Each fall, elk, those colossal members of the deer family second only to moose in mass, go into rut--a fitting term for their mating season, indicative of the bulls’ one-track mind at the time. Their obsessive behavior includes bugling and strutting while showing off to the weary cows, and when challenged by another well-antlered bull, posturing and occasionally sparring. Although their showy racks of antlers appear to be lethal weapons, contestants are seldom hurt, and never intentionally. The same two bulls locking horns during the rutting season were likely inseparable pals throughout the previous spring and summer. The elk rut is a rank-establishing ritual proven, over many millennia, beneficial to the herd. It’s a contest with simple rules: the biggest, oldest bulls (usually with the most impressive antlers) have two or three weeks to round-up as many cows as possible for their harem and breed with each of them as they go into estrus, while the younger bulls try to lure a few away and start a party of their own.

Autumn in elk country would not be complete without the stirring sound of solicitous bulls bugling-in the season of brightly colored leaves, shorter days and cooler nights. Nothing, save for the clamor of great flocks of Canada geese, trumpeter swans or sandhill cranes announcing their southward migration, is more symbolic of that time of year. And just as any pond or river along their flyway devoid of the distinctive din of wandering waterfowl seems exceedingly still and empty, any forest or field bereft of the bugling of bull elk feels sadly deserted and lifeless.

Yet there are broad expanses of the continent, once familiar with these essential sounds of autumn, where now only the blare of gunfire resounds. By the end of the Nineteenth century, a great wave of humanity blowing westward with the force of a category 5 hurricane--leveling nearly everything in it’s destructive path--had cut down the vast elk herds, leaving only remnants of their population in its wake. Today, a different kind of rite rings-in the coming of fall over much of the land. Following in the ignoble footsteps of those who hunted to extinction two subspecies, the Mirriam’s and the Eastern elk, nimrods by the thousands flood the forests and take to the fields in hopes of reliving the gory glory days of the 1800s.

Revisionists have tried to downplay the obvious direct impact of hunting, spreading the nonsense that non-hunters are just as much to blame for the current plight of endangered species as those who participate in their slaughter. Meanwhile, from the likes of Teddy Roosevelt with his head-hunting safaris here and in Africa, to John Kerry with his backfiring camo-clad goose-hunt-media-stunt, to Dick Cheney blindly blasting at birds, spraying lead at anything or anyone that moves, politicians have shamelessly courted the hunter vote while helping to promote the “wise-use” propaganda that “hunters are the best environmentalists.” For his part, the great varmint hunter, George W. Bush, recently penned (in crayon, no doubt) an executive order encouraging more hunting on national wildlife refuges. “Sportsmen” have enjoyed so much laudation of late they’re beginning to think of themselves as environmental heroes.

What’s worse is that many of today’s green groups have come to think they’re right. They should reread the words of Sierra Club founder, John Muir: “Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when godlike human beings will become truly humane, and learn to put their animal fellow mortals in their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners. In the mean time we may just as well as not learn to live clean, innocent lives instead of slimy, bloody ones. All hale, red-blooded boys are savage, fond of hunting and fishing. But when thoughtless childhood is past, the best rise the highest above all the bloody flesh and sport business…”

Maybe Muir’s irony and message is lost on the new Sierra Clubbers. Why else would they be advocating for the benefits of living “slimy bloody lives?” But Edward Abbey’s sentiment should be obvious enough for anyone: “To speak of harvesting other living creatures, whether deer or elk or birds or cottontail rabbits, as if they were no more than a crop, exposes the meanest, cruelest, most narrow and homocentric of possible human attitudes toward the life that surrounds us.”

John Muir, Edward Abbey and many of the early founders of the environmental movement had the best interests of wildlife and nature in mind, clearly recognizing homo sapiens as just one among many thousands of animal species on the planet--no more important than any other in the intricate web of life. Hence, these enlightened trailblazers abhorred trophy hunting. But a shocking turn-around has taken place in the modern bastardization of the environmental movement--certain large green groups are embracing (read: sleeping with) hunters. In a transparent effort to appear more down-home and thereby more in touch with nature, they’re making the dangerous mistake of joining forces with hunters whose so-called wildlife conservation ethic exists only so animals can be harvested again and again. These savage children live for the day they can register a record-breaking trophy with the Boone & Crocket Club, a group formed by Teddy Roosevelt “to promote manly sport with rifles.”

The Fund for Animals creator, Cleveland Amory, took issue with this statesman in his anti-hunting epic, “Man Kind? Our Incredible War on Wildlife.” A truly benevolent animal proponent, Mr. Amory writes, “Theodore Roosevelt...could not be faulted for at least some efforts in the field of conservation. But here the praise must end. When it came to killing animals, he was close to psychopathic.” Dangerously close indeed (think: Ted Bundy). But don’t let on to a hunter what you think of his esteemed idol, because, as Mr. Amory put it,“...the least implication anywhere that hunters are not the worthiest souls since the apostles drives them into virtual paroxysms of self-pity.” Amory goes on to write, “...the hunter, seeing there would soon be nothing left to kill, seized upon the new-fangled idea of ‘conservation’ with a vengeance. Soon they had such a stranglehold [think: Ted Nugent] on so much of the movement that the word itself was turned from the idea of protecting and saving the animals to the idea of raising and using them--for killing. The idea of wildlife ‘management’--for man, of course--was born.”

