Animal Radicalism Comes In All Shapes and Forms, Pro and Con

From Birdpond's blog:

Two assertions long made regarding both trophy hunting and serial killing may have now been shown by science to indeed be related; DMGDS (Diminutive Male Genitalia Disorder Syndrome) and the serial murderers addiction to killing – no matter if the victims are human or non-humans.

The recent war on wolves in the American west, and the rabid, frightening intensity with which so-called ‘sportsmen’ are frothing at the mouth and swarming into the wilderness to blast, arrow, trap, poison and snare grey wolves and other essential predators, illustrates this graphically.
Given an EXCUSE to legally kill wolves or other predators, for instance, the socially malcontent and frustrated use these innocent animals as scapegoats for their personal problems. Just visit YouTube for the graphic and disturbing videos they post of bowhunts, trapped animals suffering while the trappers wax poetic for the video camera; or note in some what seems for all the world like orgasmic moans and screams the moment the hunter’s arrow or bullet strikes an unsuspecting animal.
For a full report on the link between serial killing and trophy hunting please see this post from Howling for Justice.  The story contains a well-researched article from famed ‘Lion Man’ and wildlife advocate Gareth Patterson and includes a video on canned lion hunts that I recommend that you watch.
And the oft-heard comment that Big White Hunter must be compensating for a very small ‘package’?  Well, that may very well be true. Please see the report from the Diminutive Male Genitalia Disorder Research Foundation, which has found the long-suspected genetic abnormality on the 21st chromosome; an abnormality which implicates ‘under-endowment’ with a psychological need to dominate a helpless victim (Controlled Victim Aggression Manifestation). While this study may have been intended as parody, there’s no denying that ‘real men’ should not have to indulge in deliberate cruelty and sadism to ANY creature, human or non-human, to get their ‘jollies’.
From the evidence it appears both trophy hunters and serial killers are driven by abnormalities of the psyche and not only need help but they need to be removed from mainstream society for the protection of humans, pets and wildlife.

"I have always assumed if your cause was so just, it would be accepted on it's merit's and not on the fact that you have manufactured false claims.  I have always felt he same way about religion.  If it is all that is claimed, there should be no need to threaten with the damnation of hell, for non believer's and one's that chose to follow a different path.   As Birdpond above, and Blogging for the Grey Wolf  below, have seemed to stereotype anything, everything, and anybody in the world that they disagree with, and apparently are learned in Sociology as well as Psychology, I would hope they could offer their expertise on Bishop Robert Carlson, Lt. Col. Edward James Corbett, and President Theodore Roosevelt. 

Don't assume for a moment that it is the animal activist's that are this ignorant or desperate for their cause.  Last week I was involved in a discussion on facebook on a closed group called The Elephant Team, a group "supposedly" interested in preserving and discussing elephant's in captivity including zoo's and circus's.  I would have thought that would include me, given I have trained and shown elephants for half my career of 35 years.  I found out different when it was suggested that we no longer call an "elephant hook" an elephant hook, and instead unanimously agree to call it only a guide.  When I suggested we leave it as it is, least we give the impression that their is something wrong with it, instead of an inept person who may be using it,  the comment was met with a barrage of the most vile, evil, sloughing of my character you can ever imagine.  Not from animal activists or elephant trainers, but from "with it and for it", never worked or trained an elephant circus groupies(no, they were not fan's.  Circus fan's are much different)  One was a gay trapeze artist from Europe, one was a dog breeder, an anonymous one was involved with the circus many years ago as a publicist married to the owners son,  one knew someone who trained elephants in Canada, and a few other gadjoe's and gunsel's.   I exited myself from this group of "experts" immediately because I realized I wasn't qualified to be a member of The Elephant Group.  These self righteous, self appointed, self aggrandized "elephant expert's" in their mind think they are helping the elephant cause.  Helping as much as Birdpond and Blogging for the Grey Wolf are helping legitimate conservation..............."


Howling For Justice-Blogging for the Grey Wolf:

Is Trophy Hunting A Form of Serial Killing?

By Gareth Patterson

For me – and the many people who contact me to offer their support – killing innocent animals for self-gratification is no different from killing innocent people for self-gratification. By extension, then, trophy hunting – the repeated killing of wild animals – should surely be viewed as serial killing. And in the same moral light humanity’s thinking is, I feel, beginning to approach such a level of morality.

What are the comparisons between trophy hunting and serial killing?

To attempt to answer this question, I did some research into the gruesome subject of serial killing. I learnt firstly that serial murder is a grotesque habit which analysts regard as addictive. Serial murder, I learnt, is about power and control – both linked to the killers’ longing to “be important”.

