Dec 3, 2014 2 min read

Have you heard anyone in the past few days talking about shooting and killing a deer? Perhaps, but you sure didn’t hear that from the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

According to Game Commission news releases we’ve seen lately, many “big-game” animals such as bears and deer are “taken.” That suggests to us perhaps they’re being set upon by groups of hunters and stuffed into the trunk of a ’68 Impala, as in a gangland kidnapping. And it seems those animals that aren’t “taken” are “harvested.” Maybe hunters, unbeknownst to us, plant “deer seeds” in the spring, water them through the long summer, then pluck the ripened deer off their stalks in the fall.

In Ohio, a recent report from that state’s game agency spoke of deer being “downed.” Do hunters there bolt from the underbrush and tackle the unsuspecting bucks, then tie them up as a calf roper would? But we’re not even sure if these are living beings the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is referring to, because they speak of them as “targets.”

We have no objection to hunting, especially if people are killing these animals to put food on their tables. It’s not as if the beef we buy at Giant Eagle or Shop ‘n Save comes from animals who succumbed to old age or volunteered to become food.

But there’s really no need for the folks at the Game Commission to make it sound as if these deer or bears or turkeys or other game animals are being humanely escorted from the woods and fields in some fashion. Just tell us they’re being shot and killed. We can handle the truth.