Interior official faulted for buffalo hunt, leaves office

[quaoar]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060719/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/interior_buffalo_hunt_1

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/19/a-high-level-interior-dept-official-has-stepped-down/

WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior Interior Department official was awarded his own buffalo to hunt and kill on a billionaire’s private ranch a month before his office designated Houston as a port for exotic wildlife — a move that benefited the ranch owner.

The official’s involvement “was inappropriate and violated the appearance standard,” the department’s inspector general said in a report.

The official, David P. Smith, was deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, when he shot and killed the buffalo during the first weekend of December 2004.

It was a buffalo whose health was failing due to old age, according to the report. Smith drove to about 30 yards to 40 yards away from the buffalo — an iconic mammal that is the official symbol of the Interior Department — and shot it in the eye.

[zonkers]

1. What a f_cking cockbag. Man, I'd like to give the Bufallo a gun. Nice

painless way for an old guy to go out. I'm sure he died instantly.

[quaoar]

4. This guy Smith

is a worthless piece of shit.

[Robbien]

2. What is it with BushCo and these canned hunts

Just a bunch of carnage loving cowards.

[Joanne98]

3. "The appearance standard" That saz it all.

[Bluzmann57]

5. Wonder whatever happened to non controlled hunts?

I'm not opposed to hunting at all, but what ever happened to a hunt where the animal has at least a fighting chance? He drove up to about 30 ft. from an old crippled up bison in a controlled environment. Where's the sport in that? If these assholes want to appear like "rugged outdoor types", they may think about going out into the field, with the proper papers (a hunting license), and take their chances like um...everyone else who hunts does.

[Ian David]

11. Hey, at least he showed-up to do it in person...

The Latest Fad in Internet Animal Cruelty: Pay-Per-View Hunting
April 8, 2005

It started in Texas. In late January, entrepreneur John Lockwood let a friend become the first "hunter" to kill a confined animal via computer. The friend, Howard Giles, sitting in his home office 45 miles from Lockwood's canned hunting ranch in the Texas Hill Country, squarely lined up the animal in his computer sights and clicked the mouse. A rifle mounted in a blind back on Lockwood's ranch then fired a bullet at a wild hog hunched over a feeding station.

At that point a page should have popped up on Giles' computer screen: Fatality Not Found. According to news reports, Giles' remote-control shot hit the hog in the neck, wounding the animal. Lockwood, on site at the ranch, shot the animal two more times to kill him.

Welcome to the whacked-out world of Live-Shot.com, where you can kill a captive exotic animal from the comfort of your living room. By turning a computer into a deadly weapon, Live-Shot.com has created trophy hunting without the fuss and muss of having to hunt at all. A March report by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted that more than 350 people are already members of Live-Shot.com, each paying $14.95 a month (plus $5.95 per ten rounds of ammunition) to fire at inanimate targets. Joystick hunting costs considerably more—$300 per two hours, which doesn't include the price of the animal killed, the meat processing, taxidermy, and shipping. Live-Shot.com expects the second computer-assisted "hunt" to take place on April 9, by an Indiana man paralyzed from the neck down

Just the possibility of desktop killing has united two groups that usually eyeball each other warily—humane advocates and hunters. State legislators are also setting their sights on Internet hunting. Even Live-Shot's home state has turned on it. Calling Internet hunting, "unnatural, unfair, and immoral," Rep. Todd Smith (R-Euless), introduced H.B. 2026, outlawing "computer-assisted remote hunting if the animal being hunted is located in this state." The bill was passed last June. But the Lone Star state wasn't alone in banning internet hunt. Not by a long shot.

More:
http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/wildlife_news/pay_per_view_slaughter.html


Good news: looks like they went out of business!


http://www.live-shot.com/

[Judi Lynn]

6. Unforgiveable. These people are hideous.

"Canned hunts," just like George H. W. _Bush. How manly. How "robust," to use a _Dubya administration favorite word.




Volunteer of the Year Ervin Davis of the National Bison Range (center), flanked by (from left) NWRA President Evan Hirsche, Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Fish Wildlife and Parks David P. Smith, Deputy Secretary nominee of the Department of the Interior Lynn Scarlett, and Executive Director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation John Berry.

(Second hero from the left)

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. DUH! I bet he is grumbling about losing his job for no good reason.

[daleo]

8. The buffalo was dying of old age

These guys write their own Onion articles, I swear.

[Sapere aude]

9. There is a guy in this town that has a sign on his car promoting the

conservation of quail so that there will be more to hunt and kill. Quail for life or something to that effect.

I could never understand the idea of hunters calling themselves conservationists. I would understand if it were back in the 1800's and you had to shoot your food to survive but today you go to the store to buy birds to eat. You don't have to go out in the field and shoot a bunch of quail. You do it for the fun of killing birds with your shotgun.

[jwirr]

13. Some wild game needs to be thinned out or they die of starvation

in their range. In some area's there is good food, weather, etc. all the things that allow a specie to overpopulate. In that case there is usually a hunting season. In my state the DNR keeps tract of the number of animals killed so that they do not endanger the total.

As to this guy calling himself a hunter - that is utterly ridiculous. Hunter's go out searching for a healthy animal to shot and do not pen an animal so they can slaughter it. Also most hunter's still eat the meat from their kill. My son-in-law hunts for his sister and her family who are poor.

[Judi Lynn]

10. From U.S. News & World Report: A Buffalo Not Roaming

~ snip ~
..... he attended an annual barbecue at the Double D ranch, a 5,000-acre spread southeast of Austin owned by Dan Duncan, a billionaire oilman.

Duncan is identified in the report as "the rancher," though not by name. It says that he "vaguely recalled some brief mention" of the Houston port designation during the gathering. The report says that Duncan also said that Smith was given the "honor" of killing the old, ill buffalo. "According to the rancher," the report continues, "one could practically walk up and pet the animal." Duncan said that Smith shot the buffalo from "30 to 40 yards away," investigators wrote.

Point blank. Smith says that the animal was dangerous and had damaged equipment on the ranch. He says that the ranch manager asked him to kill the animal--and that he was anywhere from 75 to 125 yards away when he shot the buffalo between the eyes with a .300 Winchester Magnum rifle. He shot it a second time in the same spot, then walked up and fired a third shot into its brain at point-blank range.

Smith says that Simpson completed the taxidermy work last August. The skull was bleached, the hide tanned, and the hooves made into bookends. He says he paid $2,770 for the work; the ranch charged him an additional $400 "for an old, excess bison."

Smith says some will ridicule him for killing an American icon. But he's comfortable with what he did, he says: "I killed the animal as humanely as possible."
(snip/)

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060716/24buffalo.htm

[quaoar]

12. Before too long the story will change

and the buffalo will be a charging bull about to trample some young children.

[Patchuli]

14. SICK!

I'm glad the asshat's fired! What kind of dirtbags get off on killing in the first place and then killing confined, old sick animals at that? Do these guys think it's makes them manly??

Ewwwwwwwwwuuuuuuu!! You hunt when you need the food. Obviously this rich POS did not. I'm happy that online thing got shut down. What sick-Os!