Chapter Titles

Here’s the Table of Contents for Exposing the Big Game?
Foreword by Captain Paul Watson

Introduction

Chapter 1) Hide-hunting Holocaust Survivors Still under Fire

Chapter 2) An Act of Bison Altruism

Chapter 3) War on Coyotes an Exercise in Futility and Cruelty

Chapter 4) Time to End a Twisted Tradition

Chapter 5) Avian Superstar Both Athlete and Egghead

Chapter 6) From the Brink of Oblivion and Back Again?

Chapter 7) A Day in the Sun for the Hayden Wolves

Chapter 8) Critical Cornerstone of a Crumbling Castle

Chapter 9) Bears Show More Restraint than Ursiphobic Elmers

Chapter 10) The Fall of Autumn’s Envoy

Chapter 11) Inside the Hunter’s Mind

Chapter 12) A Magical World of Oneness

Chapter 13) Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Chapter 14) A Few Words on Ethical Wildlife Photography

In Closing

Acknowledgements:

Looking back, this was not, at the outset, planned as a podium from which to lambaste anyone’s hobby or heritage, but was originally intended as a venue for relating some of the behaviors and capabilities I’d observed among animals living in the wild, and as a celebration of life along the compassion continuum. However, after delving deeper into the histories of the species covered here—thanks in part to the invaluable references listed below—I found it impossible to simply depict their natural activities without also chronicling the shocking stories of abuse they have suffered at the hands of man. It would have been doing the animals a disservice to merely record how they naturally lived without at least alluding to the far-reaching and pervasive ways that human actions have altered their lives and sometimes their very natures. And the facts are clear: there has been no greater direct human impact on wildlife than the ongoing threat of hunting. As with the other pertinent and profound quotes from a variety of enlightened sources, this one from Edward Abbey proficiently puts it in a nutshell, “It is not enough to understand the natural world. The point is to defend and preserve it.”

Like the KKK, the NRA will eventually Fade Away

Comparatively speaking, the body of hunters in America is withered and shrunken, only a wee fraction of its former self. Today there are six times as many photographers, bird watchers and others who enjoy seeing animals alive as those compelled to make them lie down and die. Like the KKK and the SLA, the NRA has seen its day and will rightfully fade away. Literally, figuratively and statistically, hunting is a dying sport.

But non-hunters should not be lulled into a false sense of security for wildlife. Sportsmen, though a skeletal minority, are a shrill and voluble 5 (or 6) percent when it comes to forcibly interjecting themselves into animal issues; they‘re reluctant, to say the least, to kiss their blood-sport goodbye and join the civilized world.

The NRA and other heavily-funded hunting groups are pushing to pass laws such as the odious “Hunting Heritage Protection“ acts (already shoved on several states), aiming to enshrine their perceived “birthright“ to shoot and kill nonhumans recreationally.

Worse yet are the unconstitutional Hunter Harassment laws, which essentially punish residents and land-owners for trying to protect animals and keep hunters off their properties. In direct answer to the drop in sportsmen’s numbers, meddlesome state game departments are encouraging young kids to get a taste for killing (perverting their natural affinity for animals).

Alabama opens deer season two days early for children under the age of 16 (so they’ll have a better crack at “bagging“ one), and Maine holds a “Youth Deer Day,” allowing pre-season bow hunting for children ages 10 to 16. States like Illinois and Colorado are preying on women by offering hunting lessons for single mothers, while the private pro-hunting programs “Becoming an Outdoors-woman“ and the NRA’s “Women on Target” are seeking to enlist the future Sarah Palins of America.

Fouler still are the ongoing schemes to open more and more public lands to hunting…

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The preceding was excerpted from the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport