THE RHETORIC OF HUNTING AND WHALING: SUSTAINABLE ABUSE?
By Mike Jaynes

Mike Jaynes is a professional writer who teaches English and Western Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Holding the MA in Professional Writing, his research interests include Animal Rights, Animal Ethics, Biocentrism, Greek Mythology, Ufology, Tom Robbins, and the Embraced Rogue. He has been published internationally with academic and creative writing running the gamut from editorial to cover story in peer reviewed journals, nationally circulated magazines, newspapers, ejournals, and books.

In addition to being published in numerous outlets, he has been interviewed by university Ph.D. programs regarding Bio-Conservation and has made radio appearances speaking on behalf of animal rights and the decline of human compassion. He argues against "Sustainable Use," Performing Elephants, Mass Confinement Factory Farming, Whaling, Sealing, Shark Finning, Speciesism and Anthropocentrism. Also, he is working on a full length Animal Rights non fiction book as well as a children's book project titled *Elephant Dreams.*

Enough is enough, and it's time the hunting world takes a close look at the theory of Sustainable Use as a defense for hunting and whaling activities. This theory tells us responsible hunting is the best hope for saving animals such as the elephant, the whale, the deer and others. The idea is that if an economic demand exists for certain animal products, then said economic demand will, in fact, protect these animals. By ascribing economic value to these animals, their existence will be guaranteed by breeding programs and so on because they will then economic have value to humans and thus be worth preserving. I maintain this is a horrendous oversight of basic common sense and compassion. As a university writing and humanities lecturer, it is my business to teach people how to write convincing and often subversive arguments in order to sway antagonistic readers to their side. Teaching others to successfully use deft and effective vocabularial gymnastics to subtly argue their case, I can spot it from miles and miles when it is being used against me. And, it is the rhetoric of the Sustainable Use supporters I find deeply insulting. Using scientific and unemotional verbiage in order to cover up the truth of the matter is reprehensible. Assuming we are dull enough to accept it is perplexing. The truth behind hunting and whaling is that it kills animals, animals who were not threatening humanity. No successfully convincing phrase coinage can mask the truth that peaceful woodland and plains dwelling animals are brought down by bullets and arrows in screaming masses of blood,excrement, and terror. This article examines some facts behind deer and elephant hunting techniques and also touches on the whaling industry that is sadly gaining momentum in certain parts of the world regardless of the 1985 global ban on whaling. It also examines the handy euphemisms of the hunting and whaling industry used to convince you and me that not only is hunting and whaling not that bad, it's actually an effective form of conservation and good for the animals. I maintain animals should be intrinsically valued for what they are, not for what financial gains they may provide.

Furthermore, I argue that to only value animals for the monetary gains they might bring humanity is deeply morally flawed and an individual who truly supports Sustainable Use has, in all likelihood, lost his mind.

On Earth Day 2008, I appeared on a very popular talk radio program in Chattanooga Tennessee to be interviewed about and to discuss mass confinement factory farming. The host of the show is a meat eater and a hunter, and he is possessed of a very intelligent and open mind and was open to having me on the show, and for that I congratulate and give praise to Jeff Styles of WGOW 102.3 FM in Chattanooga. After discussing the particular horrors pigs and chickens undergo in mass confinement factory farming situations, he opened the lines to callers. To a friend's surprise but not mine, not a single caller wanted to discuss the topic at hand. The calls all referenced the guest who preceded me who discussed property rights. Plenty of callers had impassioned commentary regarding the fact that as landowners they may or may not own the rights to the minerals underneath a certain depth on their property. Everyone was up in arms about this, but no one –as often happens- wants to examine their eating habits and meat consumption habits and talk about the 10 billion plus land animals that are slaughtered each year for taste buds and fashion trends, not to mention the billions of fish and marine life. It makes people uncomfortable, you see. And here lies the problem. As selfish, egocentric, morally stunted Americans who have every right in the world to do what ever fool thing we wish without regard to other animals, human and non human alike, we do what we want. Not only Americans, but humanity seems to be lodged in a permanent pre-teen angst that bucks against all compassion and common sense and declares "I do what I want" and doesn't think beyond the new lawnmower we want, the car we just have to have, or the needs of only the people near to us. Millions of people buy their dogs and cats sweaters, strollers, and Chrismas/Hannukah presents and could care less about the 80,000 pigs, 130,000 cattle, and 1.2 million chickens slaughtered daily in American slaughterhouses so we can eat fattening and genetically altered meat that is slowly killing us. What a racket the meat industry has: killing us with substandard inhumanely produced products and getting paid billions of dollars for it, from us, the ones they're slowly fattening, clogging, and killing. However, while Americans love their dogs more than anything and would fight and die for them, they could care less about the equally, if not more so, intelligent animals dying in abattoirs unseen by those who feed on their dead and rotting bodies. This being said, when people do become disturbed about the goings on at factory farms or in the hunting world, simple research often leads them to websites proclaiming easy and conscience-salving euphemisms to ensure the consumer that it's not really as bad as all the animal rights and Earth psychos want them to believe. I urge hunters and meat eaters to dig deeper and research the truth behind many of these euphemisms. The reality of it is proponents of Sustainable Use feel animals have to make money for humans in order to deserve preservation. That's why I maintain those people have lost their collective minds. They are insane.

Portions of the remainder of this essay draw on Matthew Scully's brilliant and terrifying book *Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy*. Consider the elephant, whose global numbers are at about five percent of what they were a hundred years ago. These are intelligent and highly social creatures most of us only know from circuses and zoos in which they are kept in habitats unsuited for their happiness and well being. Scully discusses how the ivory trade has greatly reduced African elephants who are still poached by ivory hunters armed with helicopters, automatic weapons, satellite communication, and spotter planes. Some argue that the ban of ivory in many nations only hurts the elephant herds. Sustainable Use tells us that if hunters are permitted to kill elephants for their ivory then there will be increased demand in saving them. Therefore, the utilitarinistic total welfare of elephants will benefit. Question: why can elephants not be valued intrinsically for what they are? These kind creatures that have lumbered the Earth for millions of years deserve our compassion and respect. We simply do we have the right to kill them, saw from them their ivory tusks, and carve the harvested ivory into jewellery to adorn the necks of the wealthy. And here comes rights. Oh yes, I know, Americans will wear you out if you try to tell them they don't have the *right *to do something. It's as if the founding fathers wrote what they did with each overweight gun-mongering egocentric American sociopath personally in mind due to some odd temporal phase shifting effect. However, the world at large should realize this economic valuing of the elephant is wrong and contemptible.

Sustainable Use advocates tell us that the only way to save the African elephant is to gun him down from close range with a spray of automatic bullets to his chest, head, face, and great gray body. If truly the only way to convince humans that elephants are indeed valuable and deserving of our respect is to gun them down in great screaming and terrified herds, then I no longer wish to claim membership in that humanity. I am glad they are completely incorrect.

But Scully tells us that there are arguments for a resumption of a legalized ivory trade. He cites the April 2000 issue of *New Scientist* as saying elephants must "earn their keep if they are to compete for land... forget trade bans, just make the animals pay their own way" (Scully 123). This is what saddens me for humanity, for what we have become. To insist elephants, a naturally occurring intelligent species that has been in Africa for millions of years, must "pay their way" makes me embarrassed to be human, embarrassed to occupy the same species as people with minds that work this way. Consider this: in India and Sri Lanka, scientists have noticed a marked increase in the amount of elephants born tusk less. Some elephants, a very small percentage, have always been born without tusks due to genetic aberrations. However, the tusk less calves are drastically increased and Scully suggests perhaps it is "as if evolution itself were trying to spare these creatures from human avarice, that gene is spreading because the tusk less ones are often the only ones left to breed" (123). Again, my revulsion regarding the lack of human compassion rises. Why must evolution spare these creatures from our unchecked avarice? Why can't we? And furthermore, imagine a world in which human greed has actually affected the evolutionary process of elephants. That world is here, and it is repugnant and terrifying. Tusks evolved genetically for a specific reason: protection. The bigger the tusks were, the more able the elephant was to fight off rival males and to defend from other animals. Now, humans being the apex predators on the planet, tusks are not developing for the same reason: protection against their darkest predator, us. No elephant hunting Sustainable Use verbal trickery can hide that sickening fact. We have taken things we have no right to.

Caring for animals –and here comes the problem- requires giving up a few things. Perhaps giving up meat, or fur coats, or patriarchal blood sport family traditions, is required. And as for blood sport, it is most likely more fitting to turn from the elephant for a moment to focus on the deer. Not that hunters are a large percentage of the American population (around 5%, give or take depending on the study), but hunting is a huge problem for the deer of the world. Bow hunters pray to the God of compassion most of them claim to believe in that does and bucks will turn to give them a broad shot so they can have their trophy or –granted – their meat. I have recently heard hunters angered over non hunters' ignorance of the "sport." They are tired of us animal rights activists and writers attacking deer hunting and saying it is easy to hunt. It requires great skill to stalk an animal, I am told. The technological advances in hunting are worth mentioning when delving into the comparative difficulties of successful deer hunting. In *Dominion* a section is devoted to sport hunting and some of the new gadgets and technology designed to make killing peaceful deer easier. For example, would some hunter please write to me and tell me how it is difficult to stalk a deer when utilizing hunting calls which simulate a fawn in distress. So the hunter, I imagine, is sitting there effectively rendered invisible and odourless by camouflage and deer spoor. Then the great hunter pushes the button that activates his deer call, sending the sounds of a terrified baby deer in mortal danger. Then he waits and pumps arrows or ammo into the concerned doe or buck. Perhaps the great skill is involved in picking which button to push: the female doe in heat, the fawn in mortal distress, or some other setting. But you have to understand, I've been told,we have the right to do this. Hunters are perfectly within their rights to attract deer with the sound of their dying young. It's our right, you see.

Anyway, hunters also tell you, hunters are the biggest conservationists in the land. All national parks, for example, are supposedly paid for by money raised by hunting permits. Sustainable Use, again. And what is more surprising is that this ends the moral questioning for many people. Apparently, our doubts about the humanity of shooting deer in their habitat while utilizing high tech stalking devices is acceptable because it pays for the public national parks. Everything is geared away from valuing animals intrinsically. Question: selling children on the black market is a way many people in the world make vast sums of money. If one put that money to good use, would that rectify the moral and ethical problem of selling children into the sex trade? Of course not. Sustainable Use is equally illogical and repugnant and seems incapable of reconciling the fact that the ends do not justify the means if the means involve death, killing, torturing, and devouring the natural planet. Another evolutionary item of interest: One of deer hunters' main justifications is that of population control. The idea is that the more deer they kill, the more space and natural habitat there is for the remaining ones; therefore, it is kind to cull the herd in order to cut down on starvation and whatnot. Biology gives us a problematic view of this theory. Scully discusses a phenomena observed in deer and human populations alike called compensatory reproduction. When populations encounter a decrease, females get pregnant in much greater numbers to compensate for the loss. They also have shorter times between birthing. The same effect has been observed in human females during wartime. Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., is the Director of the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Montana. He cites traditional methods of controlling wild horse populations. Of all these methods, he says:

None has been successful in stabilizing populations over the long haul and management by removal ignores two biological imperatives. Removal of animals, by any means, lethal or otherwise, presents two problems, aside from the immense costs. First, as the density of horses is reduced, the remaining animals breed at younger ages, have less time between foals and in general speed up reproduction through a process known as compensatory reproduction -www.wildhorsepreservation.com

Deer and all other mammals also undergo this process when numbers are lowered in a population group. Considering compensatory population, this deer population controlling often results in even more deer being introduced to the deer population, not a good thing for deer with ever decreasing natural habitat. But, I'm sure this increase of game numbers makes for some good hunting.

Here is another word you hear applied to writers and thinkers such as me: Sentimentalist. We are to believe this sentimentalism, spoken in the same tones by hunters as *communist* was once spoken by certain McCarthyists, is the downfall of the world. You see, nature is bloody and final and that's that. Animals stalk and kill each other in the wild, so if you are worried about hunting or factory farms you just don't know how the world works and you are overly sensitive. I've been told it is a waste of my time to write about animal rights because they are ignorant of, and couldn't care less about, my efforts. For example, the coyotes I am writing in defense of would easily kill me and eat me and what do I think about that? I think this is more of the hunters' indefensible and flawed logic. To claim we should use the animal world and its carnality –Tennyson's tooth and claw bit- as a framework for us, the only animals with (as far as we can tell) advanced reason, is absurd. Animals also sometimes eat their young in times of food shortage, and most judges would not accept "but I was hungry and the store was closed" as a defense for chowing down on Junior. Also, animals steal from each other in the wild and we do not hold this us as logical reasoning why we can steal from each other. If we're so concerned about deer and whale populations and so on, why have the Sustainable Use cronies completely ignored the human population explosion? No one proposes vast sniper culling in "dense population habitats" such as Seoul, New York City, or Bangkok. Why, then, do we hold up animals killing animals as ethical justification for us killing animals? I'll tell you why; it's because we are selfish and we have lost our minds. It's not just the Sustainable Use crazies; the entire human species has gone insane. We must change these things, but be forewarned that any animal activism comes with the label of idealistic sentimentalist. I wear mine proudly.

Finally, I would like to concentrate on the whaling and marine harvesting industry, as this is where some of the most convenient euphemisms have their geneses. First, if discussing whales seems anachronistic due to the 1985 global whaling ban, realize that it isn't. We have not successfully saved the whales as of 2008. Several countries have continued to whale due to the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) global ban on whaling. On the high seas, there exists no formal method to police the waters and to enforce this whaling ban. Small groups such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd attempt to enforce the ban and do keep whalers from getting their yearly quotas on a regular basis, but they are too presently too small to save them all. Japan and Norway are among the most vocal in getting the ban lifted claiming that after years of decreased whaling, the populations have most likely returned to appropriate levels. And we see Sustainable Use saying that if these whales had some economic value, they could be better preserved. Again, valuing whales for what they are is sentimental and overtly romantic. Give me a break, people say, haven't we heard enough cries of "Save the Whales"? That's so *eighties*. Not really; it's so *right now*. The new buzzword for Sustainable Use applied to marine ecosystems is "Wise Use" and its supporters are increasing in numbers all the time. Sperm, Blue, Fin, Minke whales and others will only be spared, it seems, if they can have some economic value. Also in Asia, bears have been killed for their gall bladders and dolphins have been killed for their penises. Along with rhino horn, these things are ground up into powders and sold to erectile dysfunctional men as aphrodisiacs and sex enhancers. These don't work and people have said that the coming of Viagra may actually save these animals from this "medicinal" usage. As others have said, what does that say of us? Imagine it required a suitably effective erectile dysfunction drug to save dolphins, rhinos, and bears. Anyone sickened yet? Now, to return to the whalers, to justify the horrifying images of huge behemoth kind whales being harpooned, winched aboard whaling vessels, and dismembered, the whaling industry and the Wise Use theorists have produced some of the most fantastically verbose and morally soothing euphemisms to date.

In Scully's chapter called "Riches of the Sea," he outlines some of these euphemisms. He says around the whaling community, one is not likely to hear the word *kill*. Instead you hear the preferred terms of *non-natural mortality, anthropogenic mortality, biological removal, human-induced mortality*, *termination, *and good ol' *lethal sustainable use.* What this does, reader, is insult your intelligence while concealing the truth behind the bloody acts most people can't bear to witness on the films that have been shot undercover from nearby protest ships. Pro-whalers like to speak of whales as *living marine resources*.

One must utilize these scientific and detached terms "lest the speaker be accused of emotionalism or, worse, 'anthropomorphism'" (Scully 150). It is obvious what it says of a practice when the actual verbs that describe its daily activities have to be convoluted into such verbiage and sophistry. Even whale watching has a scientific term: *non-consumptive utilization*.

And accidental whale killing? That's called *unintended stock depletion*, as if whales are bottles of pickles on a grocer's shelf that were accidentally knocked off and broken by a greedy fat kid who has never been told "no" by his mother. Such terminology is disrespectful to the wise and intelligent whales and to the rest of us. This is not what human reason and intellect should be used for, this disguising atrocity in surface level justifications such as Sustainable Use.

It insults our intelligence when any corporate entity hides brutalities behind big words, and here's the problem. The hunting, whaling, and meat industry thinks you are stupid. They think you don't want to know what you support, and they think if they invoke high terms of conservation or economics as shallow justifications for killing, that you'll sit down, shut up, and keep funnelling billions of dollars to them without peering below their thin veneer of supposed logic. I know you are not stupid. I know you won't take my word for it either, you will find out for yourself. After all, I've been accused of being a rabid sentimentalist who thinks all animals should be saved and valued because they are living, breathing, amazing creatures of life and hope. I simply hope people will examine the facts behind the hunting and whaling industries and not believe animals are only worthwhile to us if they can make us money. Animals do not have to pay their way. We are the ones who have destroyed much of the Earth in our vile egocentrism. We are the ones who have wiped out countless animal species and continue to torture, confine, and brutalize kind harmless animals. We fin sharks and spear whales and gut shoot pregnant does with arrows. We slaughter whole elephant herds and saw off their ivory for trinkets and useless adornments. We consider ourselves some sort of gods due to the misinterpretation of a single word: Dominion. We are not more deserving or better than animals, and how dare any human demand any animal must pay their way through some insane notion of Sustainable Use. We are the ones with a debt to pay the animals and the Earth. In the life and death drama of humans and animals, it is apparent that we are the villains. There is no longer any doubt; we deserve damnation. Please don't kill animals.

Source used: Scully, Matthew. "Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy."