From the PI:

CONCRETE, Wash. — The state game officer kept his binoculars trained on a tightly clustered group of about 70 elk in a pasture surrounded by several men armed with high-powered bows.

The herd would run from one end of the pasture to the other, led by the ranking elk cow. A few of the animals had arrows embedded in their hides and were bleeding but were still upright and running.

Traffic slowed to a crawl on Highway 20 Saturday as curious motorists passed by the scene on Bill Johnson’s beef ranch five miles west of Concrete.

One elk cow’s entrails were dropping from her belly, the result of a wound possibly inflicted when she didn’t quite clear a barbed wire fence, theorized Worth Allen, an officer with the La Conner unit of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, who was at the scene.

“This is not hunting,” said Allen, slowly shaking his head as the men with bows circled the panicked animals…

This sort of thing needs to be banned. Country humans cannot continue to act as if other animals are unconscious, dim automatons made by God for human enjoyment. In our age, the age of reality (or of experience), hunting has nothing left to it but death.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

43 replies on “It’s Elk Hunting Season!”

  3. This is why I rely on my trusty .300 Winchester Magnum for elk. You won’t see them walking around tripping over their own guts once they’ve been hit by that.

  6. After global society completely collapses, future historians and archaeologists will point to the mass migration from rural to urban as one of the tipping points.

  7. @5: is that why they always talk about “when the shit hits the fan” with far-off and longing look in their eyes?

    It’s like they fantasize about that sort of thing.

  8. OK, so I’m in a good mood today. If I wasn’t, I’d say something like “@7, what the fuck are you talking about?” Because that statement just didn’t make any sense at all. But hey, what the fuck, right?

  9. Hey 5280, completely off topic here, but have you tried Stranahan’s Whiskey yet? I’m thinking of splurging on a bottle for New Year’s, but want an opinion from a veteran whiskey drinker first.

  10. I don’t have a problem with regulated hunting in the actual woods. I mean we have damaged the ecosystem to the point that many forests cannot support predators, or are to close to human habitat to have them and until we change that we need to keep populations in check in order to prevent die-offs. If some hunters want to do that, and then make use of the meat, skin, etc, it seems to be a fine way to make do.

    The hunters I have known try and kill the animals as quickly as possible and more often then not come home empty handed. Rounding some elk up in a pen and shooting at them with bows is not so much hunting as just killing things. Go ahead and ban that.

  11. To eat animals they need to die. That elk cow has it pretty awful for a couple hours, but at least she wasn’t born a sow and lived a lifetime of misery in a gestation crate.

    Hunting is downright humane when compared to the plight of farm animals. Yet urban meat eaters who sneer at vegans, citing the vegan’s self righteousness and tendancy to tell other’s what to do, have no problem getting self righteous themselves and telling rural folk what they can and can’t do to animals. It costs the urban meat eater absolutely nothing to demand a ban on hunting– no life style change, no hobbies to sacrifice and certainly no change in diet.

  12. I haven’t, Matt, and have been wanting to head down there myself. I’ve got a little bit of “excess” money left over from Christmas, which, as we all know, is forbidden by the laws of entropy from staying “excess” for long, so I may head down there in the next week or so. I’ll let you know.

  14. As long as we’re already kinda-sorta off-topic (and hey, it is hunting-related), I got an e-mail confirmation that my Ruana 20B knife shipped this morning. I’m kinda pumped. You can check it out here:
    http://www.ruanaknives.com
    Real old-timey, hand-made stuff from Montana.

  15. @ 13, I think he’s remorseful now. So unless you’re some kind of Calvinist who believes there’s no such thing as forgiveness, I’d say that you’re out of line.

    @ 5280, thanks. I may just go ahead anyway since you don’t get to celebrate a new decade every year.

  16. @11 I agree. Any city-dweller condemning this while continuing to eat factory-farmed meat products needs to have their head checked.

    I would also like to add that although bow hunting is far more difficult than most city people would believe, most bow-hunters are quite humane and don’t act like the ones featured in the story.

    The story refers to “high-powered” bows- likely crossbows. These are much easier to shoot, require less skill and strength.

  18. crossbow? where did that come from? compound bow.

    and bow hunters, correct me if i’m wrong, RARELY get a shot during a hunting tirp. Far, far less than a rifle hunter.

    This is insane.

  19. You’re right, Charles. This was nothing more than a disgusting, pathetic and barbaric slaughter of innocent animals for the benefit of a few sick individuals.

  20. People hunting for food and doing so in a relatively humane way, I have no problem with. Sport hunters are shit, though. Hey Charles, if you REALLY want to be sickened and appalled, you should read up on what West Virginia bear hunters do. It makes this look almost humane.

