Hmmmmm. I guess I'm slow today. I just noticed that "little buddy" is being shown next to a completely different rug in the last pic. Don't tell me they have two of these things.

::shudder:: (I want to go home and cuddle my kitties in a bad way right now.)

Wow.
It's a living animal lover's nightmare come true on my local CL today. This is very weird indeed.

Seriously. Would you/could you decorate your home with these things? Even laying aside all of my personal convictions about "sport hunting", I can't see these as anything other than murder victims. (Oh wait, maybe my convictions are showing again ... ;-))

Here is a link that might be useful: 'nother one ...

Auntjen, that is soooo disgusting! Having a dead body with it's head on the floor to walk on everyday???? I can't even conceive how someone would want that !! That thing used to be alive and it's poor eyes are looking at you? It's like putting roadkill into your house for decoration. Yuk IMHO.

I used to have a mounted mule deer head in one of my "ex" homes. Eventually I tired of it and sold it, and I really wouldn't care to have another one. I do understand why people would hang something like that in their home. I have friends who hunt for sport and food (at the same time), and they enjoy displaying what they've killed to make a few meals off of! But I just can't fathom wanting a big old dead cat or dead bear on my floor. The bear especially reminds me of the old Addams Family episodes. Creepy, man.
;-)

My husband doesn't mount his deer heads but he does shoot, kill, clean them. And yes, then I cook it (deer sausage in gumbo). It's heavenly.

Susan

Well, I guess I should clarify that I didn't post this in order to debate hunting (although I think I've made it clear that I personally think killing an animal strictly for the sake of killing it is abhorrent) -- but I do wonder how others react to the cat and bear rugs. Would you have such a thing in your home? Maybe it wouldn't seem quite so awful if the head wasn't attached. I mean, I've seen plenty of cowhide rugs that don't make me think immediately of Old Bossy grazing in the pasture, ya know? There's something about those heads (and eyes, although I realize they're glass), and the claws that just really creeps me out.

It breaks my heart. I don't care what anyone says, it's horrifying and a frivolous waste of another's life. No, I could not have anything like that in my home. Probably could not visit another's home with that kind of thing going on either.

Unless you're a vegan, much of the food you eat comes from animals. I realize this and I'm definitely not a vegan. On the other hand, it bothers me to see animals killed just for sport. I do realize that there are many good people out there that do this, but I surely couldn't. I could never live with rugs like that myself. Heck, I don't even step on ants if I can help it and I catch spiders to let them outside safely.
Lynn

My next door neighbor in NC, a mom of three evangelical Christian homeschooled boys, actually paid someone to get her and her husband up in a hunting stand above a baited area, to which a little black bear *cub* came, attracted by the candy, and my wonderful neighbor *shot* the curious cub basically point blank. The little guy, some mama bear's little son, didn't have a chance. He wasn't doing anything wrong.

They have him as a tiny rug, head still attached like that picture, in their family room in front of their fireplace so their human boys can have the memory of their mom's domination of nature. They're *terribly* self-righteous about it--she's so proud that she showed herself that she could "kill something if she needed to". The soul *reels*.

I'm so glad we don't live next to them anymore.

I think that it pays for those of us who eat meat to know how the bacon, steak, and lamb chops arrive on our tables. When I was a high school senior we had a very progressive social studies teacher who took us to visit places of a certain kind of infamy in the Chicago area. We visited the (empty) cell blocks of Cook County jail, a nightmarish state mental hospital (during which visit a stark-naked woman walked right through our group), morning drunk court on Skid Row - and a slaughterhouse/meat-packing plant. Chicago was at that time the center for meat-packing, and in those days the stench from those plants blanketed the South Side in the hot summers. We saw everything, and I mean everything, in terms of killing and packing pigs, cows and sheep. I actually wish that I hadn't gone, because almost fifty years later, I can't get those images out of my mind. A few weeks later, my mother threw out all the clothes I'd worn that day, as the stink couldn't be removed. I refused to eat meat for awhile, but finally relented, although I will not eat veal.

My point is that the meat we eat is so nicely packaged in supermarkets and we are oblivious of the tremendous suffering that animals go through at the end - if I just explained about the pigs you would never touch another slice of bacon (I am Jewish, so that's not a problem for me - and yes, we saw the style of kosher slaughter also). Animals that are hunted and killed in the wild have far "happier" lives and way far easier deaths than little Elmer Fudd or Bossie the Cow, whose ribs are sitting on your dinner plate. In fact, they have easier deaths by a hunter's round than they would going naturally by disease or a predator. And to me, there's no difference between wearing leather shoes, a real croc handbag, having calfhide on the ottoman, or a bearskin, head and all, on the floor. It is all for human comfort and pleasure. Each of us comes to terms with these tastes in our own way. But I don't see the dilemma in having Bambi on the wall (not that I'd do it!) and stroking the "soft, buttery" leather of a new squashy handbag. IMO people who hunt are entitled to their enjoyment just as much as I am of the new leather sofa.

I am absolutely not a vegetarian; I have tried it and can't do it, but I have thought through what eating meat involves. I could never hunt, could never shoot a living creature, but we have many friends who do - nice, "educated" professionals, such as our dentists and a couple of doctors, and several neighbors. Our friends across the street are retired teachers, and he loves to hunt wild boar. In fact, he brought us some boar meat - gack - a few years ago, proud of his success. It sat wrapped and frozen in our freezer until I just threw it out, we couldn't look at it.

