John Tyson, chief state investigator in the shooting deaths of a herd of 31 horses near the town of Sparks in Northern Nevada on Dec. 27, says “I think these were random acts of killing due to people target shooting.”
Anything’s possible. There will always be drunks and morons who kill out of boredom — the same way we remain burdened by the kind of drivers who will swerve to hit a cat or dog.
But 31 horses? Taken down with military-style rifles in calibers .223 and 30.06? Apparently the bulk of a herd, some taken with undeniable skill (which is not to express any admiration for the deed) as they fled at all angles? Such thoroughness — in daylight near a major highway — argues in favor of a purpose and a plan, as well as a certain strength of resolve.
The suspicion lingers that Mr. Tyson’s statement serves much the same purpose as the standard announcement that a murder victim’s boyfriend “is not a suspect, but is merely being sought for questioning” — the kind of questioning which coincidentally leads to an arrest with amazing regularity, once the poor sap is lulled into showing his face.
Between 1987 and 1993, more than 700 wild horses were shot in rural Nevada — mostly in the north around Lovelock and Battle Mountain, east along Interstate 80 and the Humboldt River from the site of Sunday’s slaughter — in what amounts to a minor war between ranchers and government officials enforcing policies which effectively ban the private killing or round-up of any roaming horses, even strayed horses on state or private lands (like those killed in this incident), which technically are not protected by the Wild Horse and Burro Act, pushed through by Eastern “animal-lovers” supposedly to protect only herds of free-roaming wild horses which have run on federal lands for generations.
Such “preservation” measures play well among Bambi-lovers far removed from the day-to-day struggle of earning a living on a ranch in the arid West. Unfortunately, the net effect of such regulations is often that — as the “sacred” horses multiply and monopolize limited forage and waterholes — ranchers can actually be ordered to reduce the number of cattle they run on their range under existing “government permits” … with little regard for those ranchers’ already-thin margin of economic survival.
(This is not mere theory. Nevada ranchers are actually being run off the land via cattle seizures and massive fines, by federal regulators with no patience to await the results of the ongoing landmark court case Hage versus United States, in which plaintiffs argue that such grazing permits only recognize a pre-existing land right — that the federal government has no authority to alter, suspend, or cancel them.) More »