THIS is why I don't support hunting, FUCKWAD.

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, let me clarify my position on hunting before we get started. I don’t hunt. In fact, the 16 acres here at the Palacial Estate are a haven for the local fauna (deer, mountain lions, bobcats, possum, rabbits, armadillo, ad nauseum) with the exception of the rattlesnake population (when they get too close to the house) and the mice/rat population (Hermes has to eat something). I don’t really understand the need some people have for hunting, and I don’t support it as a general practice (ecological control is an entirely separate issue), but I do accept that it is an important part of some people’s lives. We are bordered, in fact, on two sides by 3300 acres of forest, which is leased by the local law enforcement/judicial people specifically for hunting. BUT, I would personally rather see the type of hunter who uses as much of their kill as possible… they take the meat, hide, and whatever other trophy they need to have, then dispose of the unneeded parts in a respectful manner (for example, one of Mr. Kitty’s friends is an art teacher who has a deal with the local hunters- she gets the deer bones for her classes to use). What I saw the other day (and continue to see, because it’s STILL THERE), however, just PISSES ME OFF.

To the total cumstain who left the deer carcass on the side of the road: What. The. FUCK are you thinking? Took your trophies and just discarded the rest of this poor creature to rot. How long did it take you to saw off the antlers and hack off the hide? Less time than it would have taken you to drive the THREE FUCKING MILES to the ranger’s station, where they would have 1) given you a nice, clean place to do whatever the fuck you wanted to to the deer, and 2) taken the meat that you apparently didn’t feel was worthy of you and given it to the local low-income population??

Now for the past week this deer has been laying on the side of the road (can’t begin to tell you how pleasant THAT smells), its death completely meaningless, so you could have a fucking set of antlers and a hide. Wait, I take that back. HALF a hide, because apparently it would have been too much work to take the whole thing. You did NOT have to kill this creature for a god damn trophy. I WILL GIVE YOU DIRECTIONS TO THE STORE THAT SELLS SUCH THINGS FOR UNDER $10.

Gods, this sort of thing just makes me want to move back to a civilized part of the country. :mad:

2

Won’t someone think of the rattlesnakes? They will take care of your rat problem if you leave them alone.

I only hunt paper targets. What that hunter did was sick. Bad deer karma also. Five years from now maybe he’ll fall on the antlers. Hmmm?

3

I am a hunter, and I support hunting, but ethical hunters do NOT support crap like this!! In fact, in my location it’s illegal to dump a deer carcass.

It may have been poached, or struck by a car, or otherwise taken illegally, which would mean he couldn’t take it to the ranger station.

Slob hunters like this give us all a bad name. I’m sorry you had this experience, bobkitty.

4

Please do not use this poacher idiot as an example of what hunters are.

We don’t want to be associated with such a fucknugget.

5

You think that’s bad…
About 12 years ago I was living with my boyfreind and my brother was also staying with us.

We were coming home from picking up a snowmobile trailer one evening, and at the turnoff to the house a girl had hit a deer with her car. It was still alive and had crawled into a ditch. We stopped, she was pretty upset. We called the police from a nearby house (pre-cell phone days) and they came by in short time.

The girl who hit the deer declined to keep it (I guess there was a law - if you accidentally hit a deer with your car, you can keep it as meat if you wish), so my brother asked if he could take it. We had a trailer, and lived less than a quarter mile away. The cops said no, they’d take care of it themselves.

That was when I decided to walk home, I didn’t want to see the deer get shot. I heard the shot as I walke up my driveway, and my BF and brother pulled in soon after.

The cops definitely did not take care of it. Someone cut off the head (it had a nice rack) and left the headless carcass there for a whole week! I finally got fed up seeing it everyday and called the county highway department and asked them to get rid of it.

So instead of the meat going to some use, the headless carcass went to waste. I am pretty sure the cops did it, it pissed me off.

6

Keep in mind, most hunters are not like this. You are required to take a hunting class in order to get your hunting license. They teach you the proper and ethical way to hunt, and most people abide by this. Obviously what this person did was not in keeping with these accepted hunting practices or the law. But one asshole is not reason to not support hunting.

What about hunting to get venison? Have you ever eaten venison? It is very good, and better for you than beef. Oh and, where else can you get that much meat for free? I’m sorry, but a few deer a winter could save me hundreds of dollars on meat, and that means A LOT to a lot of poor families who rely on hunting to supplement their diets. Oh, but I guess living on your “Palacial Estate,” there is no need for “poor man’s beef.”

I just don’t get it…why is it OK to eat slaughtered livestock and not deer? Are you a vegetarian? Hunters are taught to make a clean kill. Shoot for the heart or liver to kill them instantly. Never make a shot unless you are sure it is dead on. The goal is to kill the deer instantly, with no suffering. Most hunters are animal and nature lovers, and conservationists. They recognize that deer herds are in desperate need of thinning since they are grossly overpopulated. The deer are starving to death due to overpopulation. Do you think it is better to let them starve to death and die a slow death than to kill them instantly and feed your family?

