COVID-19 and the Pandemic of Hunting
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Jim Robertson, President, C.A.S.H. Committee To Abolish Sport Hunting
September 2020

Rather than being consistent with people’s need to stay home and stay safe, hunting is being billed as an essential (if not sacred) activity that hardware, grocery stores and gas stations should stay open to supply.

hunting mask

It must be hard to stay socially distant when your favorite social activity is huntin’. Sure, being in the great outdoors is good for one’s soul or spirit, or whatever, but why does it have to include taking an innocent life. Well, the fact is, it doesn’t. You can get a lot more in touch with Nature or your inner self without focusing or fixating on trying to kill an animal (unless, of course, you happen to be a psychopath).

But, rather than encouraging folks to get out there and take a hike in the woods or wilderness, most state game departments (possibly fearing their cushy—nonessential—jobs would dry up otherwise) encouraged folks to go out and hunt turkey or trap otter or whomever else they’d created a nonessential season on.

Turkey

But, it’s hard for sport hunters to keep their social distance, as evidenced by how many turkey hunters shot each other (in the face or the back of the heads) just this spring, when they should have been on lock-down. Some of the hunting accidents hit two victims at once (you can’t be too socially distant if that happens) and some were fatal, involving 11 year old boys. (That’s just off the top of my head—there were so many to keep track of…). [Visit the C.A.S.H. website our reported accidents.

Some hunters may have been fearing a meat shortage, since so many workers in slaughterhouses and packing plants were coming down with Coronavirus, but that has never translated to empty shelves at the grocery stores. If anything, the price for flesh-foods went down during the crisis. Far be it from the federal government to subsidize Beyond Meat or some other plant-based, high protein “meat” items out there that hungry people could learn to eat.

But, rather than being consistent with people’s need to stay home and stay safe, hunting is being billed as an essential (if not sacred) activity that hardware, grocery stores and gas stations should stay open to supply. The often inaccurate tests take time and Covid-19 takes 2 weeks for symptoms to show, so we don’t yet know how many people caught it while on hunting or fishing forays. But one thing is certain—no-one needs to get sprayed with lead from a recreational shotgun blast at a time like this, when so many others are taking up necessary hospital beds.

Jim Robertson is the President of C.A.S.H. and the author of Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport.


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