Not trying to set up a nasty argument here; I am not the sort of poster who likes doing that. But I've read through so many of our threads about hunting, etc., and have always wanted...

sable, I'm pretty sure my neighbors didn't eat the bear or do a darn thing with it except parade it. They didn't use it at all.

Subsistence hunting is one thing, but sport hunting of carnivores serves *no* purpose at all.

Very well written and stated sable. I completely agree.

My biggest complaint with hunting is that the hunters are usually going for the biggest and best trophy, thereby slowly wiping out the genetically stronger bloodlines.

Fortunately the first post was removed from CL.

I was at a meeting at the Fish & Wildlife office recently and the room had mounts of all sorts of animals that had been poached or otherwise illegally taken. Dozens of bucks, beavers, elk, big horn sheep, and even a very large cougar. It was kind of disturbing to be in that room, being the only non-hunter, but at least F&W preserved the animals for teaching tools.

Also, when they catch poachers, they confiscate their guns, bows and whatever. Sometimes they even get the boats, trailers and trucks. The items are sold and the monies are used for educational purposes. Still, it makes me squeamish to see wild animals shot for sport.

pesky, which state are you in, may I ask? I've interacted with DFW people in my state (Oregon) mostly concerning cougar protection but not been to the offices --I see you're in the PNW too--did I space that you are in OR too?

My husband is a deer hunter in Maine and when he gets a deer, he pays for the butcher and all of the packages are sent to the homeless. If the deer populations were not cropped every year, there would be an over poplulation in deer and the amount of available food would not suffice. It is a survival of the fittest and very often my husband finds skeletons of tiny deer who were not able to reach the higher branches due to their small stature and the depth of the snow. In my opinion,keeping a handle on the deer population is not only absolutely necessary but also a kinder death to the animal. As for bear rugs and bear killing,he and I are opposed. It always surprises me that people don't seem to mind about fish or clams etc. Wonder why.

yaya, that's pretty much where we come down, too. Subsistence hunting is fine (at this point unless we get to the point where we all need to take deer, and then we'll have to ration them out and leave some for the cougars too), although one reason there's an overpopulation of deer over there is that their natural predators other than man have been eradicated (e.g. cougars).

I know this wasn't supposed to be turned into a debate about hunting, so I kind of hestitate to post this. But I am going to do it anyhow, just in the sake of healthy collegial discussion :-) Even for a vegan - native habitats - such as native forest and native prairie have been destroyed and turned to cropland to grow the non-native vegetables consumed by people. The destruction of natural habitat (whether it be for people's vegetables, their houses, their roads, etc) leads directly to the death of native animals. The end result from vegetable farming is not different than hunting or animal farming. There is no blame in it, it is just the way of mother nature - living things must consume other living things to survive. The goal for all of us should be to do things sustainably.

My husband hunts regularly, and I have hunted in the past. Our whole family eats what we kill (we usually butcher it ourselves), and we also give some away to people who ask for it ahead of time. We also grow a huge vegetable garden in the summer, and have fruit trees. Yes, I afford to shop at the grocery store, but we choose to provide what we can for ourselves. The deer from our own property are fully organic, are much cheaper than organically farmed food, and live a more natural life than even organically farmed animals do. I think people would have much more respect for the food they ate - be it meat or vegetables, if they had to participate more in its harvesting and preparation. The grocery store is so far removed from the natural state.

I echo what sable said, and she said it very well.

Honestly, these conversations make me want to just roll over and die. Is that what we're supposed to do?

Squirrelheaven - Well, if this is a forum about what is and is not "in", appropriate, and tasteful in decorating, then IMO it's okay to discuss it. Personally, I was far more offended by identifying the purported bear cub killers as evangelical Christian homeschoolers, as if that had anything to do with the subject, and was insulting to the many E.C.H-ers who post here. I say "purported" because where there is a cub there is virtually always a mama bear; and how would one descend from one's perch and drag the cub home without a roaring sow coming on like the derailed train in The Fugitive?

I am not 'offended.' And much of the conversation is not about decorating. It is also ok to talk about it, for those who enjoy the discussions.

I was saying how these conversations, and some of the arguments that are usually made, make me feel. I have come away from them eating bread, nuts, and water.

Looking at the cub post you refer to, I agree that it's particularly odd for a very religious family to plan a family outing with the kids around the shooting of baby cubs. I don't see how that statement has anything to do with the group as a whole, as you say. Their own behavior just wouldn't seem to fall into that belief system.

Ah, I see, sable...I wondered what was being referred to.

Oh I can tell you, it was a definite reality. Unless you don't want to believe me. I don't know how they got the dead cub away from the mama, but there it was. They also had a professional guide there who probably made it happen.

Basically canned sport hunting doesn't seem to go with the other values they supposedly espoused -- it always *baffled* me that one could value a "culture of life" and think that it's great to kill a non-offending baby animal just because one wanted to. Would the story seem more acceptable to you if I'd left that aspect out? It was *the* most prominent, determining, constantly in-evidence aspect of their lives, and there they were with that baby animal dead in their family room. It wasn't an irrelevance to *anything* they did. But hey. Let's say it was just any old family that killed a baby bear and put it on their family room hearth. Is that better?