Animal rights activists are up in arms after Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney bagged some quail on a hunting trip while on a trip to Georgia.
According to the Boston Herald,
. . . the political outing backfired when it was revealed the birds had been fenced in.
Humane Society of the United States’ Michael Markarian complained about Romney hunting at the Cabin Bluff animal preserve, telling the Boston Herald,
Many of these private hunting preserves are basically providing drive-through killing animal opportunities. These animals are often tamed and bred on the property, fed by people and accustomed to people. They have no chance of escape. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spokeswoman Jennifer McClure told the Boston Herald,
Stalking and shooting animals is a cowardly, violent form of recreation, and if Romney wants to keep his political career alive, then he should stop supporting this dying blood sport.
Right, because hunting really killed the careers of politicians such as George W. Bush and John F. Kerry.
Anyway, opponents of such animal preserves like to call them canned hunts or refer, as the Boston Herald does, to the fact that the animals are fenced in. But this sort of criticism is silly in the case of preserves like Cabin Bluffs which sits on no less than 45,000 acres.
That’s one incredibly large can.
Source:
Mitt under fire for hunt: Romney catches flak after quail kill. Dave Wedge, Boston Herald, January 5, 2006.
These hunts are criticized because they directly contradict the often used argument that hunting is “natural” or necessary. This is manifestly absurd. Human intervention creates the situation through breeding, manipulating fauna, etc. and then we argue that further human intervention is necessary to fix the problem.