I read somewhere they are doing that...using mercenaries to train the park rangers and semi-equip them...and the rangers are punching the tickets of the poachers.

S.African rangers kill poachers in Kruger park

another $ maker...
raffle or buy a tag...

Rika

Wow. What a sniveling wretch of a human being. You are despicable.

Do you consume any meat at all, use the by products of animals slaughtered?

If you do, all we are arguing about is who pulls the trigger, the hunter or your wallet, your need for meat.

A chicken is as noble and deserving of life as the Rhino, their life no less valuable.

I don't hunt, don't care to. But you continually belittle those that do but excuse the butcher who provides you your veal and chicken.

Ponderous.

Well put....***** about it when you are living a life free from animal products or else be a hypocrite.

If we make it through the next Century, we will eventually have to come to terms with the fact that we now have to tend the earth as if it were a giant garden.

That may involve some kinds of culling or weeding, but a pristine wilderness will no longer exist anywhere on earth without some kind of help...

We will figure this out or not, at our peril.

Many countries now have army troops in the field with "shoot on sight" orders concerning poachers.

Do you ever get tired of displaying the depths of your ignorance? When you post this kind of nonsense, all it serves to do is to point out how little you understand about this topic. You don't even know enough to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff - we talked about this before with you, when I refused to engage you in a contest of real knowledge vs. "wiki knowledge".

In this particular case, whichever website you found (and failed to credit) has, very simply put, led you astray. But it says what you want to hear, and with no real knowledge of the topic at hand, you eagerly repost the "facts" you gleaned from it here, for all to see what a fool you are.

Traditional rhino horn "medicines" date back at least a couple of millennia, if not more, and in far more than just Chinese cultures. Its use spans the Middle East to the Far East, and down into the heart of Africa. Even Eastern Europe and into Russia. In addition to its supposed medical value, rhino horn is highly prized for its ornamental value. Jewelry, knife handles, and that sort of thing.

So, no, killing rhino for their horns is by no means a recent phenomena. It's been going on for at least a couple thousand years. On the other hand, game management in its native countries only really got organized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and, with it, conservation efforts directed at endangered species like the rhino.

Unfortunately, about the time efforts began to conserve them through regulated hunting, the great boon in poaching also began. This was due entirely to two factors, the ability to more easily access remote parts of Africa, and the ability to more easily kill them. Modern transportation and weapons led to a never before seen level of poaching activity, not just on rhino, but every other species of value as well.

This is where it stands today. Lots of poachers out there who can move quickly and easily, and are pretty darn hard to find. Their weapon of choice is the assault rifle chambered in 7.62 NATO. Ammo is readily available due to the constant level of insurrection on the African continent, and it kills well enough if you pump enough of them into your quarry.

So, again, your "facts" have failed you. Hunters have never contributed to their decline. They hunt for the sport, not the horn, and there have never been enough of them to seriously endanger the rhino. It has been, and remains a serious poaching problem. Those are the guys who kill several a day, leave them to rot, and profit from the trade in rhino horn. Stop blaming the hunter and the farmer. Without them, the black rhino would be gone by now.

I'm glad we got that straightened out.


Yes I do Paul. If that makes me a hypocrite in your eyes so be it. I don't think it does. I don't find any correlation between sport hunting and killing an animal for food. I choose not to kill. And obviously I don't need to as there are more than enough folks that don't mind doing the dirty work. Humans are carnivores. But I will say, If I had to do the killing I still wouldn't. I would indeed turn vegetarian. You are 100% correct that a chicken life is as deserving as the rhino. Unfortunately the chick is sustenance.
And you are right about one more thing. I need to shut the fuch up about it and let the hunters hunt. Starting now...

You choose to eat meat but not to kill it - that's fine.

But aren't you criticizing others for doing both? What is the basis for that criticism?

BTW, I would not say the individual life of a chicken is equivalent to that of a rhino. And that is even beyond the fact that one is endangered as a species, while the other is not. At the extreme, you would not compare the life of an oyster (or a rotifer) with that of a monkey, dolphin, or human. Yet they are all animals.

hey Mark,, I'm honoring our truce,, but damn almost out of popcorn and cocktails :-)

There are an awful lot of folks who make this choice, which fine. It's entirely workable in our modern age. Never mind that as little as a few generations ago they would have starved in most of the developed world (and would still starve in much of today's developing world). It's one thing to bravely announce one would still not kill, but rather turn vegetarian to avoid the need to kill while sitting all fat and comfy behind a keyboard, it's quite another to follow through if it ever came to that. Hunger is a great motivator. It's enough to make you want to kill something.

Didn't some infamous vegan activist once say "a fly is a dog is a boy" or some other such nonsense? I'm afraid there are those who buy into that sort of rot, even as they are cutting into a nice juicy ribeye.