The infertile union between hunting and environmental groups is motivated by a shared notion that humans are the most valuable constituents in the environment and their wants must be taken into consideration--each and every gourmandizing, carnivorous one of them. Super-sized corporate green groups, seduced by a desire to engage as many paying members as they can get their hands on regardless of their attitudes towards animals, must think blood-soaked money is just as green underneath as any.

Fortunately, a dedicated few are seeing through the murky sludge spread where green fields once thrived. Sea Shepherd’s Captain Paul Watson (founder and president of about the only remaining group still using the word conservation to mean protecting and saving animals) recently took another in a lifetime of bold stands for the animals when he resigned from his position on the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club. He refused to be a part of their whorish sleeping with the enemy: their pandering to “sportsmen” by holding a “Why I Hunt” essay contest, complete with a grand prize trophy hunt to Alaska.

Applauding hunters for their environmental efforts, while ignoring the deadly results of their primal passions, can be likened to praising pedophilic priests for sheltering homeless choirboys--or cheering Michael Jackson for a generous donation to Big Brothers of America--while choosing to remain willfully ignorant of their true motives in spending time with youngsters. Turning a blind eye to “conservationist” hunters’ offenses against animals is not much different than discounting Ted Bundy’s crimes against women just because he volunteered some of his time on a rape crisis hotline. Like covetous child molesters, hunters prey on the defenseless; and like serial killers, they leave their victims emotionally scarred and physically wounded or dead.

How will the Sierra Club and others divorce themselves from this unholy alliance when hunters hold a contest hunt on coyotes or a call for a cull on cougars, wolves or grizzlies that are taking too many of “their” elk, deer, moose or caribou? Like the naive young girl who falls for the charms and promises of a carefree sociopath and later learns of his violent, abusive side, let’s hope when their love affair finally goes sour, the Sierra Clubbers realize they didn’t have that much in common with hunters after all.

Real environmentalists care deeply about the animals of the Earth and allow their emotions to help guide their conscience. Their inspiration is essentially altruistic. Conversely, hunters’ impetus is to serve their own interests, which they consistently put high above those of their victims. To them “game” animals are an objectified enemy--possessions to be guiltlessly harvested without the slightest sign of “human” emotion.

Aside from such basal feelings as thrill or hubris, emotion is forbidden among hunters, a doctrine particularly clear whenever they lobby wildlife law-makers. How many times have animal advocates heard, “Wildlife laws should be based on science, not emotion”? Science is important for understanding behavior, the workings of nature and our place in the universe, etc., but does not provide guidance for morals or ethics. There is no scientific argument against pedophilia, for example, or any other human on human crime a hedonistic perpetrator comes up with. Laws against cruelty to innocent victims are crafted by people who rely on their sympathies for the victims and their emotional attachments to the innocents. Those who can feel empathy and have compassion for the other creatures of this planet should be the ones making decisions concerning their welfare, but wildlife policy-makers tend to side with the phlegmatic animal abusers.

Possessing only shallow emotions is one of the key symptoms of psychopathy, according to the Psychopathy Checklist spelled out by psychologist, Robert Hare, PhD. Other symptoms include a lack of empathy, remorse and guilt. In his book, “Without Conscience,” Dr. Hare writes of psychopaths: “In the final analysis, their self image is defined more by possessions and other visible signs of success and power than by love, insight, and compassion, which are abstractions and have little inherent meaning for them.” While every hunter may not be a full-blown psychopath scoring 100% on the checklist, the desire to possess the head, skin and flesh of another living being to gain a sense of power sure points in that direction.

Instead of asking hunters to write essays explaining why they hunt--why they stalk, shoot and take the lives of other sentient beings--the Sierra Club would do better to examine what motivates serial killers who prey on human victims. But these predatory psychopaths are proficient at rationalizing and justifying their crimes, to themselves and to others. The same holds true for hunters who--individually, or as a well-represented whole--have invented volumes of validation in hopes that their acts of conspicuous cruelty may one day seem justified to those who question their “need” for unnecessary killing. As Mr. Amory observed, “Man has an infinite capacity to rationalize his own cruelty.”

The reason hunters hunt is simple and always the same: because they want to--it makes them feel good and boosts their floundering self-esteem. They imagine themselves reaping the power of the stately bull elk as they shoot him, slaughter him and devour his flesh. To them, elk are nothing more than pawns in their big game.

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This article will appear in the upcoming issue of the Animals Voice Magazine.