so this isn't a hog filled wi tannreite? damn...
Posted on 03/07/2019 3:33:02 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
The Wild Hog Explosion has been called off by the Bandera County Library’s board of directors after a Bandera treatment center backed out of an agreement to operate the annual fundraising event in the face of angry criticism and reportedly threats from an animal rights organization that was protesting the show.
John Pearce, the vice president of the library’s board of directors, said the board met on Monday, March 4, and decided unanimously to cancel the Wild Hog Explosion because Warriors Heart had advised it by letter that it was withdrawing from a one-year agreement to host all but one event at the show and the board did not think it had the time to pull the event together itself or find another organization to step in for Warriors Heart.
The Wild Hog Explosion, which features contests pitting wild hogs against teams of youngsters who try to catch the fleeing animals in a small ring, place them in a sack and carry the past a finish line in the shortest time possible, is a major fundraiser for the library. The event was scheduled to be held at Mansfield Park on March 16 in what would have been its 17th year of operation but with someone other than the library as its prime operator.
“(Warriors Heart’s) decision will stand. There’s not enough time for us to do it,” said Pearce. “We’ve very disappointed it won’t happen.”
Josh Lannon, the founder and president of Warriors Heart, a treatment facility for military veterans and members of first responder organization, was out of the country but was available to comment about the situation by text.
He said his organization got involved in the event to help the library and the Bandera community by putting on a needed fundraiser that the library board was having a difficult time putting on itself.
“After really getting into it, we began to see how much anger and confusion there is around the event, especially with the hog sacking portion,” Lannon said in one of his texts.
He said Warriors Heart chose to withdraw from the agreement “after a chain of events,” and the final decision came after Warriors Heart officials talked to “fellow
business owners who were being threatened by animal activist.”
Lannon had texted on Thursday, Feb. 28, that Warriors Heart was “getting death threats from the activists” as well.
The Bandera Bulletin mistakenly reported in the Wednesday, Feb. 27 edition of the newspaper that Warriors Heart was excited to be part of the event and instead was “very concerned” about the explosion, which critics in the activist group were calling “animal cruelty,” wrote Lannon.
“This is something that Warrior Heart will not be part of,” Lannon said in text on Saturday, March 2, that confirmed his organization would not be supporting the event.
“(The) Warriors Heart mission and focus it to bring healing to our nation’s warriors and the community. The Wild Hog Explosion was now in conflict with our purpose and creating more harm to our community than good,” the center’s president said in a text on Monday, March 4.
Pearce said he had not received threats from the protesting group called Unparalleled Suffering and he was not aware of any other sponsoring agencies that had been threatened.
The library board official said last week that he thought the protestors had been misinformed about how the event was run. The hogs got plenty of water to drink during the contest, were kept in the shade before being released into a pen and were only used once during the show, Pearce said.
The board’s decision to cancel the show was not significantly influenced by the complaints and allegations of Unparalleled Suffering, which has been organizing its protest and commenting on other animal rights issues on its Facebook page, Pearce said. He said the decision was primarily the result of Warriors Heart’s decision not to be involved in the activity.
With less than two weeks until the event was scheduled to be held and without being able to identify another organization capable of pulling the event together in that time, the board chose to shut down the event this year.
Pearce did say the library board will still hold the one event it always had planned to operate – the Bacon Bingo, raffle-like event – though it will not be operated like it was before.
Instead of selling numbers on 300 squares that are laid out on the ground and awarding a $1,000 prize to the holder of the number where a pig first deposits his load, the library will hold a drawing for the winning ticket at the library on March 16, Pearce said.
Only a few tickets remain available for the event. Pearce said anyone interested in buying a ticket should make an inquiry at the library at 515 Main St. in Bandera or by calling 830-796-4213.
Attempts to obtain a comment from a representative of Unparalleled Suffering were unsuccessful.
On its Facebook page, it had called the explosion a festival “centered around disrespect and abuse of wild pigs” and urged its supporters to call the library, the Bandera County Chamber of Commerce and other local officials or send them emails or texts expressing their outrage at the event.
