Look What I Did

I know you’ve seen the pictures. Selfies taken with the kill of the day fill the scrapbooks and the social media sites. Stories of the ‘one that got away’ are as numerous as the trophies heads on the wall.

Editor’s note: What follows may (or will) offend some so read on at your own risk.

Now I realize that hunting and fishing are classified as sports and the 2^nd amendment guarantee the right for any schmo to go into a store and come out packing and that history shows our necessary for killing animals to survive.

Yet today, in the 21^st century, with all the options to questionably nutritious food, why do we still feel the need to go out and kill something? What would make a civilized individual wake in the middle of the night, put on layers of camo, place traps and decoys and wait for the prey to come close to surprise them with overpowering force?

Wouldn’t it be more of a ‘sport’ if you chased a deer on foot? Face a bear off with a knife? Swam underwater to catch a fish with our opposing thumb hands?

Of course not, for we have superior intellect to outsmart creatures just trying to find water, shelter, and enough food to continue their evolution. Besides we have a massive industry grinding out new and more deadly methods of killing the helpless.

Genesis 1:26-29 King James Version

26 And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth”.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”.

We have been assigned by God to have dominion over all the animals. Dominion means a self-governing autonomous state. From what I read autonomous means acting independently or having the freedom to do so.

I fully understand if a tiger has been pushed out of its territory by over development and is attacking children for food that protective measures must be used. If wolves attack our flock more intense measures than a dog are needed.

Our history shows we have used our ‘dominion’ with glee, just ask the American Buffalo.

Today as we throw that steak or salmon on the grill, we have lost sight of the animals raised for slaughter. We avoid sight of the cramped living conditions or the herding into trucks to be filed into killing zones to be sliced and diced and hung out to dry. The dominative animals didn’t know what was about to happen anymore that those at Auschwitz Birkenau.

Of course you have seen the trawlers ‘harvesting’ the sea with giant nets scooping up masses of families and friends out of their natural environment to drop them on the decks. That little floppy dance they are doing is merely suffocation, the same as if they dragged you down to the oceans depths.

Like any animal, there are natural predators. Those that feed off the weak or vulnerable for survival, but is it sport?

Through all this rambling, my point is ‘Why?”

If we raise our pets and care for them yet go out and kill defenseless animals how are we following ‘God’s word?’

What is it about wearing a fur around our neck that makes us glamorous? Putting a stuffed head on the wall makes us macho? The last tiger rug on the floor will make interior design awards?  Are those real ivories or plastic keys on that piano?

Let’s face it; we like to kill. Any reading of our history is about the continuous bloody trail of bodies.

We have settled to not only have dominion over the animals but we expanded it to each other. I think the 5^th commandment said something like “Thou shalt not kill”. Seems we threw that one out with the trash.

If the violent video games don’t fill your thrill, we continue to find some reason to amass armies and invade lands of others and create carnage of innocent and guilty. After you sign up and are handed the latest technology for mutilating another human being remember, they shoot back, unlike the animals.

Proud mama and papa as you take that photo of your youngster on their first fishing outing watching in amazement of what they had done to another resident of the planet and you are pouring glorifying praise on the accomplishment of killing, tell your child to look into the camera and say, “Look what I just murdered”.