A Little Closer To Heaven

I am so outraged with my neighboring county I could scream! They voted yesterday in a meeting to declare elk in the are a nuisance animal and are allowing “necessary measures” to stop the nuisances. In other words, they’re giving permission to shoot an elk that gets into crops or harrrasses animals. Normally, I would be all for it, but there’s less than 500 elk in Arkansas and most of them reside in Newton County. I can’t speak for the crops, but every time I see elk in a cow field, they’re grazing right beside the cattle.

They should be ashamed of themselves. I don’t think they realize the can of worms they are opening up. Where is the accountability? This is a state protected animal and now it is okay to shoot them with no consequences. It opens up the chance of dishonest slayings of the elk and so much more. Not only that, but these elk herds congregate by the masses…it’s not a single elk problem and it won’t be taken care of by killing a single elk. It took years to get the population up to where it is now and they are jeopardizing all of that for the sake of a few grumpy farmers.

There are other ways to deal with this problem! Use your brain instead of your trigger-happy fingers, people! I guess the good news is this…though the county has okayed the killing of elk, the state forest service has not. Therefore, the first person to shoot an elk is almost surely headed to the supreme court. I just hope the trigger happy hillbillies from Newton County think about that before they decide to take out the “biggun” that’s eating their crops.

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