I lived in West Virginia for a time and it is a poor and rural state. Many families there rely on hunting for food. Please keep this in mind. I agree that hunting purely for trophies is wrong…there are organizations such as “Hunters for the Hungry” that enable people to donate the unwanted venison.

7

Although I like the hunters who take the meat, one of the big reasons there’s hunting is to control the deer population. My home state (WI) is OVER-populated with deer and CWD (like mad cow disease, but with deer) has broken out. The population needs to be thinned somehow (since we don’t have many of the deer’s natural predators around any more). So from the DNR’s viewpoint, it doesn’t really matter what happens to the deer after it’s been killed.

But yeah, that person was an ass.

8

I am not generally sympathetic to hunting*, except if someone needs wild game to eat or has an official role in controlling problem animals.

But it seems more likely that the person who left behind the plundered carcass at the side of the road is a scavenger of road kill rather than a hunter. If you found a carcass in that condition in the woods, the rant would be more on target.

]

*I am even less sympathetic to rats with hooves, but that is another story.

9

Oddball question, but any chance this thing may have been hit by a car and the person, or whoever came after them, snagged the antlers as some kind of weirdo momento?

Just wondering why you’re so sure it’s a hunter thing.

10

Ah man. I swear I that post from Jack wasn’t there when I posted.

Thanks Jack.

11

I want to try to address all the questions/points being raised, so please bear with me.

First off, calm down and re-read my initial paragraph, nyctea. I clearly stated that although I do not understand the need to hunt, I do understand that other people feel it’s important, from a cultural/sustenance POV, although if it is going to be done, I would

In fact I went on to extol the virtues of the employees of the local ranger station, who will dress and package the unwanted meat for the local poor population who may not be able to hunt or afford quality meat otherwise… I think that’s a great program/service. I have tried venison (in fact there are venison hot sausages sitting in my freezer right now, a gift from our neighbors the law enforcement guys), and it doesn’t really appeal to me taste-wise. I am NOT a vegetarian (although Mr. Kitty was for over 15 years), and the palacial estate is located in an extremely rural, low-income area of Alabama where quite literally everyone (with the exception of Mr. Kitty and I) is related to everyone else, so I know poor and what sometimes needs to be done to feed your family.

Beagle… I think of the rattlesnakes every time I set loose a new king snake on the property. :wink: Actually, we have a sort-of cooperative relationship. Stay OUT of the house and the dog pen, and you won’t get your head blown off. There’s a good-size chunk missing from our garage floor where a visitor decided to slink his way into the bay Mr. Kitty and I were repairing our car in.

easy e… I’m well aware of the overpopulation problem- I made an allusion to it in my post (“ecological control is an entirely separate issue”), and I agree that because of the incursion of humankind into deer/predator territory that someone has to take up the slack. A lot of the deer around here are abnormally small due to the overcrowding (though there’s apparently a White Whale of a deer that the local hunters have been trying to get for years- an 18-point buck), and certainly the health issues in recent years makes for even more of a need to thin the herds out. Apparently the rangers… umm… mulch the remains of the deer they get and mix it into regular fertilizer for D.O.T. projects.

Jackmannii and Archergal… as I said, I’m bordered on two sides by well-used private hunting land. The area where the carcass is is located about 1/4 of a mile away, at the entrance (well, the narrow dirt access road) to the public hunting area. People park their trucks there, and walk in to their hides (is that the right term?)… if the deer was hit by a car, it was awfully coincidental that it happened there. I suppose there is a possibility that it was taken illegally, but would you bother to haul a deer out of the woods, strip it, and leave it if you were doing something illegal? I suppose I shouldn’t ask that question…

Thank you to everyone for your kind words… I’ve been calling around trying to figure out who will come pick the animal up… it’s too big for regular animal control, and the rangers don’t do that sort of thing. Tomorrow I plan on harassing the DOT until I get some solid information… it breaks my heart to have to drive past the poor thing every day, although at this rate the buzzards and crows will have done their job before anyone official can get out here.

12

I dunno, Bobkitty, but the side of the road location and the half-hide removal make me think this may be a scavenged road kill rather than a hunting kill. If the scavenger came across it after it began to rot the meat may have been unfit for human consumption, and if they were alone they may not have been able to shift it around enough for a complete skinning.

Or maybe a fuckwad sicko shot a deer, took souvenirs, and then left the rest.

Point is - this might not be what you first thought it was. Hell, it could have died of natural causes and was then scavenged. Roadkill is often dragged to the side of the road and left for nature (and wandering bipeds) to clean up.

13

People who’d take just the hide and antlers generally are not willing to drag the whole deer anywhere.

Even if they were shooting out of a vehicle, the carcass would normally be further from the road.