It mounted a petition drive against the event and encouraged supporters to turn out for the show to protest if it was not cancelled. A Feb. 26 post on the group’s Facebook page said nearly 10,000 people had signed the petition protesting conditions at the show.
Unparalleled Suffering also said its protests had shut down a similar hog sacking event planned at the Rio Frio Fest.
My work compadre knows a couple of those guys-and you are right-it will not be good PR for them-he said he heard a rumor that a couple of them were p****whipped into opposition by whiny women, and that sounds logical-since guys at work gossip, I’m sure the truth of it will be known by Monday or so-shunning isn’t just for the Amish...
Thanks——that’s how my Mom grew up,in very rural Nova Scotia——I get it.:-)
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You’re welcome-it is just a different world out here in redneck country...
More moral cowards.
so this isn't a hog filled wi tannreite? damn...
Bandera has sure gone downhill. Why don’t they put the “animal activist” in a sack and drag them across the line? Next you’re gonna tell me that beef jerky store has closed. (That would break my heart.)
We’ve been way “Disney-fied.” A lot of people think the world is a Disney movie, an amusement park, or a petting zoo.
I’ve noticed that just about every wildlife program anthropomorphizes animals. (”The mother coyote is worried that she won’t be able to feed her babies.” Really? Coyotes worry? How do you know?) A lot of people seem to believe that animals really are people, too.
I find hogs to be scary, myself. I have a relative who was bitten on the face by a hog when he was a child. He was literally scarred for life, emotionally as well as physically. My ex’s late mother had an aunt who had one arm amputated below the elbow following a hog attack. And those were domestic hogs, not feral ones.
Youngsters? Wild hogs? That combination can’t exist. REAL wild hogs are dangerous, foul beasts. And a “group of youngsters” is going to get one into a sack? Oh, I don’t think so. Something doesn’t add up in this reportage.
“So how do they feel about shooting them from helicopters with assault rifles?”
Pretty darn good if you’re with these guys!!
http://www.helihunter.com
First it was midget tossing and now it’s wild hogs....where will it stop?
+. My first question.
GMTA!
We have trapped them for years and have many traps that we occassionally set.
Hogs are smart. You have to bait them a while until they don’t think it is a trap.
I’d say your grandfather had a huge adrenalin rush from fear when he saw the sow attack your dad! Your dad was fortunate he was within earshot.
A lot of people don’t know that it’s not uncommon for sows to eat their own litters. Apparently they aren’t all born with maternal instincts.
Not long ago I was watching a nature program when they showed something that shocked me. A fox kit died and they showed the mother fox eating the body. I wasn’t shocked that it happened but that it was shown. That kind of reality isn’t common.
Yeah, some sows do eat their offspring. These tend to make it to the breakfast table a lot earlier than brood sows who succeed in delivering healthy litters. However even good mothers have stillborns and large litters can have an occasion stillborn or an weakling in a large litter that gets pushed away from an teat or just one that gets squished as the sow stands in the nest and resettles. That’s why it’s important to keep an carefully eye on the nursing sow for the first few days. Removal of the dead piglet is important so the good mother doesn’t develop “a taste” for “pork”
In nature, I imagine all animals have this instinct, mostly to keep the nest the clean of dead offspring(stillborn) or to remove an offspring that would be too weak to survive and the nutrients would be better given to an healthy littermate to thrive. And dead creatures could alert a pred
Mother
Nature can be cruel but she has to ensure her children live to ensure the next generation... and then the next. And she has many children to feed. And they all get hungry.
The Disney version or “anthropomorphizing” nature shows do a disservice to young viewers, especially urban and suburbans youths who will never see the wonders, and the horrors of Nature in the raw. Add in the ruse of the “villain” in these shows is usually Man. Usually in the pursuit of hunting, development of wild territory(pollution or expansion of suburbia) or of late, “Global Warming”
Kudos to the show that allowed the fox eating it’s young. It’s all part of “nature’
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