Cat Hunting in Wisconsin

Received an e-mail from from the Wisconsin InterNetwork (so called conservation group) telling me how to vote at the DNR Conservation Congress meeting (read Hunter's Lobby) and where each one will be held (every county has a meeting place).

To explain, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has developed a support group for the DNR composed solely of hunters and trappers which is used to threaten politicians whenever the DNR wants to increase its' budget, prevent budget cuts and to legislatively increase the scope of its' influence. This is called the Conservation Congress (Hunters Lobby).

No other state agency has created a similar lobby for its' "client" base. The energy department, the agriculture department, the justice department...... no other state department has citizen committees staffed by department workers who organize annual meetings in every county to "vote" on proposed regulations and register with the agency.

At these meetings hunters elect their members to sit on DNR boards which organize and mobilize hunters and trappers for political action. This is done to the detriment of the rights of non-hunters and non-trappers. Thus are non-hunters use of tax supported state lands diminished. This organized power was demonstrated by the passing of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the primary right of hunters, trappers and fishers in Wisconsin to take and harvest animals and fish from the public lands. The passage of this amendent also demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the so called animal rights groups who are taking your money in Wisconsin.

At the meetings this year the DNR is asking to lower the hunting age from 12 to 10 years. So we can have 10 years old children running around shooting guns as if there are not enough pets being killed by idiot adults. They also want to make it legal to shoot cats.

At this stage, those without guns in their hands are seriously afraid to walk off the beaten and crowded camping areas where all the non hunters are crowded into by the DNR. There is no safe-space boundary around hunting land. Just walking your dog on your own property can get you killed or maimed by a stray bullet. Sadly, the dream of moving to the country for the joy of living in nature has been turned into a nightmare for most non-hunters by the constant shooting, which is unconfined anywhere. They kill in the state parks, along the highways, in animal sanctuaries, and next door on private and public lands. They have "game farms" across the street from residential areas. Your animals are killed for target practice and caught in traps that are everywhere. You must fence your land to be safe and bullets go through fences so even that is not enough.

Killing other people's animals has become so routine and accepted in the hunting community that the arrogant killers are seeking to make cats a legal prey in case they are caught. That is another question on the ballot at the April 11th meeting of the Conservation Congress in your county. Should there be an open, unlimited hunting season on collarless cats? Vote yes or no.

This proposal first went to one of their board/committees and they approved it to be put on the Conservation Congress ballot. They thought it was a good idea. Get a whiff of the kind of people who sit on these DNR advisory boards? Your tax dollars at work.

Two of my cats were killed before I caught the hunter who was doing it. I believe he and his wife had been killing the neighborhood cats for years and they certainly did so at their hunting cabin outside of the city.

The killers say any animal that is not in the presence of an owner is their legitimate prey. They blame the owners for letting their animals go outside and organize around that concept. It sounds good at first glance. Just like when the cops told women to stay home at night if they did not want to be raped. This blame the victim ethic has been adopted by a brain dead animal rights movement. They have supported local ordinances that make it a criminal offense for a cat to be outside of private property. But it is NOT a criminal offense not to have a cat neutered.

However, you will be fined if it escaped the house and the hunters will be defended when they shoot it. Blame the victim/feed the predator. It is so much easier than fighting the predator and making the world safer for all beings. Just show pictures of pitiful animals and ask for money but never actually challenge the well funded killers.

My cats were shot, trapped and killed by my neighbor - lured out of my fenced backyard and he was protected by his hunter cop friends and by the hunters in the rest of the legal system in Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

When I sent her the latest "conservation" e-mail, I wondered how they raised money to pay for these mailings and how they got the mailing list. I wondered if it came from the DNR. My friend's answer is below.
Hi -
Yes - the Conservation Voters - I spoke with them at the People's Legislature where they were tabling. I also received that email - and was intrigued by sending all the locations in the email itself with the proper vote on the issues.- What motivated me to act in the first place was the epiphany that only hunters and trappers and anglers (utilitarian user uppers) were decision and policy.making.

After my first visit to the Congress alone in 1997, (no one else wanted to go - even from the Alliance for Animals - "Oh - just hunters deciding hunter issues.") I was on the Captive Bear and Cougar committee for the state. We revised laws that had not been changed since the 30's...that bears and cougars could be kept in 10 by 20 foot 6 foot high cages with cement floors all their lives.

