Wayne Pacelle on Hunters, 1988

Wayne Pacelle has denied he ever said what he said back in 1991 about wanting to ban “all sport hunting.” We have to wonder if he’ll deny this too.

After Pacelle graduated from Yale in 1987, he went to work as assistant editor of The Animals’ Agenda, then the central publication of the animal rights world. Everybody who was anybody in “the movement” subscribed.

He contributed an essay himself from time to time, and we found one from 1988 titled “Animal Retribution?”

It’s really a one-page screed against hunting, and against hunters personally.

Here’s what Pacelle had to say about hunters getting hurt by animals: it’s a rare instance of “justice.”

You couldn’t make this up:

As reported recently in The Washington Times, a hunter shot and wounded a passing Canada goose, but unexpectedly the plummeting bird turned kamikaze and slammed into the head of the hunter, knocking him out. Despite these rare instances of justice…

But that’s not all. Pacelle goes on to call hunters “coreligionists” (which is a bit ironic coming from someone in the animal rights movement), and also refers to ants as though they were people (writing “an ant who…” instead of “an ant that…“)

It’s always interesting to see snapshots of the real Wayne Pacelle, before he scrubbed his image for those “$19-a-month” commercials. Maybe he doesn’t hold the same beliefs today, but to our knowledge, he’s never disavowed any of his writings.

Whatever happened to being humane to people?