White Buffalo, Inc. - Animal Abuse, Point Reyes Fallow Deer, Local Horror

August 9, 2007 on 2:41 am | In Sonoma County Wildlife |

Marin County, California
August 2007

Point Reyes National Seashore Superintendent Don Neubacher welcomed animal exterminators, White Buffalo Inc., to our local seashore at the end of July. West Marin locals are seeing the helicopters, seeing Fallow and Axis does with ear tags and collars, and seeing large storage containers that will hold the bodies of the 1000 mother deer that White Buffalo will rocket-net, shoot, and captive-bolt over the next three summers. Locals are outraged at the intrusion of violence in their once-peaceful park and Trinka Marris of Friends of The White Deer states,

“The number of 1000 is misleading. The public needs to understand that killing the does will result in hundreds or thousands of orphaned fawns dying a horrible death of slow starvation. The NPS is choosing not to count these baby fawns’ death when they give the number ‘1000′.”

This is fawn season. Visitors to Marin may just have the chance, if they are very lucky, to glimpse one of the white or speckled fawns that have just been born this year. The above photograph, taken by photographer Trish Carney, shows the beauty and defenselessness of these baby animals. I am writing this article here to voice my own horror, and the horror of the people of Marin over the fact that these innocent baby animals are about to witness their mothers, sisters and aunts murdered in the following way by White Buffalo Inc.’s brutal gunmen:

“White Buffalo will bait deer, trap them in a net, and then kill them with a captive bolt (the same instrument used in slaughterhouses). A video taken in Illinois shows netted deer wildly struggling to escape. Then a person sits on a deer, another holds her head, and a third fires a 4-inch captive bolt into her brain. While each deer is being wrestled and killed, the others frantically continue to struggle as they watch and hear their companions dying, only to await the same fate.”

In addition the abuse documented here, many of the does will be shot at and will wander the seashore, perhaps gutshot or crippled, bleeding to death. If White Buffalo Inc.’s gunmen manage to capture a shot deer, their policy is to suffocate it by putting a plastic bag over its head.

If this cruelty to animals occurred anywhere outside of government lands, the perpetrator would be sued by the Marin Humane Society with a very good chance of being convicted of a serious crime.

I am a birder, and you, my valued readers, are also birders. If spending all of those hours in nature, watching our feathered fellow creatures has taught us one thing, it is that the animals with whom we share the planet are beings of dignity and wonder. I am sickened to the heart to know the fate that is currently meeting the gentle Fallow and Axis Deer of the Point Reyes National Seashore. I am sickened by the cruelty and stupidity of mankind.

Bambi was a cartoon; these deer are actually living beings

I have been appalled by the coverage most of the local newspapers have given to the plight of the Fallow and Axis Deer of Point Reyes National Seashore. In their strivings to hit on a catchy title for their editorials and articles, journalists working for the Press Democrat, The Marin Independent, The San Francisco Chronicle and the Point Reyes Light have repeatedly likened the local deer to Disney’s cartoon Bambi.

And they aren’t saying, “Didn’t anyone realize how horrible it was that Bambi’s mother was shot?”

Their tone is, “Well, wow, it’s just like Bambi. Aren’t I clever to have noticed that?”

The Bambi cartoon has traumatized countless children, despite it’s unrealistic attempt to make it all seem okay that Bambi’s mother was killed, because, after all, then Bambi makes friends with a rabbit and some other cute and cuddly creatures of the forest.

In real life, it will not happen that way for the orphaned fawns who will starve to death once their mothers are dead. I am completely disgusted to realize that journalists are so out of touch with even the most remote concept of respect for life that they can trivialize the trauma and pain of a living, breathing baby creature by glibly comparing it to a cartoon. Shame on each one of them for this inhumane attitude towards wild animals.