We mandated that game farms with bears must upgrade to creating a 1200 square foot exercise area with enrichments of various sorts. As this goes into effect, bear owners who have kept their bears in dog fences, will not choose to put the money and effort into upgrading - so will shoot their bears.

I consider starting a bear sanctuary - but after the goats and sheep - the work and money drain is just too much for me. I do think that a bear sanctuary in this location would draw people from Madison and the surrounds and educate them about bears to protect them.

I recommend the book, Animal Underworld, by Alan Green if you can stand to read it - much of the research was done in Wisconsin with Tom Solin, a friend who used to head up law enforcement at the DNR.

Some of it concerns an animal dealer named Schobel who has a game farm not far from me in Marquette county. Baby bears are being bred for teaching hounds to harass and help kill wild bears. Babies do not hurt the dogs. When they get older, they have no use, and are going to slaughterhouses in Illinois. I think we could enroll sympathy for bears, and trapped animals....leading folks down the path to the love of life that is their birthright.

I called the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and the Audubon Society and asked each of them what was their position on trapping. Well - the Nature Conservancy allows hunting on 2/3 of their land, and uses trapping "as needed". The Sierra Club had no problem with hunting and trapping - and worked with those groups as a coalition.

The Audubon Society was equally murky on policy...even when the mourning dove was going on the chopping block - I called without identifying myself the day before the Natural Resources (doesn't that word say it all?) Board met to set the hunt in motion, and the young person answering the phone, said "Well - we have not really taken a position on the mourning dove - it really depends on the scientific research and whether it can sustain a hunt..." Then I could not contain my anger and I said "You know - the public supports you because they think you are protecting birds - I would expect to hear that from a hunting organization - but I will do my best to let people know that you are not."

I realized that these older "environmental" organizations - that I thought were protecting animals, had struck the bargain with their hunter membership, to work on saving habitat for killing - a bad bargain.

I attended the court case for the Bambi fawn that was taken in by a life long deer hunter and his wife - nursed back to health after its mother and sibling (now mounted...wierd) - had been killed by the car that injured it...and now, after telling these folks they must build a fence and do this and that - now done - they are claiming that no one can take a "wild animal" from their canned hunting stock and keep it safe from them - they have to destroy it. It looks like the judge is somewhat sympathetic - and will give his ruling on April 22.

Then I went off to post the animal posters all over Madison. Tomorrow - Baraboo - Portage, WI Dells and Pardeeville. I hope you downloaded the poster and put it up all over Janesville. I found it easy to educate people at book stores, the library, and pet stores. Grocery stores usually have bulletin boards, and coffee shops. I also asked all the newspapers to post it in their offices.

My editorial comes out Sunday as a guest editorial on why the Conservation Congress does not deserve its power. I faxed it to WI Public Radio to see if I could generate interest in doing something on it Monday morning. If Joy Cardin does not want to do it since I was just on - then I will approach Kathleen Dunn. One of my good traits is I am relentless - but of course more tired and discouraged than when I started 7 years ago.

The book Animal Underworld, by Alan Green can be ordered through Frugal Muse for 25% discount off the hard cover price. (Note: Frugal Muse did not seem to have a secure ordering system on-line so I bought my copy from Powell Books which also offered a discount)Also DOMINION, by Matthew Scully - a pivotal book - just touches on the worst abuses of the hunting crowd, the pig factories in North Carolina and the oceans - but a good writer and a good read. I have given it to several people - including Amy Goodman on Democracy Now...Free Speech TV gives me hope.

Anger - a good self-motivator but bad teacher.

Are you going to attend ? Do you know that they moved the feral cat issue to the beginning of the night in hopes that people will not stay until the end to learn more about their killing ways? They are so duplicitous. Have you used the posters? I will need feedback from as many counties as possible - and if there is an opportunity to get someone in as a delegate - I would hate to have no one running. If you see the opportunity, just have a friend nominate you on the floor - it is 3 meetings a year - no big deal - and it would give you a number on how many people showed up that are not hunters.

If you could write a letter to the editor asking for a column for the non-consumptive public...it is a crime against the citizens of this state that most of them who do not kill know nothing about this vote and that it is an election. I ask people to write in short letter asking for me to be hired to do a column for the non-hunting public with an advocacy for protecting wildlife - comparable to the open killing advocacy of the outdoors columnists.