The fact of the matter is we have to kill so that we may live. It's the way of this world. There are those of us left that would like to occasionally challenge ourselves, pitting our wits and knowledge against the instincts of our prey rather than against a styrofoam tray and some saran wrap.

I don't think any segment of the population faces greater judgement from their detractors than we do for making this choice. We see prime examples of such right here, on this forum not only on this thread, but many others concerning hunting. Out in the real world, this opposition seems boundless in their energy, which can only be matched by their hypocrisy and ignorance of the topic.

This equal footing on which they place all living things is just another example of their uneducated, uninformed, purely emotionally driving stance. Many of them do, in fact, elevate the lowly oyster in whatever value system they ascribe to that of a human. Actually, when we really stop to consider that, what they are in fact doing is lowering humans, not raising other creatures, to the same level. As a matter of fact, I recall some time ago ol' Buckterrier had some signature line denigrating humans in some way. Maybe, as such, he will volunteer to get off this bus and give his place to a cucumber or something. Naw, never happen - all show, no go. Lofty platitudes wrapped in hypocrisy - he's got no more than that.

activist re activists, but I got in an argument with a vegan one time on the oyster question - too bad, b/c she was very cute...


the central issue is often between people who care about the pain or discomfort caused to an individual animal vs. those who are concerned about extinction of an entire species

best example I know of was shooting feral pigs on islands - the pigs are killing off the endemic fauna (and maybe the flora also), but animal rights organizations sued to stop the pig shooting (by sharpshooters in helos)

Kind of like that Spoc dilemma in the old Star Trek movies - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one" is kind of how we would like to manage such situations. Seems to make more sense than "the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many", despite what Kirk had to say about it.

Mark...Don't you raise chickens? I thought a couple years ago you had a thread about building a bad azz chicken coop. What happens to your chickens? What is their typical life cycle? Do you dispatch them? Are they sold to others? Do they die of natural causes and are composted?

It's not just his eyes that see it that way. Nice attempt at deflection.

I would say there are many, many more meat eaters that condemn hunters/hunting than there are actual hunters. And some of those folks, like Mark, thump their chest proudly at being the hypocrite. It's their way of talking down to those that disagree.

Mark, have you actually seen a slaughter house/meat packing plant in action? I say if you haven't, please do. The meat delivery system has become a machine of incredible abilities. At least then your stance would have some credibility.

cred·i·bil·i·ty, noun
1. the quality of being trusted and believed in.

hy·poc·ri·sy, noun
1. the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.

Whatever Jeff. Yes we all know whatever you write is fact, pure as the driven snow fact. Just like the factual statement you made in the original post on this thread...

Not very many left, but one hell of a lot more than a decade ago, thanks entirely to hunters' money.

I'm sure not one red cent from wildlife conservation groups have gone towards the cause, because you've said so. I'm not going to sit here and debate. Facts don't matter to you only 'hunter facts' matter to you as the above statement of yours proves. I stand by my statements.

Thank you Todd, and I am honoring my statement also that I will no longer engage hunting threads after I answer a few questions asked here.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1390052352.jpg


Thank you for the complement on the coop Low, (I think it was). You can google Mail Pouch Tobacco barns to learn about them. Of course nothing you find would be fact because it's online. Might want to ask Jeff. I don't really raise them as much as they are pets. Long story how I got into it. I still have 3 hens, which can live up to 8 years or so. Again you'd better ask Jeff about that. No I have not dispatched any. I don't sell them, actually I've taken in a few that were part of a flock which had grown to large. They were in pretty rough shape, raw areas on them from being pecked. Chickens are not nice creatures. They are all nice & healthy now. When they die I put them in back for the coyotes and or vultures to feast on. The cycle of life?

No deflection Don. I still disagree. I'm saying I eat meat products. No I don't kill them. And I'm saying if I had to kill I still would not, I'd become a vegetarian.
My moral standard is I will not kill an animal. If I did kill for food that is hypocritical.

You don't have a moral standard. You're just nuts.

Whoa....

MHO, if given the opportunity I'd personally hang poachers from the nearest tree by their balls with rusty barbed wire.

Big difference between poachers and hunters. Did you think about this before you wrote it? Kinda questioning whatever logic went into that statement.

Looks like Buckweat and his friends have been getting busy:

Winner of rhino hunting auction: My $350,000 will help save species - CNN.com

It's somewhat astonishing to see that the psychosis runs deep enough in his lot to threaten human children over some damn rhino. Talk about completely bass ackwards values and morals.

Buck can quack all he wants. As long as he is a flesh eater and animal product consumer, he is nothing but a hypocrite. I can actually respect a vegan that at least lives his beliefs, but a guy who bashes any form of hunting but outsources his killing to an industrial complex, consuming animals that were raised for food? No respect whatsoever.

G