  21. Hey, Matt from Denver — I had Stranahan’s at San Francisco’s Whiskyfest in October. I think I had it later in the evening, so I don’t have anything radically intelligent to say about it, but I definitely liked it, as did some of the people I was with. Anyways, I remember it, which is saying something, given the sheer number of whiskeys there were to taste…

  24. You won’t see them walking around tripping over their own guts once they’ve been hit by that.

    What, your Winchester will lever them over fences? According to the article, Miss Entrails probably hit barbed wire.

    There’s an enormous divide in sympathy between urban and suburban/rural folks when it comes to the local wild ungulates. City folk think they’re the very essence of the pristine wilderness and ruralites hold them in slightly lower esteem than rats, because they breed like rabbits, eat the fuck out of your garden, and carry lime disease.

    I tend to reserve my outrage for pigs, who are actually quite smart and don’t get much me time before they’re slaughtered.

  27. Just a quick point but I doubt this has anything to do with hunting season – most farmers/ranchers are able to get “problem elk” permits to do this type of slaughter on their own land if it’s deemed that an animal or animals are causing harm to the land. This also happens in the Yakima Valley when elk get outside the 100+ mile elk fence. I’m not defending this guys actions though – the last time I saw something like this it was b/c the landowner cut the fence and baited the animals through while his buddies sat up in trees shooting at them as they tried to run back through the fence.

  28. I’m confused. Hunting is usually regulated up the wazoo. You pay out the nose for necessary permits, stamps, and tags; follow narrow seasonal windows for hunting certain species, and then you can only shoot one or two animals. Are there really no laws concerning elk hunting in Washington state?

  30. @7: i don’t know who “they” are, but i certainly don’t fantasize about our food system collapsing, because i’ll be fucked. i’ll be trapping squirrels like a stranger writer and protecting my fig tree with an assault rifle.

  31. I don’t know any “country humans” who hunt like this. It is not a standard, traditional or typical way of bow hunting. And when done properly, a bow is just as effective and quick as a rifle.

    Hunting as a way to obtain meat is definitely more humane than getting beef or chicken from the mass producers. I drove by a chicken-filled semi once and nearly broke out in tears. There’s no way that that is better treatment than hunting is.

  37. @36 I know, right?

    @35 You know what, barely-sentient ape men DO inhabit rural areas. They delight in not only hunting, but TERRORIZING these animals. Many bear hunters, for example, brag about how they skirt around laws put in place to keep them from torturing the bears before killing them. And guess what: the bears are getting more aggressive towards all humans because of these fucking troglodytes. I hope the elf follow suite and start goring people left and right. Maybe then some harsh action will happen

    @28 You’d be amazed how many game wardens are entirely paid off.

    My best friend used to work in the Forest Service in West Virginia. Trust me, guys, “subhuman” doesn’t even begin to describe the banjo-pickin’, nigger-lynchin’, cousin-fuckin’ hill trolls he had to deal with. And they think it’s hilarious to torture animals.

  38. this is not a sport it’s not even humane slaughter. what kind of sick person would particapate in this animal terror & abuse? same kind that would kill another person without any concern.

  39. @37… Are you suggesting that bears that had an unpleasant time before being killed are leaving blog posts so that other bears then become more aggressive in revenge? If bears are becoming more aggressive (and I have seen no data to back that up), I would suggest some simpler explanations — like habitat reduction or simply more interactions with humans.

  40. @37: So far, the only troglodyte to show up in this thread is you. Why don’t you us all a favor and kill yourself, you fucking self-righteous shithead?

  41. So much for that good mood you started in, 5280.

    Personally, the one deer I ever shot while on a family hunting trip got it through the spinal column (my aim is way better against zombies), and as my dad walked over to finish off the terrified creature, I felt sick. I can already hear the protests about feed lots, and the accusations of hypocrisy, and I can accept that.

    Having said that, I do find this very inhumane and a disgusting example of human behavior, to say the least. Most hunters prefer to be referred to as “sportsmen”, but there is no sport in this.

    If all of this is to benefit local farmers and thin the herd so their crops are not damaged, why not dart them and euthanize them, to be humane? Shooting at an animal from a moving vehicle is prohibited, but firing arrows at them in a penned field is permitted?

  42. I really did start off in a good mood, too. But after a full day of dealing with morons (not just here, but elsewhere on the interwebs too), it doesn’t last especially long. Ah well, today’s another day.

  43. @ 37

    way uncool. not all west virginians are like that at all. all the hunters i grew up with followed the law and most were poor enough that bagging a deer/bear etc meant they had meat for the winter. its just another kind of bigotry to call them out like that. also, not cool using the n-word even if you’re ‘quoting’ to describe the supposed behavior of hill folk.
    1) there’s a really low african-american population in WV, they all passed right over during the great migration because jobs there are pretty scanty
    2) WV actually came into existence during the civil war and was union. yeah, its poor, but parts of it that are are mostly so poor doesn’t matter what color your skin is. just so long as you can cite a family tree

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