw in:
"I was a State and Federal law enforcement officer for years and “maiming” is non-existent in my experience."
Joy Williams, a vastly talented writer, assembled some quotations for her essay "The Killing Game" that I shall repeat here:
"'Spectacular abuses occur wherever geese congregate', quietly notes Shooting Sportsman."
"A biologist with the Department of the Interior who observed a hunt at Sand Lake in South Dakota said, 'Hunters repeatedly shot over the line at incoming flights where there was no possible chance of retrieving. Time and time again I was shocked at the behavior of hunters. I heard them laugh at the plight of dazed cripples that stumbled about. I saw them striking the heads of retrieved cripples against fence posts.'"
I ran across this myself on the internet site HuntingNet.Com, in an article by Rob Poorman:
"I'll give you an example of an animal that I made a poor shot on because I neglected to stop the animal and shot him on the move. At 25 yards I placed my arrow too far back on the buck.. As soon as I saw the arrow hit further back than I wanted, I knew immediately not to take up the track until at least 6 hours later. I shot this animal at 7:30 am and got out of my tree at 11:00 and left the woods. At 3:30 I returned to the woods and found my buck not 50 yards inside a woods at the last point I saw him. Had I not waited, there is a very good chance that I wouldn't have found him due to the standing cornfields surrounding the woods he was bedded in."
This man brags about letting a deer sit in agony for SIX HOURS -- six hours of pain, fear, confusion -- before he followed it. Sure, if he had followed it it might have run away, but isn't the more basic point that the animal had to do something for SIX HOURS while waiting to die? He was disgusting and selfish enough to use a bow, an instrument whose curelty is absurd, and for what? Was his fun worth letting the animal suffer like that? And I'm sorry, Mr. Beers, but only sickos would find it fun to inflict crippling wounds that an animal must endure for hours, potentially, before succumbing. Yes, they might aim for a "kinder", quicker location on the animal, but people miss, and the chance of missing alone should be sufficient grounds for ending hunting.
To get back to Mr. Beers' quotation:
"I was a State and Federal law enforcement officer for years and “maiming” is non-existent in my experience."
Maiming does happen, both intentionally and unintentionally (e.g., when hunters get trigger happy and shoot much too early or when a shot is "poorly placed"), Mr. Beers, and you'd be a fool to say it doesn't.
You feel terribly entitled, and there's no way to argue with that. You think if something is in the law and in the Bible, it's OK to do. That's essentially the same philosophy that caused slavery to persist for so long ("If you don't want to own slaves, then don't, but dontcha dare tell me I can't! Heck, it's legal, and there's slaves in the Good Book for goodness' sake!"). All I can hope is that, as a species, we grow out of our crude, destructive tendencies, of which hunting is a central one.