But Hunting’s An Old Time-Honored Tradition, Ain’t It?
White Buffalo Inc’s gunmen are not hunters. Hunters are the Aleutians who kill whales with spears so that their families can eat. Once upon a time, hunters were people like Pa in the Little House on the Prairie series of books about pioneer life. Men like Pa shot only enough animals to feed their wife and children. They shot stags…not does and fawns in fawn season! Hunting was a practice developed by humans in order to survive…to have something to eat. Hunting is not a sport. Hunting is not a business.

For the record, I am a vegetarian. I have not eaten meat in more than 15 years. I am ethically opposed to any type of killing of animals. However, I am also quite aware that in many parts of the world, native peoples still rely on hunting as their primary food source. I may feel sadness over the Aleutian killing of whales up in the far north, but I get it…this is how these people survive and they’ve lived like this for centuries.

This is at the opposite end of the spectrum from camouflage-draped men shooting firearms from helicopters in order to brutally eliminate thousands of deer at a time. These are not hunters. They are violent, twisted people. The president of White Buffalo compares killing deer to brushing his teeth and is eager to tell reporters how much he enjoys his job.

What kind of a person takes satisfaction in the screams of defenseless animals while bolts are being shot into their brains? What kind of a person is that?

White Buffalo Leaving A Guilty Trail of Blood Across the United States

They ride into your town under government protection, in case some hippy might wave a “Please don’t shoot my friends” sign at them. They meet with the press and talk about what great shots they all are and how professional, efficient and humane they are. They talk about the great hunting life they lead. The press prints the standard propaganda for you and your neighbors to read. They tell you they’ll be giving the meat to the homeless, so everyone can feel better about it.

Then the shooting starts.

White Buffalo’s policy is to keep times and places for shootings a secret, but the word always seems to leak out. Suddenly, people are finding baby fawns keeling over in their backyards. Children are screaming over stumbling upon the bloody, half-dead body of a deer. You and your neighbors are threatened with arrest if you so much as try to take a single photo of the carnage.

Maybe the homeless do receive some of the meat, but most of the dead mothers are left to rot in the fields. White Buffalo is securely escorted from the town with many thanks from the NPS, and the people, the animals and the land are left reeling from a trauma that will never heal.

What is happening in Marin, California has happened in Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut and a growing number of states across our country, always at the request of park officials, and always against the consensus of local citizens. It’s a terrible, sickening pattern and Marin is only the newest town on White Buffalo’s woeful list.

The Final Insult, or, What’s In A Name?
My husband and I are both proud to have partly Native American ancestry. We honor the way our ancestors existed within an environment, rather than viewing themselves as somehow outside of it. I want to state, as a woman with Native American heritage, that I am personally offended by the name of this company - White Buffalo, Inc.

From their website at whitebuffaloinc.org:

“Native American legend tells of the White Buffalo Woman who offered a sacred pipe to a Dakota tribe, explaining that the pipe symbolized that all things were connected. Its purpose was to remind people of their tie to nature, what nature gives and what should be done in return.”

What? What is this? Is what we are supposed to give in return the wholesale, inhumane slaughter of some of nature’s most fragile and lovely creatures? I was stunned reading this statement. It is so insulting that this company would dare to use a Native American legend to describe their behaviour.

And, just for the record, the version of the White Buffalo legend I know goes like this:

Once White Buffalo Woman appeared to two men. The first man was disrespectful to her and tried to harm her. She turned him into a pile of bones. The second man was respectful, so she gave him a pipe and taught him special music.

If my Powhatan Indian ancestors were only alive today, I am sure they would find it hard to keep the sarcasm out of their voices as they explained to White Buffalo Inc. the actual fate of the bad man who harmed nature. I can hardly believe the irony of White Buffalo Inc.’s selective twist on this old story and they have wound up looking very foolish in doing this.

The Fate of Nature
Every time I sit down to add a new blog post to this birding blog, I am trying to share my deep love of wild creatures with you. Today, I am sharing my sadness and outrage. If you share my feelings, please, take the time to visit the following website:

Friends of the White Deer

Please visit Trish Carney’s Flickr photo set to view her photographic documentation of the fallow deer of the Point Reyes National Seashore.