Undercover Investigations Expose Brutal Wildlife Killing Contests
An Entertainment Abuses Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM From Katie Stennes, Earth – Food – Life, A project of Independent Media Institute
July 2021

Welcome to the cruel world of wildlife killing contests, family events where children play amidst piles of slaughtered animals—and legal in 42 states.

Killing contest contestants bring their dead coyotes to be weighed and counted, Williamsport Fire Department, Williamsport, Indiana, on December 6, 2020. (Photo credit: The HSUS)

You would really have to try hard to find anything more depraved than a wildlife killing contest, which targets coyotes, foxes, bobcats, squirrels, raccoons, crows and even wolves and cougars in some states, for the sake of a prize that could range from cash to hunting equipment. These contests are responsible for the mindless killing of an inconceivable number of animals, all under the guise of sport.

Contests like these should be relegated to history books; instead, these events still take place in nearly all of the 42 states where wildlife killing contests are legal and result in the killing of thousands of animals every year.

Participants in these events, billed as family-friendly and often sponsored by bars, churches, firehouses and other local groups, compete with each other for prizes for killing the largest or smallest animal or the highest number of animals. Hundreds of animals may be slaughtered during a single contest. After the bloody piles of animals are weighed, prizes are awarded and the celebration ends, the bodies of the dead animals are often dumped like trash. Contestants frequently use cruel electronic calling devices to lure animals in for an easy kill and then shoot them with high-powered rifles—including AR-15s.

Killing contest contestants bring their dead coyotes to be weighed and counted, Williamsport Fire Department, Williamsport, Indiana, December 6, 2020. (Photo credit: The HSUS)

Referring to a custom-built rifle, a competitor in the De Leon Pharmacy and Sporting Goods’ Varmint Hunt told an investigator from my organization, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), that these rifles, “they’re like a .22-250 on steroids.” He had just used the rifle to gun down animals during the 21-hour contest that culminated in the pharmacy’s parking lot on a January morning in Texas. The rifles are “not very fur-friendly,” he added as he stood over a row of bloody bodies he had killed. “I wouldn’t use something like that if you want to save the fur.” To illustrate his point, he nudged a coyote, bragging, “I shot this one up here in the throat from high up and it blew out the whole bottom of his chest.”

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE (PDF)

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