Here’s someplace I seldom dip for post topics… San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Mark Morford.

Before I begin, however, I must offer a warning to my most politically conservative readers.  Mr. Morford’s columns often lean to the left of… I dunno… Diane Feinstein?  Ghandi?  He’s unapologetically a city boy, and a poster-child for what some folks would call, “San Francisco values.”  For many of you his columns may well cause apoplexy, hysteria, and possibly blindness.  They will certainly create a quickening of the pulse and a moderate-to-severe rise in your blood pressure. 

For my own part, I read his columns pretty regularly.  I usually enjoy his writing even though I find myself diametrically opposed to many of his positions.  For example, Morford is unabashedly opposed to private firearms, and considers hunting a barbaric throwback to our proto-human ancestry.  And it is from this position that he launched his latest column… and spurred me to a convoluted rebuttal/agreement.

To set the stage (because I must), Texas exotic game ranches are now some of the only places in the world with viable, breeding populations of certain species of animals.  Among these are the scimitar horned oryx, now extinct in its native Africa.  Other species, such as the dama gazelle and blackbuck antelope are endangered or at risk in their natural environments.  However, on many Texas game ranches, the species are actually thriving.  Blackbuck have even escaped the confines of the high-fence ranches are ranging widely throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with Axis deer and several species of goats and sheep (e.g. aoudad). 

Hunters from all over the country, and around the world, travel to Texas to hunt these exotic species.  As a result, the hunting industry in some parts of the Lone Star State has become huge business.  In many cases, exotics and wildlife ranches have replaced the venerable cattle ranches.  There’s more money in it, and some of the african plains species are much better adapted to the marginal lands and arid climate of western Texas. 

There has been some concern, possibly well-intentioned, that there should be some protections afforded to these endangered animals on the hunting ranches.  The thinking is that if the well-being of the animals is directly influenced by their profitability, then if they become liabilities, the ranches will eliminate them.  In other words, if they’re not earning their keep they’re gone.  The Texas legislature has taken this into consideration, and is now crafting regulations (and restrictions) that are intended to drive the management of endangered exotics.

As one might expect, the legislation has drawn the ire of many ranch-owners, some hunters, and the Safari Club, International.  Earlier this week, like many outdoors media sources, I received an email “Alert” from SCI, urging all ranch owners and anyone involved in the industry to get involved and take action.  The email wasn’t particularly specific about what that action should be, nor did it even include a link to the legislation in question.  Since I was already aware of what was going on, and not particularly involved or educated, I chose not to make it another Hog Blog topic, and deleted the email.

But somehow (whoever is managing the SCI mailing list may need a kick in the head… or at least a punch in the ear), this same message went to Mark Morford’s email.  Maybe he mentioned SCI in a column at some point, or maybe even spoke to a representative about some other topic and they saved his address.  I don’t know.  But the message predictably triggered a commentary.  However, the commentary itself wasn’t quite as predictable as I’d have expected.

On the predictable side, Morford writes:

Have you heard of these places? Giant ranches where giant men pay giant fees to be driven in luxury SUVs out onto huge swaths of privately owned property in order to shoot carefully bred and relatively tame exotic and/or endangered creatures who never had a chance in the first place? And then they kneel down next to them and grin like caveman as they pose for revolting photos atop a very, very dead bison, or leopard, or gazelle — a creature who was, minutes prior, pretty much just standing there waiting to be shot because, well, it’s a goddamn game preserve, after all. What are they going to do, run?

Now untwist your drawers for a second.  Did you not read my warning above?  Morford has no mercy for the gun-loving, animal-killing masses and he makes no bones about it.  Of course, to my knowledge he’s never visited an exotics ranch, and he has no real-life experience with what goes on there.  He’s enslaved by his prejudices.  But honestly, who isn’t?

The point is, despite the stereotypical and hyperbolic nature of his description, it’s not all that far-fetched.  Exotics on many of these game ranches are not especially “wild”.  You can (and many operations do) pretty much drive right up, pick the one you want, and pull the trigger.  To be brutally honest, that’s exactly how I shot the scimitar-horned oryx I’m holding in the picture above.  I know this doesn’t jibe with the ideals of sportsmanship held by many in the hunting community, but I’m not going to waste a lot of time with my personal justifications.  In many cases (but definitely not all), that’s how exotics hunting on a preserve plays out. 

But this post isn’t really meant to be about high-fence hunting.

So now the unpredictable aspect of Morford’s column:

But wait. Not so fast, self-righteous liberal columnist. Here is where I admit my own wild hypocrisy, my own complicit nature.

Here is where I humbly remind myself that not only do I eat meat, I do so quite adoringly. Grass-fed and organic and sustainable as possible, reverentially and deeply gratefully and in small and reasonable amounts? Yes. But whatever. Still: meat.

So as not to copy and paste the entire column, I’ll tell you that Morford also writes that he’s a big fan of leather, and even shops at places that feature various exotic animal products, such as skulls and skins.  He recognizes that, by shopping at these places he’s probably supporting some of these very ranches.  Even if he’s not getting actual blood on his hands, he’s still involved.

And there it is.  Sort of…

Morford never backs off in his attack on hunters.  Sorry if I got your hopes up.  I doubt he’ll ever change his attitude about people who shoot guns and kill things for “sport,” because to him, that’s all hunting and shooting will ever mean.  He doesn’t really “get it”, in the way we (hunters) would like to see him get it.  But he at least recognizes that meat and skins and those cool animal skull, wall decorations come at the cost of the lives of these animals, and that his commerce contributes to the selfsame industry he’d like to lambaste.  He’s made the connection and acknowledged his hypocrisy.  That’s something, even if it’s not everything.

What I don’t think he recognizes, however, is that the primitive draw of these products to him and his urban peers… the desire to own the ”gorgeous, sacred gemsbok skull”… is probably rooted in the same drive that affects hunters.  There’s something primally satisfying about a cool skull, a glistening white set of bones, or a finely patterned hide.  It represents something deep in our psyche, even if we can’t put a finger on what that “something” is.  The difference is that while Morford prefers to acquire his trophies in the safe and sterile confines of a fashionable shop, hunters prefer to take things into their own hands… to bear direct responsibility for taking the life that provided that meat, that skin, or that trophy on the wall. It is, certainly, a big difference, and it’s probably irreconcilable. 

It is probably quite true that the desire to hunt and to revel in the trophies of the hunt is a very real throwback to the brutish, visceral appetites of our prehistoric ancestors.  I’ve no doubt that, at many levels, there’s a sense of bravado and conquest in the successful culmination of a hunt even if we filter it in different ways.  I don’t think it matters if that hunt took place from a “Texas trolling tower” in the back of a customized Hummer, or if it was in the deepest jungle of the darkest continent, or if it happened in the aisles of a hip boutique. 

Why deny that part of ourselves?  Who are we trying to fool?

Food for thought from my own random scribblings:

If life is sacred, then life is sacred.  We don’t get to pick and choose which life is more sacred.  If you eat, you must kill, and you must eat if you want life.  Then is killing not also sacred because it gives life?  You can’t have life without death.  Therefore, if every living thing deserves life, then doesn’t it equate that every living thing deserves death? 

Simplify.

 

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