LETTERS

Turkey hunt sends wrong message to children

Posted 3/10/20

To the Editor: The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, in partnership with The Light Foundation, is offering a Youth Wild Turkey Hunt in Rhode Island this spring and it is open to youths ages 12 to 15. The Rhode Island Division of Fish &

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LETTERS

Turkey hunt sends wrong message to children

Posted

To the Editor:

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, in partnership with The Light Foundation, is offering a Youth Wild Turkey Hunt in Rhode Island this spring and it is open to youths ages 12 to 15.

The Rhode Island Division of Fish & Wildlife should exist to benefit all citizens, but they have become decidedly pro-hunter in practice. The promotion by a state agency sends the message to children that it is acceptable and even fun to kill and maim other living beings.

However, killing non-human animals desensitizes children to the suffering of other creatures. Encouraging young children to hunt communicates to them that they have the right to exercise their power over others violently simply because they have the weapons to do so.

One must ask the question: What does witnessing an animal take its last breath do for a child?

We should be encouraging children of all ages to behave compassionately toward animals, not to glorify killing defenseless animals.

There is an inconsistency in our message to children. We have educators teaching and conveying compassion in our schools while we have a state agency encouraging children as young as 12 years old to kill animals.

Having a juvenile pick up a weapon and aim it at another living being and fire must deaden a piece of a young person’s heart.

In addition, the experts will tell you that the prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in impulse control, is still immature and can develop an impulse control disorder in which a person has trouble controlling emotions or behaviors.

We don’t want our children watching violent movies or playing violent games, yet we are willing to look the other way when the state sanctions the killing of animals by 12-year-old children.

When we allow children to participate in the killing of animals, are we really attempting the desensitizing of a child to violence because it happened in the field and not in our streets?

Do we take our children to a slaughterhouse to subject them to that experience?

How do we justify the lack of compassion, lack of remorse or empathy, by intentionally harming animals for sport?

One doesn’t have to be an animal rights activist to find a problem with a state agency promoting 12-year-old children participating in the killing of animals.

Dennis Tabella

Director,

Defenders of Animals Inc.

Comments

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  • Justanidiot

    you keep your traditions and values. ill keep mine. we are being overrun with turkeys and it is a sensible plan to keep their population in check. if not the turkeys will be running all over the place and having the mayor of johnston chasing after them. think about that when you bite into a big, red juicy steak. yummmmmm

    Tuesday, March 10, 2020 Report this

  • Thecaptain

    Dennis,

    Here's a great recipe for wild turkey.

    Thin slice the breast meat and batter with egg and bread crumbs

    Heat virgin olive oil in a skillet with salt and pepper

    Pan sear each side for 3 minutes until golden

    Dry on paper towel to absorb excess oil

    Sprinkle parsley flakes

    Cut into small squares and serve with tooth pic

    Stop living in the produce isle and enjoy what God put on the earth to feed us.

    Tuesday, March 10, 2020 Report this

  • davebarry109

    Dennis...grow a pair. Hunters learn at an early age. Killing an animal that you then eat is better than going to McDonals for your food. You appreciate the wildlife. You would wait until everyone was 18 to begin hunting? Just because you are so 'sensitive' doesn't mean others need to be. Thank goodness most WWII vets were raised to be men. We would all be speaking German or RUssian now.

    Tuesday, March 10, 2020 Report this

  • Justanidiot

    h/g please. you are advocating that we kill innocent animals, plants, and anything else. just to keep humans going. don't you know that humans are a cancer on this planet that needs to be eliminated. well except for the elite on the east side. they can feast on the red blood of the blue collared working men that made america great

    Tuesday, March 10, 2020 Report this

  • Animallvr

    Way to speak out for the most vulnerable, Dennis! I am grateful men like you are having the bravery and courage to speak out. Killing animals is not a sport, it's violence. Children do not need to be shown how to be toxic- especially boys. The taking of an animals' live to prove one's "butchness" is a sociopathic behavior. I know this is often rewarded as a sign of toughness, but it is really ignorance and disconnect. Animals deserve to live, they don't want to be maimed or killed, and to demonstrate acts of severe detachment, of how to NOT have empathy destroys any hope for a peaceful world. I congratulate you Dennis. And for those who would try and inflict violence on any individual be they human or non- your time will come to an end and you will have to explain your actions. Activists like me and millions of others are bringing the right of personhood to animals which will l make it illegal to murder so that they are protected and violent offenders prosecuted. You might have the ability to commit state-sanctioned murder, but your descendants will not.

    Thursday, March 12, 2020 Report this

  • CravenMoorehead

    you can't grill it, until you kill it

    Thursday, March 12, 2020 Report this

  • davebarry109

    Animals do not have rights. THey are not people. You folks commenting here that equate hunting to 'butchiness', whatever that is, are incredibly wrong headed. Perhaps you deliberately equate hunting with machismo to denigrate it. Well, before you folks turned little boys into little girls, men hunted. Women also hunt now, in growing numbers. I guess they have sexual dysfunctions as well? No, you animal nuts need to put animals back in the place they belong. As pets and food.

    Saturday, March 14, 2020 Report this

  • Wuggly

    "Do we take our children to a slaughterhouse to subject them to that experience?"

    This line alone shows you have no understanding of hunting. Equating hunting to a slaughterhouse is stating custom hardwood furniture is the same as Ikea furniture. Two different animals entirely (pun intended).

    Humans have forgotten where food comes from and what life actually is. All life lives by killing something. Even plants can't grow in the same soil year after year unless that soil is replenished by nutrients from something that has died. Even if that something must travel through a digestive tract first.

    You look at it as 12 year old children killing animals. I see it as a lesson in life and death. Learning to be self sufficient, responsible and proactive in ones own livelihood.

    Sunday, March 29, 2020 Report this