The Past is Prologue

NOT FOR SALE

I am writing this as a venison backstrap is thawing in the kitchen. The butcher paper it was wrapped in was stamped “Not For Sale”. Venison butchered and wrapped by rural butchers in most states are required to so stamp the wrapper on the meat they cut up to distinguish it from the domestic meats cut and wrapped for sale in grocery stores. While states vary in their regulations for such local deer processing regarding the inspection and permits for processing wild animals from ducks to elk, the system for reducing wild game to home dinner fare works well for the hunter, the butcher, and the consumers. It is also relatively bullet proof on the one hand and vulnerable on the other to the animal rights campaigns to eliminate hunting.

Rural butchers’ game processing is relatively bullet proof to the depredations of the Humane Societies and PETA’s and associated “Councils” and “Centers” (all of which aim to eliminate hunting) because it is regulated by State and Local governments. That means that the anti’s and the environmentalists looking for yet another handle to grab to destroy hunting have to go through 50 state governments and hundreds of County governments to try and disrupt the processing of game while they do all sorts of other things like eliminate the use of dogs and lead bullets and make entry requirements for licenses too onerous and expensive. While some states like New Jersey and Massachusetts are increasingly receptive to the animal rights agendas: others like South Carolina and Wyoming would run the animal rights lobbyists out of town. The same is true for the County governments, nearly all of which are rural (remember the Red/Blue Presidential voting map ala 2004): the likelihood of the animal rights lobbyists gaining any traction there is about as likely as getting signatures supporting a UN Gun Treaty at an NRA Convention.

On the other hand, the processing of game is increasingly vulnerable to the depredations of the animal rights zealots and their radical allies. One need look no further than last summers’ Federal legislation that outlawed the slaughter of horses anywhere in the US and the inevitable and current drumbeat for “more” federal legislation to prevent the sale or transport of horses anywhere that they might or may be eventually slaughtered. Now if the federal government can (beginning when was this legal?) just pass a law that says no butcher may slaughter any horse nor can any horse owner dispose of HIS OWN horse in any way that may eventuate at ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE in that horse being slaughtered: why they can just eliminate County and State Constitutional authority over rural game processors and the butchering of game by just waving the same wand. All it takes is an incident or some “groundswell” any more and “Shazam” the all-powerful central government can wield all the power of corrupt medieval Kings or Middle East despots. What if somebody gets sick from processed game? Want to bet that all those animal rights folks will leap to our aid and blame the processor and get their pals in the media to trumpet the “conditions” and then lead a drive to get “federal standards” and “federal controls” and “federal inspectors”, etc., etc.? What if some “perfessor” or “researcher” or “doctor” determines that certain diseases or maladies in game can only be avoided or “controlled” by federal intervention or the elimination of all but a few tightly managed and federally-controlled facilities at certain locations designated by said “experts”. What if the same “experts” “discover” that any home butchering or cleaning of game endangers the neighbors and therefore everyone will need to attend classes and get a permit from the local animal shelter before being allowed to clean their own game (and fish too)? In each instance the key, as with guns when there is some incident, is stampeding the public with slanted propaganda to obtain “new” federal authority that will be expanded to eventually eliminate the thing everyone denies will be adversely affected.

By now, some of you are saying, “what a nut, does he really expect us to believe that these ‘experts’ and animal ‘lovers’ are so crass and devious?” Well I only need direct you to the 30 December Washington Times newspaper and an article titled “Wind farm plan stirs opposition”. It seems a local “former poultry executive” owns 2,000 acres on a bald mountaintop on the otherwise heavily forested Virginia/West Virginia border and he plans to place 20, 400 ft. tall wind turbines on it and there is considerable opposition. Let us focus though on the environmental/animal rights position, to wit: “Environmental organizations have supported wind energy projects, but some are reconsidering after reports of birds and bats being killed by the blades of wind engines. Highland County is known for eagles, flying squirrels, big-eared bats, and shrews, said Charlotte Stephenson, former president of Highlanders for Responsible Development”. One can only marvel at the duplicity and hidden agendas that is reported as “fact” in these two sentences.

First, the fact that the “environmental organizations have supported wind farms” for several decades and only now are “reconsidering after reports of birds and bats being killed by the blades” is stunning in its audacity. These folks have supported wind farms TO JUSTIFY STOPPING the drilling for oil in Alaska and offshore; the mining of coal in Southern Utah on public lands; the prevention of refinery expansions or construction; the construction of nuclear power plants; the manufacture and sale of SUV’s and pickups and full-size cars; the extraction of natural gas on public lands; the destruction of dams on the Columbia River; and other assorted and sundry energy development and uses. We don’t “need” any of that energy development stuff because “wind” and “sun” and “methane” etc. will soon be all we “need” (translation – all you will be allowed).

Then there is the 10 or 20 or 30 years of “support” by these folks until now they are “reconsidering” because of “reports” of “birds and bats being killed”? It would have only taken a “New York Nanosecond” for these folks to have a bevy of ambulance chasers filing a suit in federal court if there were “reports” of bird deaths from say a nuclear power plant or some dam or some oil derrick anywhere: but it takers decades to “reconsider” when it is “your own ox being gored”.

Then some portion of the “general public” is expected to get “the vapors” and go into a “swoon” when told that “eagles, flying squirrels, big-eared bats, and shrews” frequent the proposed wind farm area. Fact number 1: if any eagle hit one of those turbine blades he would probably be immediately disposed of or the facility would be closed down and all the other wind farms would no longer be viewed as the harbingers of the Brave New World we are told to believe in (even though the Kennedy’s don’t want them off Martha’s Vineyard) . Fact number 2: flying squirrels don’t “fly”, they glide mostly on a downward arc from tree limb to tree limb: they are about as likely to hit a wind turbine blade as a satellite in orbit. Fact number 3: bats are probably pretty invulnerable to a wind turbine blade as anyone that has tried to hit one with a broom can attest. Fact number 4: shrews are small mammals that live on and in the ground; their likelihood of smashing into a wind turbine blade is on par with finding one on the moon.

None of this is to say that wind turbines don’t kill birds and on occasion probably lots of songbirds and other certain migrants using the winds and windy places that they and their ancestors have utilized for eons and are coincidentally exactly where wind turbines function best. It may be only a day or two or one week in the year or just before some big storm that a migration at night or on the winds that both the birds and turbines covet that significant bird kills occur; and make no mistake, they do occur. When this happens every mammalian predator and avian scavenger in miles cleans up the carnage in short order. But where are the Endangered Species “perfessors” or the animal rights advocates or environmental “gurus’ or bureaucrats or politicians? They are clipping coupons and allowing these propaganda lies to persist for decades. They have all known what these turbines can do but they don’t “fund” or “conduct research” or question such things because they are merely political scavengers and not the “experts” we have come to bow to on everything from “Native Ecosystems” to “Invasive Species” mandates based on “science”. They are happy to let their “partners in crime” (i.e. the environmental/animal rights organizations that build government power and budgets and grants) get their media “partners” to publish lies like this to cover the “beat up our enemies” and “cover up our agendas” nature of their duplicity.

These are the people we are dealing with when it comes to game processing and “more” animal laws and “more” authority for animal zealots to abuse others and ultimately the elimination of all private property rights that are the real cornerstone of the “free” country we are watching steadily flow away. They will do whatever it takes while we who are their targets respond like petulant children hoping to get some “new” government benefit if they “take away” this or that right. Our response to date, like Clint Eastwood’s Supervisor’s mouthwash in one of those Dirty Harry movies, “aint cutting it”.

Jim Beers
1 January 2008
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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.