The Chronicle had an AP article on animal rights groups and hunting on the front page this morning.

Activists hoping to change minds

“If you approach the hunters in a nonconfrontational way and just talk to them in a reasonable and level way, you can really change a lot of minds,” facilitator Dan Shannon said. “I see it happen all the time.”

They haven’t changed the mind of John Jackson, who has hunted for the past 30 years and chairs the Metairie, La.-based Conservation Force, a hunting and wildlife advocacy organization. He’s encountered so many animal rights activists, he knows some by their first names.

“They bandy about like chickens. I’d like them to go find something better to do,” he said.

I have no idea what the hell that saying is supposed to mean, but it seems like the right sentiment.

“People who like making wildlife dead have less bravado these days. They realize they’re going to get less applause than they used to for driving home with a dead deer tied on their roof rack,” said Priscilla Feral, president of Darien, Conn.-based Friends of Animals. She claims their anti-hunting magazine advertisements, billboards, legislative lobbying and protests have made hunting less popular.

Certainly not where I’m from. I think animal rights activists strapped to your roof racks are still generally approved of.

Steve Hindi, an animal rights activist from Elburn, Ill., hunted and fished for 30 years, mounting his biggest trophies and hanging them on the wall even as he took in stray animals and loved his pets. Then he began reading magazines from animal rights activists, and he visited a pigeon shoot in Pennsylvania where he was surprised and upset by the way wounded birds were treated.

He began talking to friends, colleagues and activists who opposed hunting. Eventually he said he couldn’t quell the “nagging voice suggesting that killing animals, especially those much smaller than me, was not completely defensible as a hobby.”

“It was in talking to animal rights activists that I decided I was fighting on the wrong team,” he said.

These days, Hindi can be seen driving his so-called “Tiger Truck” at rodeos, sports shows and other events. The converted delivery truck has projection screens mounted on the sides and back, usually airing videos of animals being hurt at bullfights, hunts and other events.

Adopting the tactics of anti-abortion activists, how nice. You know, I just don’t have any causes that I can use bloody pictures for. I’m not anti-abortion, an animal rights activist, or a pacifist. I need to rectify this, ASAP. I thought maybe death penalty executions, but lethal injection is pretty staid. Even the electric chair is boring, when it works correctly. You’re just not cool unless you have disgusting pictures appealing to emotion rather than reason. It strikes me that environmentalists must feel left out. A freshly cut tree trunk with sap oozing out of it just doesn’t get an emotional response. They could co-opt dead fish from the animal rights movement, I suppose. A bunch of those floating down a river isn’t particularly pleasant.

I know, I need a van with paneling showing surgery footage! Modern medicine is disgusting! Does anyone know of some surgery footage where the doctor holds up a heart Temple of Doom style? That’d be the best, I think.

I won’t lose my liberal decoder ring for this entry, will I?