Most people are indoctrinated into abusing most other life forms, and never revisit their belief system, even when life on earth is threatened by this very abuse. We need the newspaper's outdoor pages to have advocacy articles for living wildlife to balance the killing wildlife articles traditional to the outdoors pages. There is a need for 90% of the public to be educated about the vote in the Conservation Congress and educated about what is going on in nature - bringing in real scientific information, projects that are being done in other parts of the country to re-introduce and nurture wild creatures as well as wild habitat.

The newspapers might consider it if people ask for an alternative to the hunter focused articles.

But even given new information, people just keep doing the same old things out of habit. Moles make tunnels in their lawns - poison the moles. Deer eat their shrubbery - call in the killers. Natural predators are "dangerous". Eliminate them. Eat animals. Wear animals. Kill them and rearrange them over styrofoam in your den as dead possession in the materialistic life of killing as decor.

Test on animals HIV and any other disease or toxin or bleach or brain damage or mutilation, in case it might prove interesting (always with the caveat that this is what it does to animals and we haven't a clue what it does to humans) and bring millions of dollars of research money from the National Institute of "Health" - which just means that doctors are paid if we are sick and not if we are well - so where is the incentive for proactive health care like a non-animal diet and un-poisoned foods?

Animals are killed for fun, and trapped so that men can trade trophy bobcats of this or that color or size and pretend that they are French trappers in the good old days of total freedom to kill without any possible restriction. This is why new information needs to be in the newspaper, said over and over until it actually balances old habit that are no longer suitable for today's needs.
Patricia

That is why the public should be educated about the amount of tax dollars that goes to the hunting lobby. While you are doing your taxes you might think about how much of what you pay in goes to fund the hunter's lobby . Because the DNR and the hunters lobby take the defense of their members seriously. They do defend each other's rights - at the expense of non-hunters rights to use the resources. Most of those guys were in the military and they learned not to leave the people they fought with bleeding on the field alone.

When I was being hurt by hunters and they were killing my cats, no animal rights group would help or support me - in fact they blamed me and not the killers. They talk big but when their supporters actually do defend animals and have the killer culture to fight against, the defender finds the organized animal welfare groups on the other side with the killers.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund constantly told me that cats were being killed in my neighborhood because I did not keep them all inside my house all the time. Even after I told them that the Dombecks were luring the cats out of my yard, opening gates, breaking into my house when I was at hearings asking that their guns be taken away, the ALDF just kept saying it was my fault. Of course they had no clue about how to keep them in the yard. I found out about the Cat Fence In system all on my own. I do my best to publicize it on my own. Ally Cat Allies also teaches how to make your own cat fence in system. They are an excellent group.

I am deeply wounded and realize now that most so called animal rights groups/ organizations are only about making money for themselves. People are treated as deep pocket expendable objects. You need to ask exactly what organizations do and ask for proof (a list of accomplishments with enough detail for you to go see for yourself) and accounting statements before you give your money blindly. This is especially true of Humane Societies. Ask how many animals they kill every three months. The Alliance for Animals is an information network. They have no action accomplishments. They spend a lot of time calling actions of others worthless as an excuse for non-participation. They should simply say they do not have the resources and energy to participate instead of going on the radio to say things like " a constitutional amendment for hunters is meaningless and will not affect anything".

You can probably do more using your money to help animals yourself and so many people are doing this after a brief association with the organized movement. Rescue groups are springing up like May flowers and the people in those groups were always very supportive. The people doing the most for animals are those who are spending their own money to keep them healthy while writing, talking and supporting one another. They spontaneously organize actions with their friends. You need to have supportive groups. The organizations who ignore the defense of those individuals protecting animals usually end up with one person in an office pretending to be an organization, blaming the victims who do act .

I dream of a real animal rights lobby that will actually help the people who are out there on their own defending animals against their torturers instead of blaming them. We will have to be really strong to stand against the tax supported DNR Hunter's Lobby called the Conservation Congress.

There is a really great Cat Resistance Movement being started in Wisconsin called Don't Shoot the Cat (DSTC). I like them and hope they do not turn into the same old arrogant, greedy, clique type organization. Click on DSTC above to get to their website and view all the real action they are taking to fight the hunter lobby of the DNR in defense of our companion animals. They list the date of the Conservation Congress hearings and the places they will be held. They will ask you to sign a petition.

Go to Ally Cat Allies for education as to how to trap, neuter and release, blueprints to build a shelter from the cold, how to keep water from freezing and other good information.

Go to Cat Fence In to make a barrier for the top of your fence to keep your cats in and other cats out.