Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Tennessee: Little girl, 10, gets media attention in small town newspaper for killing a deer.

TENNESSEE - Gretchen Elmy, 4th grade student at Woodbury Grammar School, killed her first deer on 11-01-09 at 4:00 p.m. at a distance of 100 yards.


I do not have a problem with most legal hunting (people who use dogs and use bait animals like dog fighters to "train" their dogs are another story). I do have a problem with people not having respect for the animals that they maim and kill. 

First, let's quit referring to maiming and killing animals as "bagging" them. You didn't "bag" them, you killed them (hopefully quickly, but we all know that rarely happens). They also say they "harvested" them; no, you killed it. 

Statistics from Wildlife & Game commissions say that about half the wildlife shot at, whether with bows/arrows or guns, are not retrieved by the hunters. The animal is wounded and running for their lives and the hunter either cannot find them to finally put them out of their misery by killing them or they are so engrossed in finding animals to kill that they don't care that this wounded animal ran off and is somewhere suffering, slowly dying. Sometimes the crippled animal lies there for days or drags itself around, gut shot or with a broken leg or wing, until finally dying of starvation and its injuries.

Show me that this kid was respectful about taking this animal's life. Show me that her family paid to have it processed and utilized everything they could from this animal. Show me that she cares about animals; not just being driven somewhere, handed a gun and told to pull the trigger on a deer that was likely been baited for months with corn at a certain spot (and possibly one of those somewhat tame deer that roam around subdivisions).