We’ve all heard stories, sometimes from the laughing, bragging guilty parties themselves, of seemingly healthy, normal people being intentionally cruel to animals. Giving birds Alka-Seltzer and rice to make them explode and burying live cats up to their necks in the ground so you can run over their heads with lawn-mowers are apparently seen as socially acceptable behaviors by some people.
However, torturing and killing animals for fun is just a short step away from torturing and killing people for fun. We need to send the message that these acts are not funny, entertaining, or acceptable at all in our society. We must require that people who commit such atrocities serious repercussions – more than just taking away a hunting license or paying fines. If we won’t do it to protect the animals, we should do it to protect our own society.
Just thought I’d throw my two cents into the pile. What do you think?
-Kitty Mowmow
There has been a growing trend of “thrill killing” of animals throughout Wisconsin during the last few years, chief state conservation warden Randy Stark says.
Officials say several dozen cases have been confirmed in which wild animals were shot with firearms and arrows, run down with vehicles or clubbed with baseball bats and homemade weapons such as sharpened sticks.
“This is simply a criminal act. It has nothing to do with hunting,” said Department of Natural Resources warden Rick Rosen, who is stationed in St. Croix County. “It has nothing to do with sportsmanship at all. As far as why, it’s just like retail theft. That’s the best analogy. It’s the thrill with getting away with something and not getting caught.”
Jeremy Peery, a conservation warden in Rusk County, said he arrested three high school students several years ago who spent their summer driving around at night and shooting animals.
They “shot sandhill cranes, they shot turkeys, they even shot at some sturgeons that were spawning and porpoising up near a dam. Just for the kicks of doing it,” Peery said.
The trio paid fines ranging from $2,000 to $4,000, served jail terms and lost their hunting and fishing privileges for years.
Just about every warden in the state has heard of or investigated a similar case, Peery said.
A warden in Chippewa County handled a case in which high school students spent their evenings traveling around, shining lights at deer and shooting the vulnerable animals paralyzed by the bright lights, Peery said. They were accused of cutting out the heart of one of the deer and put it in the locker of the ex-girlfriend of one of the boys.
Ted Dremel, a warden in Waupaca County, has investigated a couple of thrill killing cases, including one in which three young men admitted to killing or wounding 48 deer in the Iola area.
“They truly give hunters a bad name,” Dremel said. “I think it’s important to make a huge distinction between hunters and this type of activity.”
The DNR surveyed wardens three years ago to see how much of a problem there might be, and 20 to 30 cases were reported by 23 wardens, said Chuck Horn, a conservation warden supervisor based in Dodgeville. A number of other thrill killing cases have been reported around the state since then.
The bulk of the perpetrators have been between 15 and 22 years old, and most incidents have involved groups of people acting together to kill the animals, officials said.
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