I don’t get why they’d drag a hundred pound deer (which is quite a work out) to the side of the road if they never meant to keep all of it.

14

Cnote (and, on preview, Broomstick)… people hit deer around here on a fairly regular basis and leave the bodies… this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this. We had one literally at the end of our driveway for around 2 weeks (Mr. Kitty and I were going NUTS for days trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL THAT SMELL WAS… the deer had expired in a ditch, covered by some tall grass, and we had no idea it was there), and about two weeks ago I passed one about a half mile down the road. They pretty much poof up, deflate, and are either finally picked up or eaten by scavengers (we do have some pretty nasty packs of coyotes around here). This deer is literally half naked- a clean cut around the midsection to remove the hide, and saw marks on the remaining antlers (I did get out of the car to look, primarily because the way it was laying and the way it was stripped I initially thought it was a human body)… that’s a lot of work to do on roadkill- though not impossible, if someone were motivated- and you’d have to come across it reasonably fresh, otherwise it would be nasty business.

It’s not impossible that it was scavenged, certainly. I have to admit to jumping to the ‘hunter’ conclusion because of the location of the body and the fact that it has been hunting season for a while in this neck of the woods.

15

As a hunter <the good sort, i use it all except the organs> And a taxidermist, I’d say they were going for a “Cape cut” What we use to mount a head and shoulder trophy. If they left anlers though that really weird, was the head still attached? just totally skinned?

16

Oh and, where else can you get that much meat for free? I’m sorry, but a few deer a winter could save me hundreds of dollars on meat

You must eat a lot of meat! One deer would keep me and mine in meat for a full year, unless it was a fawn, which I hear are the yummiest anyway. I’ve only had buck so I have no comparison.

there are organizations such as “Hunters for the Hungry” that enable people to donate the unwanted venison.

HFH is so cool. You take your deer to the volunteer butcher guy, they grind up the meat and whatever else you’re supposed to do, and whatever meat you don’t want is made into 2 pound packages and given to people.

I have no problem with hunting for trophies because I figure eaten or not, that’s one less worthless deer that will jump in front of someone’s car in the middle of the night and cause them to flip and possibly end up dead. I do wish people would at least donate the meat if they’re just headhunting, though.

17

I’m just envious you have 16 acres. Me and my cats would have so much fun if we had a playground like that.

18

bobkitty, I’m so sorry you had to deal with this kind of crap. I will suggest, however, that it might not have been a hunter. As someone who advocates hunting (and who does hunt - crossbow), especially of deer (in my area it’s pretty much a necessity seeing as to what we’ve done to our local landscape - now that we’ve displaced them, what are we going to do when the herds get too big as they do every year - thanks to overdevelopment of the land locally - build them public housing??) - I could never, ever condone what you saw. It’s despicable. Hunting is one thing - murder and dumping a body is another. It sounds more like someone in a vehicle may have collided with it, and taken a “trophy”. And yes, if anyone wants to go head to head with me about the difference between murder and hunting is welcome to.

On another note, I’ve seen Coyotes lying in the medians near Barrington - they’ve been hit by cars. We drove them out of their habitat to build million dollar houses and onto heavily travelled commuter thoroughfares so they could find FOOD. Yet no one ever claims their bodies - they’re left there to rot. I’ve CALLED the village, I’ve CALLED animal control to pick up their bodies. They just leave them there to rot. My dog is half Coyote - that was a sight I loved seeing on my way to work - a dead coyote - but thank goodness she’s trained - she won’t leave our yard.

It’s a pretty sad situation all around when we as humans have managed to pretty much displace the animals that were here first for nothing more than aesthetic and financial reasons, and then don’t accept responsibility for the changes, good or bad, that we’ve wreaked in the ecosystem. And don’t get me started on Elk Grove, Busse Woods, or the deer that ran across Dundee Road into the Jewel parking lot across from my old house and ended up dead, yet no one, not even the “environmentalists” nor the “developers” will accept responsiblity.

My apologies to all - I’m really, really, rabid on this subject. :frowning: Again, I apologize.

19

Another vote for road kill that somebody sawed the horns off of. Any other scenario involves too much work and risk for too little reward. It is illegal to discharge a firearm within a certain distance of a public road, or shoot towards a road.

You can buy a set of antlers for a couple of bucks, and who would want only part of a hide? It’s worthless. Animals, however, will tear the hide off a dead critter in strips, if that’s how it pulls apart.

My guess is road kill.

20

bobkitty: I guess I don’t understand your position. When you say you “do not support hunting,” are you saying that (given the chance) you would seek to ban it?

And speaking as a hunter, it is my opinion that anyone who kills a deer and does not harvest the meat is indeed an asshole[sup]TM[/sup].

[sub]But right now I’m in Philadelphia. Why must I be on travel in the middle of deer gun season?[/sub] :mad: