Wild Hog Hunting From Helicopters Now Legal in Texas
Helicopter Based Hunts To Start In September 2011.
A law allowing to hunt wild pigs from helicopters and establishing minimal rules for the new 'sport' sped through and was passed by the legislature in Texas. It faced very little opposition The governor signed it without delay.
Up to now only landowners could contract with helicopter owners, pilots and shooters for hog eradication services on their property from the air. Now any ex-schoolyard bully, wannabe animal torturer and pretentious hero who is lacking the physical prowess to hunt a smart, resilient and cunning animal can take to the sky to mow down game that cannot look up to the sky even when its life depends on it.
Texas has the largest wild hog population in the United States. No Texan parking lot without its own hog, as the saying goes. Damage inflicted by the boar to agriculture, habitat and infrastructure is significant. Interested parties exaggerate it wildly to further their causes. Nevertheless, wild pig control and eradication measures are a must in Texas. But does that mean only cowardly helicopter hunting can solve the problem?
I doubt it.
The controversy is mostly not about the high number of wild pigs and the damage they are doing. There are much stronger financial incentives in play that promoted this decision. Landowners first began to charge hefty access and guide fees for hunting wild pigs on their properties. That gave boar the space and safety they needed for prolific breeding and population expansion. Today at a time of loud and persistent wailing by ranch owners about the damage the boar inflict on their properties, wild pig hunting in Texas is not cheap. Even a so-called free hunt will set you back over 250 dollars not counting travel expenses. A regular hog hunting weekend in Texas costs anywhere from $ 350.00 to more than $ 800.00 – without trophy fees.
Now ranchers found another way to increase revenue by selling hunting rights from helicopters to couch potatoes, out of shape big game hunters and sadistic murderers of Miss Piggy. How do they justify the double dipping? I do not know.
Overflight fees for the use of the air space above their ranches? And if that does not fly because of lack of jurisdiction, how about terming them 'removal fees' for the wild pig carcasses scattered all over their respective ranches?
Or meat processing fees for preparing the corpses for human consumption? Or 'sanitation fees' for taking the rotting, stinking cadavers to rendering plants?
No, this one will also not work. Removing road kill is the job of public services and their employees. Can't interfere with that.
But removing carcasses from private property is not their job. Who will do it? Helicopter operators and owners who run aerial wild boar hunting businesses? I do not think so. But if they did, they would need access to the private ranches for removal of killed pigs. Do I hear 'access fees' again? For land access?
I can see why hunting animals from helicopters has met so little resistance. Ranchers get the best of three worlds: Overflight and land access fees and free eradication of those pesky wild pigs; all wrapped in the mantle of thrilling helicopter hunts to rid the land to rid the land of the plague of wild hogs.
I hope the very same ranchers change their opinion when the first irresponsible helicopter operators and incompetent wannabe helicopter machine gunners start mowing down their livestock. I cannot wait.
Australian helicopter 'hunters' tried their greedy hands on boar hunting from helicopters with good initial success. Yet the boar soon developed their own countermeasures. What makes us think that it would be any different here?
And how about Santa Cruz Island off the coast of California? Helicopter hunting was supposed to rid the island from the wild pigs. It did – to a degree. The smart, wily old boar withdrew to the most inaccessible sectors of the island where even helicopters found it difficult to go. It took old fashioned experienced, fit professional hunters on foot to get them.
The new law lacks detailed safety feature and rules. Anyone with enough money to rent a seat on a helicopter can try his hand at wild hog hunting from the sky. Experience or not. Shooting down from an erratically moving platform at fast moving targets has its own problems. Accidents are bound to happen. Texans beware of the amateur cavalry in the skies!
We should all loathe the day when flying sadists will discover the need for caliber 50 machine guns to use on the dastardly goons below.
It starts innocently enough with land based modern night vision equipment, then progresses to the use of automatic weapons. Helicopters are only the first step on a very slippery slope to perversion. Helicopters equipped with heat seeking and night vision equipment will most likely lead to the demand for machine guns in the sky.
I searched quickly and found this picture that sort of reinforces the nightmare scenario: Helicopter gunships over private, public and park land in Texas, complete with crazed sadistic gunners spraying boar and other wildlife alike with machine gun fire to the tune of 'Flight of the Valkyries' of Apocalypse Now fame.
It is only a small step . . .
With landowners, helicopter companies, pilots and 'guides' all eager to cut out their piece of the newfound pie in the sky we can expect a proliferation of helicopter hunts and helicopter hunting organizers all over Texas. Prime hunting areas, that is sectors with flat territory and few obstructions on the ground, can be expected to see a high density of hunting helicopters.
Let's see how too many (new) helicopter companies and pilots, untrained shooters excited by the thrill of pursuit and erratic whirly birds in the sky can crowd accident free into prime air space without accidents and for how long.
Read for yourself how some hunting writers are already drooling over the prospect of engaging in the most exciting “hunt” of all times. Go to guns.com and look for their article on helicopter hunting in Texas, to 'funfix' and many similar publications.
But can we call these activities “hunting” at all? I for my part can not. True hunters always respected their game and used humane methods whenever possible. Even in times of subsidy hunting hunters thanked the game animals that sacrificed their life so that the hunter and his family or community may live. Modern sport hunters do their best to engage their quarry in a fair and humane manner.
High tech mechanized hunting from helicopters leaves not much to chance. It is neither fair nor humane.
It derives from warfare. By its very nature it is therefore designed to injure, maim and kill indiscriminately. Humanity is not a factor at all.
Killing animals from helicopters has only one justification, if it has one at all: To eradicate a species deemed destructive to the environment and a danger to humans. We should be honest enough to call it by its real name, species eradication, and not to besmirch the image of hunting and honorable hunters in efforts to whitewash a dirty job and get rich in the process.
Are we headed back to the times of market hunting? Have helicopters replaced market hunting trains when railroad barons shuttled train loads full of eager shooters to rid the prairies of pesky herds of bison that were taking up too much space and eating much grass?
If this is the future of hunting, then it is time for me to hang up hunting for good and join animal rights activists and PETA in a better, more wholesome kind of foolishness.
Once again human greed and the folly of politicians pandering to the interests of a few wealthy individuals have put us on a slippery path from which there will most likely be no return.
Wolves in Alaska, coyotes and hogs in Texas, wild pigs in San Diego County today - tomorrow bears everywhere and Grizzlies in Yellowstone and the Cascades.
Didn't a grizzly just kill a hiker in the Yellowstone. Helicopter gunners to the rescue!
Ah, wild horses. I forgot the wild horses and burrows. They eat the grass that huge cattle herds feast on. Let's mow them down instead of rounding them up and putting them on feed lots for the rest of their life. And the myriads of cattle that overgraze the land? Shoot 'em up from the sky.
But wait! They belong to the rich ranchers who love helicopter hunts. We cannot upset them.
Oh, Catalina Island in California has a few bison to spare.
Who or what will then be next?
Wild pigs in California?
Didn't a marauding band of boar from a nearby animal preserve raid the front yards of a tranquil rural community digging up manicured lawns and uprooting rose bushes? How dare they! Helicopters and machine gunners to the rescue!
PJJ
