California — Finally! — Bans Bear-Hunting with Dogs
California state legislators, after weeks of false starts, have finally passed S.B. 1221, which will prohibit using packs of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats.
Here are some links.
Governor Jerry Brown hasn’t signed the bill yet, but presumably he won’t buckle under to the NRA and other “sporting” groups. Ahh, the thrills and ejaculations of using a pack of hounds to chase a bear for hours and hours, and then finally shooting the cornered exhausted animal at close range. It’s not quite as sporting as beating up little old ladies with a tire iron, but it comes close.
Most people — i.e. those who can find their way in and out of a one-room apartment and whose parents aren’t first cousins — are in favor of this law. On the other hand…
If you’d like to see a description of this sickfuck “sport” — or if you’re one of the above-mentioned inbreds and you’re looking for something to masturbate to — here’s a fact sheet on Hounding for Bears.
This “sport” is cruel to the hunting dogs as well as the bears. The cornered bear will often fight back and tear the hounds to shreds. I would have thought the already-existing laws against dog-fighting would make this “sport” illegal, but what do I know.
There was one down side to the article about this new law. I had always thought animal cruelty was one of the few issues that cut across party lines. Not this time. In the California State Senate, not a single Republican voted in favor of this bill. (I got my information from a Humane Society e-mail.)
Labels: bear hunting with dogs, Humane Society, SB 1221
posted by Tom Harper @ 5:30 PM
17 Comments:
I hope the law passes. The most vicious animals on the planet are the humans who do cruel things such as this. Not for food or for the safety of their family living in a wilderness cabin, but for what they call sport. It's disgusting. I can't imagine Brown failing to sign the bill.
I just hope once the law passes it can be enforced.
OMG BEAR AT JOHNNY HOW CAN THAT BE
Go Bears.
You've got work to do BB. It's still legal in South Carolina. On the back roads just north of Hampton is a sign... Wild Boar hunting. Year Round.
BTW, on one of my trips up to Charlotte past Columbia we need to hook up for a cup of java.
Oops, sorry Tom. Got confused and though I was talking to Carolina Beach Bum.
SW: I agree that these trophy hunters are "the most vicious animals on the planet." I too hope the new law will be enforced.
Randal: Tha Bearss.
Mr. C: Year Round Boar Hunting -- my gun is getting hard as I type this.
Happiness is a warm gun
Erik
Erik: LOL.
Frankly, we need more dead bears in California. They've turned into a bloody nuisance due to too many bears and not enough habitat, meaning that they're breaking into cars and cabins, strolling through town like they own the place and stopping traffic, boldly strolling up to people who are having a nice picnic in the woods and taking their food right out of their hands, and otherwise, err, acting like people.
Dog hunting for bears in California was never really done anyhow, our terrain simply is wrong for that and besides you don't need a dog to find a bear to kill in California, just a picnic basket (heh!), so it doesn't matter to me whether Jerry signs this bill or not. I'm just responding to all the "humans bad, bears good" nonsense here. This ain't Yogi Bear we're talking about, this is a 500 pound omnivore with claws that can rip your guts out with one swipe and a mouth big enough to enclose your entire head and crush it with one bite, with the cunning of a coyote and the fearlessness of a Republican lying on live TV, and this is a 500 pound omnivore whose main natural enemy -- the wolf -- is extinct in California.
Bears have become a serious problem because of that, a problem that's resulted in serious property damage, injuries to humans, and even a few deaths to humans, as well as damage to the habitat due to too many bears, and making simplistic statements like "humans bad bears good" simply doesn't work to describe the situation, no more than "humans bad, bambi good" describes the deer situation (which is similarly out of control as numbers of those four-hooved woods rats spirals up to the point of habitat collapse, numbers collapse as deer starve to death, then once the habitat recovers the cycle continues). This year has been especially problematic due to bears coming down from the mountains due to drought there, and it ain't gonna get better as long as there's too many bears and no predators predating them. And, err, man is a predator. Just sayin'.
If a bear is a threat to people then obviously it needs to be eliminated. But there are humane ways to do this other than a bunch of inbreds chasing them with packs of dogs.
The root cause of this whole problem is too many F&%$#! people and not enough animal habitat. If a bear comes into a populated area, then obviously something has to be done right then and there.
But in the long term, we need to reintroduce wolves and other animals whose extinction has thrown everything off balance. And there needs to be much stricter environmental rules to prevent wilderness areas from being paved over and turned into houses. More "in-building" and less urban sprawl.
A lot of the human/animal conflicts are caused by people who move to a brand new housing tract on the edge of a forest or desert, and these people have absolutely no concept that they're living in what used to be bear/deer habitat just a few months earlier. These people need to either boost their IQs up into the double digits or move back to Daly City.
(I assume this doesn't apply to you, since I think you live in an urban part of Silicon Valley if I'm not mistaken.)
As I pointed out, there aren't packs of inbreeds chasing bears with dogs in California. The terrain is entirely wrong for that. If you haven't been out in the terrain of the Sierra Nevada, you just don't have a clue.
The majority of bear encounters in California are in long-established towns that have strict building restrictions that basically make it almost impossible to get a permit to build outside the town core, not in urban sprawl. Though various laws make it hard to restrict development. The town of Mammoth, for example, is bankrupt because a developer who was refused building permits sued them and won a ginormous settlement. Still, Mammoth isn't much larger than it was fifty years ago -- but the number of bears has increased tenfold due to all the national parks expansions and the creation of numerous wilderness areas (hunting is illegal in national parks and access to wilderness areas is difficult enough to reduce significantly the number of hunters who predate there).
I agree about the wolves, but the bears are here now, and the wolves aren't. We need fewer bears. Maybe not as few as there were fifty years ago before all the wilderness areas, but fewer bears. And more wolves too, but man is a predator too, y'know, and can fill that niche almost as well.
As always, it's more complicated than "bears good, man bad." The ecosystem in the Sierra Nevada got put out of whack when all the National Parks shut down predation (hunters), and whining that predation is bad ignores the fact that predation is natural and necessary -- whether done by man or by wolf is irrelevant to the bear.
It's funny how us dumb folk that chase bears with our dogs take better care of our animals then you fat ignorant people do of your children. Also we pay more money into this sport then most low income families make in a single year. Great move in a crapy economy California now we will loose more bears to hunger and disease that is better then feeding a family. By the way not all hunters are bad people and for those of you who are against us if you eat fish,beef or anything that was living at one time what are they volunteers.
As long as we're throwing stereotypes around, I'm not fat and I don't have any children. I don't think "all hunters are bad" but chasing a bear with a pack of dogs and then finally shooting the exhausted animal -- ooohhh, where do you find the courage?
Your topic is only half right! Hunting bears with dogs is only illegal for We the People, but no the government-hired hunters that are wasting your tax dollars that you are already squandering elsewhere. I'm telling you, when California goes bankrupt and you crawl to the Federal Government (the rest of us, that is) I will demand our flag goes down to 49 stars and California becomes a territory because you lost your sovereignty (which you probably can't comprehend what that is anyway). I do not know any hunter who hunts deer, boar, or bear and leaves them to rot; there are already laws regarding this wherever I hunt already.
Anonymous, California would have a budget surplus if not for the fact that we're subsidizing you losers in the flyover states by sending way more money to the Federal Government than we get back. If California were a country, it would be the 8th largest economy in the world. And frankly, all we get from being part of the rest of the country is wheat and a market for the stuff we design here. So be careful what you ask for ;).
Regarding government hunters, if a Wildlife & Fisheries agent has determined that a bear is a nuisance animal that is a threat to human life he is allowed to do anything and everything necessary to kill said bear, whether in season or not. So you're saying the protection of human life should not take precedence over hunting regulations? Harumph!
Finally, the science says that use of dogs in bear hunting in California caused a larger number of males to be killed vs. females, which in turn contributed to the current overpopulation of bears. The deal being that with bears easy to find via multiple dogs, hunters chose the biggest (male) bears, while in seasons where bear season overlapped with deer season (only 1 dog allowed), the ratio was closer to 50-50. That seems to imply that they should have limited it to one dog, not banned use of dogs altogether, but (shrug). So it goes.
You guys have no Idea of what you are talking about. If you are not a hunter, your opinions have serious consiquences on the population of animals due to your lack of knowing. Take a wild life class, or join a wild life program to see why there are hunters. Just because you don't have the interest of hunting, doesnt mean you know what's best for the sport. And sure as hell don't know about animals. Everything you know is false, and based on emotions. Educate yourself by actually taking part in the sport to know what it is that you are talking about.
My post had nothing to do with hunting in general. It was about the sick cowardly practice of using dogs to chase and then shoot bears.
I have nothing against hunting if a person is hunting for food. The animal probably had a better life and more humane death than the billions of livestock animals that spend their lives paralyzed in tiny cages.
But trophy hunting or hunting for "sport" -- Ixnay. If you'll give your targeted animal a gun identical to the gun you're using -- or a pack of dogs to fight off your dogs -- I'll agree to call it a sport. Otherwise, forget it.
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