It appears when the serial killer commits the first act of murder, he experiences feelings such as revulsion and remorse, but the killing – like a dose of highly addictive drug – leads to more and more murders until the person is stopped. Researchers have discovered that serial murderers experience a cooling-off period after a killing, but as with a drug craving, the compulsion – the need to kill – keeps building up until the killer heads out again in search of another victim.

Trophy hunters are mostly “repeat” killers. This is further fuelled by elite trophy hunting competitions. It has been calculated that in order for a hunter to win these competitions in all categories at the highest level, he would have to kill at least 322 animals.

Pornography is perceived by analysts as a factor that contributes toward serial killers’ violent fantasies – particularly “bondage-type” pornography portraying domination and control over a victim.

Hunting magazines contain page after page of (a) pictures of hunters, weapon in hand, posing in dominating positions over their lifeless victims, (b) advertisements offering a huge range of trophy hunts, and (c) stories of hunters’ “exciting” experience of “near misses” and danger.

These pages no doubt titillate the hunter, fuelling his own fantasies and encouraging him to plan more and more trophy hunts.

Trophy hunters often hire a cameraperson to film their entire hunt in the bush, including the actual moments when animals are shot and when they die. These films are made to be viewed later, presumably for self-gratification and to show to other people – again the need to feel “important”?

This could also be seen as a form of trophy which mirrors in some respect pornographic “snuff” videos known to be made by some serial killers. Other serial killers have tape-recorded the screams of their victims, which were kept for later self-gratification.

There is a strong urge to achieve perceived “heroism” in serial murderers. This is linked to the individual’s craving for “self-esteem”. Student Robert Smith, for example, who in November 1996 walked into a beauty parlour in Mesa, Arizona, and shot five women and two children in the back of the heads, said of his motivation to kill: “I wanted to become known, to get myself a name”.

Multiple killer Cari Panzram (among whose victims were six Africans he shot in the back “for fun” while working for an oil company in Africa) once stated of his actions: “I reform people”. When asked how, he replied: “By killing them”. Panzram also liked to describe himself as “the man who goes around doing good”.

The “Stockwell Strangler” of South London in the mid-1980s who told police he wanted to be famous is another example of how the serial killer clearly confuses notoriety for fame.

Are the trophy hunter’s killings linked to the serial killer’s addiction to murder, to achieve what is perceived to be heroism, to deep-rooted low self-esteem, to wanting to be famous – the “name in the trophy book”?

Certainly one could state that, like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans his killing with considerable care and deliberation. Like the serial killer he decides well in advance the “type” of victim – i.e. which species he intends to target. Also, like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans with great care where and how the killing will take place – in what area, with what weapon.

What the serial killer and trophy hunter also share is a compulsion to collect “trophies” or “souvenirs” of their killings. The serial killer retains certain body parts or other “trophies … for much the same reason as the big game hunter mounts the head and antlers taken from his prey … as trophies of the chase,” according to Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman in The Serial Killers, a book on the psychology of violence.

In The Serial Killers, the authors wrote about Robert Hansen, an Alaska businessman and big-game enthusiast who hunted naked prostitutes through the snow as though they were wild animals, then shot them dead. Hansen would point a gun at his victim, order her to take off all her clothes, and then order her to run. He would give his victims a “start” before stalking them. The actual act of killing his victims, Hansen once said, was an “anti-climax” and that “the excitement was in the stalking”.

How many times have I heard trophy hunters describing their actions in similar terms? “No, hunting isn’t just about killing,” they say. “It’s also about the stalk, the build-up to the kill”.

Hansen was a trophy hunter, who, according to Wilson and Seaman, had achieved “celebrity by killing a Dall sheep with a crossbow”. He also trophy hunted women but, as a married man with a family, he couldn’t put his human trophies next to those elk antlers and bear skins in his den.

As an alternative, Hansen, it was revealed, took items of jewellery from his victims as “trophies” and hid these in his loft so that, as with his animal trophies, he, the hunter, could relive his fantasy-inspired killings whenever he wished to.

According to Wilson and Seaman, Jack the Ripper cut off one victim’s nose and breasts and “as if they were trophies, displayed them on a bedside table, together with strips of flesh carved from her thighs”.

Jewellery, body parts, clothing such as underwear and so on, are all known “trophies” of the serial killer. One serial killer flayed his victim and made a waistcoat from the skin as a “souvenir” or “trophy”.

What could the non-hunting wives, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children reveal of the nature and behaviour of a hunter in the family? Could they reveal that the hunter had a very disturbed childhood?

Almost half the serial killers analysed during behavioural research were found to have been sexually abused in childhood. Environmental problems early in life manifest in many cases in violence such as cruelty to animals. Maybe they have a frustrated craving for “self-esteem”, a deep desire to be recognized, a resentment against society? All these factors are some of the known links to the profile of the serial killer.

Lastly, serial killing has been described as a “20th-Century phenomenon”. The same could be said of Western trophy hunting in Africa.