Rabbit Advocacy Animal Matters

Paul Ryan the Bow Hunter is Stalking America

October 11, 2012 C R Davis examiner.com

Paul Ryan just got a whole lot creepier to the general public. In an interview on WJR TV, Ryan showed his belligerent side, walking out on a local reporter because he didn’t want to be questioned on details of his tax plan for America. His disdainful attitude toward that reporter might be surprising for many but it’s no shock to the millions of animal welfare advocates who are familiar with Paul Ryan the bow hunter. There are numerous pictures of him on the Internet posing over animals he has killed with a bow and arrow. The smile on his face in every one of those hunting pictures is the same—that of a self-satisfied and cold-blooded bully.

According to In Defense of Animals, The Fund for Animals and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, hunters kill more than 200 million animals yearly—wounding, crippling, orphaning, and harassing millions more. The annual death toll in the U.S. includes 42 million mourning doves, 30 million squirrels, 28 million quail, 25 million rabbits, 20 million pheasants, 14 million ducks, 6 million deer, and thousands of geese, bears, moose, elk, antelope, swans, cougars, turkeys, wolves, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, boars, and other woodland creatures. ************

Bow hunting is one of the cruelest forms of hunting because it doesn’t always kill the victim—50% of the hunted animals are wounded and left to die slowly. Any little ones affected by the loss will also suffer and die. Paul Ryan seems to be practically frothing at the mouth about the prospect of killing anything he can—whether it’s women’s reproductive rights, medical care for the needy or defenseless animals. He fits the stereotype of the bow hunter perfectly—the kind of guy who enjoys stalking his victim, wounding his victim and then, perversely, taking souvenir photos of himself gloating over his victim as he or she suffers and dies. This is machismo fueled ambition in its purest form—the cave man running straight out from behind the bushes and into the Whitehouse. He’s stalking America.

Every time I turn on the television, there he is, standing triumphantly, smirk on his face, incredulous that mere journalists ask him to defend his policies before the vote. He seems agitated and high on a combo of lifted Romney poll stats, testosterone and amino acids he’s personally extracted from animals he’s killed. He’s annoyed that his potential victims (women, children, the unemployed, the sick, the needy) would dare to ask for a chance to be heard. He’s too used to being in control of every situation—unlike his victims in the woods.

Paul Ryan told CNN he’s even making his own sausages now. Each year, the vice-presidential wannabe grinds up some of the deer he killed to make sausage. Ryan said he will make time "after the election, Thanksgiving and Christmas," and he'll get his kids involved.

"I've got to take Liza this year," Ryan told CNN. His ten-year-old daughter, for whom he recently bought hunting gear, will soon be learning the blood sport from him and will kill with him for the first time. Then three of his children will help him grind up the animals they killed to make sausage.

"You skin a deer then you bone it out," Ryan advised, "and then you grind it and you have to add some pork for fat because venison have no fat and then um, you know everyone's different. You get hog casings (pig intestines), and you grind it and put it in a grinder and you put it in the hog casings and mix it with the spices."

“He chooses his targets as a hunter the same way he picks his political targets, the more defenseless the better,” said Emmy Award winning political comedy writer Kevin Rooney. “And he’s going to do to most Americans what he does to deer—make sausage of them.”

Los Angeles animal rights activist Carole Sax is one of the many people I spoke to who is appalled that Ryan will be teaching his children to hunt. “He’s sadistic and people who torture animals and don’t flinch from doing it have sociopathic tendencies,” said Ms. Sax. “It’s sick to introduce your daughter to torturing animals and she’ll probably grow up with zero feelings towards life.”

"Sport hunting, or killing animals for the fun of it, for me as a veterinarian, is totally reprehensible," said Elliot M. Katz, founder and President of In Defense of Animals. "This senseless killing of innocent beings becomes an even greater tragedy through Bow Hunting, where the death of the animals is so often a slow, painful and crippling process."

"Animal hunting is an unfair sport." said Lejla Hadzimuratovic, president of the Bunny World Foundation. "Sport, unlike killing with a bow and arrow is supposed be enjoyed by both parties. Sports are fun because both sides know it's a game and this clearly is no game. Causing agony to a sentient being for entertainment is cowardly, primitive and has no place in civil society."

Michael Markarian president of The Humane Society Legislative Fund has written that Ryan’s voting record on animal rights issues is mixed. He has voted in favor of animals on some important issues like dog fighting and cock fighting but has voted to weaken the endangered species act and voted against animals who are hunted for trophies.

“He also voted to allow the use of federal tax dollars to kill Yellowstone bison; to allow the trophy hunting of bears using piles of bait on federal lands; to process meat from downed livestock too sick or injured to walk on their own; to permit the import of sport-hunted polar bear trophies from Canada; and to facilitate the slaughter of American horses for human consumption in France and Belgium where horsemeat is considered a delicacy.” 

Before petulantly walking off from that interview on WJR, Ryan lectured the TV reporter about teaching people “good values, good character” because, he said, “that is civil society.” If Ryan were genuinely interested in promoting a civil society, he would teach his children to look forward to hanging diplomas on their walls, not the ghoulish stuffed heads of their victims.

Comment: As gatekeepers of legislation, politicians must be held responsible for their compliance with such atrocities. While ‘hunting’ is legal, a moral crime is committed. Rise up against such inhumanity, people! 

“Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.” Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

The major common denominator with those who commit thrill killings is that they usually feel inadequate and are driven by a need to feel powerful. Sadism is fairly common in thrill killings.