Arkansas Blog

"Jerick Hutchinson, another Huntsville High School teacher, killed a raccoon with a nail gun and skinned it as part of a class lesson."

I remember reading this in the paper. The article sail Mr. Hutchinson was expecting the raccoon he got from a friend to already be dead and when he found it was not, dispatched it with a nail gun.

I'm thinking, put off the skinning demo for another day and go to plan B in the lesson plan.

Madison County -- they're probably used to a little vigilante justice up in those parts right? I mean, it's been done before for lesser things....

This was old news. It was in The Madison County Record a few days ago. It was pretty graphic too.

As was pointed out earlier, killing a raccoon with a nail gun violates Arkansas hunting ordinances. The incident was white washed by the local law enforcement when a teacher complained. One email in support, despite over 600 against, clearly exonerated the policy. But this wasn't enough. A dog had to be killed; skinned & draped over the gate (not necessarily in that order) of the complaining teacher in order to make the point that dissension would not be tolerated. The school superintendent said "We investigated it according to policy"; "We dealt with it. Now, it's over." Didn't they say the same about the Jenna 6? And what of the cars with a "As a parent, we support Hutch" written in white on their rear windows? The consensus was "I think there's (sic) bigger problems in the schools than worrying about somebody skinning a raccoon" and "There are probably some poor kids in that school hungry enough to take that raccoon home and eat it."

Thus, if a public policy of teaching school children to illegally kill whatever (or whoever) the locals' consider a pest is not good enough for you, then you could be threatened, tortured, mutilated, killed and prominently displayed so as to be made an example of. To add insult to injury, those who choose to enable and whitewash these hate crimes will claim, "I've never heard of anything like this happening before."

"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell." Bertrand Russell

There Is'nt a reason for this to be made as big a deal as its being Made. And cutting down folks in Madison County Doesn't make sense either. There's plenty of reason to cut down folks in other parts of the state, but you don't See us doing it.

Zatharus has in his post, with his usual wisdom and eloquence, given us the point of view of a civilized human being.

And then Teebow tells us what his group thinks.

Don't miss the comments following the nwaonline article. One person thinks it's just an incident of "poor taste." Another says it's just a prank, like shooting out a teacher's window or torturing a chicken.

I don't know what is considered acceptable for teaching in an agri class in Huntsville. Apparently there are few limits, and common decency is not a factor. Back in the dark ages when I was in high school (I think Davy Crockett himself was in my class), the agri teacher was as neanderthal as they come, and even he never included nail-gunning and skinning a raccoon in his lesson plan.

And for those who think abusing animals does not ultimately lead to harming humans, look how this has escalated. If the authorities do not act now to stop this clear threat to the teacher believed to have reported ole nail-gunnin' Gomer, there is no limit to what these cretins will do next.

I guess the annual convention of the Arkansas Farm Bureau can now end on a high note.

If the teacher broke the law..well then they should be charged. But I think it's quite leap to connect teaching kids how to skin an animal ( a very useful thing to know how to do) with harming ones fellow citizen human beings. All hunters and meat eating human beings don't take this as a cue for killing humans.

Once again.. a nail gun is probably very similar to techniques used in slaughter houses.

The dead dog on the fence.. now that's disturbing.

Having just had a conference call with former Mayor Bill Vines and Rep. Dimmy Altes, we have concluded the best thing to do is round up all raccoons and ship them back to where they came from. Now...we must be careful to not piss off skinned dead dogs. Skinned dead dogs put Bush over the top in Ohio in the 2004 election. We are in the same position with skinned dead dogs as we were after the Korean War and we must pay attention to our vast minds....attention must be paid!

Does anyone else ever think maybe Osama has a point about the evil of the United States? If the rest of the world just read Arkansas news.....what part of it would make them like us? 142 years after the end of the Civil War and black people still can't get any respect from our elected officials.

I can't piss on Madison County cause look at Sebastian County's record of man's inhumanity to man. What's next for us? A dead skinned black man draped over a gate in Fort Baptist? I may just get on the Mexican boxcars back to Mexico when Dimmy has his way.......living here is starting to hurt.

Eureka, a skinned dead dog on the fence of a teacher believed to have complained about the nail-gunning agri teacher is way more than "disturbing." It is a clear threat to this person, and an escalation of the violence against animals from ones in the category of "nuisance critters" to ones considered pets (not that violence against either is acceptable). There is every reason to believe that if left unchecked, the violence will escalate further until humans are the victims.

Any student who actually would find skinning an animal a very useful thing to know is probably a member of a household in which he has already been taught the finer points of such activities. This is no legitimate educational activity, more likely just the way this group gets their jollies or tries to convince others what manly guys they are. And now they're getting their jollies by threatening anyone who dares disagree with their gruesome activities.

Considering the general barbarity of the actions involved here, one can only imagine what torture they inflicted on the poor dog before killing it. And in view of the dog recently skinned alive in one county, maybe I should just hope that they did kill it first.

Until you brought them up, no one said anything about "all hunters and meat eating human beings" harming other humans, but since you chose, in the best tradition of the Farm Bureau, to use this tactic I will say for the record that anyone objecting to gratuitous cruelty to animals is not accusing all hunters and farmers of being future killers of humans.

And what they "probably" do in slaughterhouses is not a defense for those involved in this case -- at least those in the beef industry have the goal of providing food for people, not just killing for the sheer joy of killing. The Farm Bureau argument that preventing extreme cruelty to animals would present a hardship to legitimate farmers and hunters is a lie. Even Texas has a felony animal cruelty law, and I would hazard a guess they have more cows and hunters than we do.

There's plenty of reason to cut down folks in other parts of the state, but you don't See us doing it.<<

No you just cut down helpless creatures, skin them , and hang them across a teachers gate.

Now if you guys were resourceful someone would have sold that skinned dog to the Chinese buffet restaurant in Huntsville.

Any student who actually would find skinning an animal a very useful thing to know is probably a member of a household in which he has already been taught the finer points of such activities. This is no legitimate educational activity, more likely just the way this group gets their jollies or tries to convince others what manly guys they are. And now they're getting their jollies by threatening anyone who dares disagree with their gruesome activities.
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Uh, no. That's like saying anyone who rode in a car for 16 years doesn't need to learn to drive or pass a test before getting a license. I don't think a vegan parent who doesn't want their kid to learn how to dress an animal should have any problem keeping their child out of such a lesson.. But I for one am glad such practical matters are available for learning in school. How to survive.. especially the ugly chores, are important things to learn. Especially for kids/families who do chose to eat meat.. they should understand the full reality of what's required to place that meat on the table.

And I would have no trouble at all with laws against the dog mutilator ... where do I sign the petition?

"That's like saying anyone who rode in a car for 16 years doesn't need to learn to drive or pass a test before getting a license."

Eureka, have you been attending the Wally Hall School of Analogies? I repeat, students who actually might want or need to skin an animal have probably already been taught to do so at home, just as most students are probably taught to drive at home. But who taught someone to do something has nothing to do with any tests required to legally perform an activity. The important difference in the two activities is that, while students actually need to drive a car, the need to skin an animal rarely or never arises. So why should our tax money and time in an agri class be wasted engaging in such activities, unless the real purpose is just the fun of killing and mutilating an animal? Or why don't we teach fencing just in case they run afoul of the Three Musketeers and need to do a little of that to survive?

As I said before, even back when I was in school, nail-gunning animals to death was not taught in agri class, and it is not an appropriate activity for the classroom now. You have to wonder how many of the students who enjoyed this activity are performing at their grade level in the more academically oriented classes. It would be to their benefit (and the common good) to be teaching them things they will actually need to get a job (or even be self-employed) and succeed in the real world. Last time I looked, torturing animals didn't really sell on a resume.

What next? Save the baby carrots! Don't peel baby carrots in front of the children!

Eating food and being able to handle food is as important to survival as driving a car.. If the three musketeers ever need a hamburger or veggie burger... tell them ES will be glad to entertain them over a nice meal of either diet plan.

better yet.. maybe next time the teacher should just blow the head off a raccoon with a shot gun.. outside in the playground of course.

Eureka, the more arguments you make, the less logic they contain. Your using a ludicrous comment about carrots to justify animal abuse is even worse than Wally. You apparently want to make this an argument about vegetarianism rather than the actual subject at hand: that nail-gunning a raccoon and skinning it is not a legitimate exercise for a high school agri class; and that the subsequent killing and skinning of a dog to threaten a teacher who is believed to have reported the nail-gunning teacher to authorities is so far beyond the bounds of decency that no one should be defending it (although some apparently are).

One can survive without killing either raccoons or dogs. Apparently what this little exercise in class taught someone is that no punishment will be meted out for the gruesome killing of a small animal. They then went out a killed a larger animal and skinned and used the carcass to threaten a teacher. I hope something is done to stop them at this stage before any more animals or any people meet a similar fate because these sadists have learned to enjoy killing and believe nothing is going to be done to punish them.

You have apparently spent a lot of time fantasizing about the most enjoyable method of dispatching a raccoon. It has always been my opinion that most farmers do not revel in causing as much pain as possible to an animal when they kill it, but try to be as humane as they can. Perhaps you could use that as a standard next time you feel you simply must kill something.

vegan, I am about as pacifist is one can be without being a member of PITA.. Meat is food.. food is necessary.. I love a good butcher as much as I love the farmers market. Killing is gruesome ..no doubt about it..but necessary and it must be done with respect as well as a clean kill when preparing to eat an animal.. Doing it for torture or as an act of protest is incomprehensible to me..much as knowing how to utilize the knife for food prep is for you.

You lose many supporters when you lump folks like me or a fellow trying to teach kids the most basic of survival techniques in with the farm bureau or dog slaughterers.. There is a huge difference, that's really what i am trying to say.

Sad this has to happen at all.. considering all of our leaders and potential leaders are hell bent on killing millions of human beings and their pets.. it almost seems trivial..

Yikes! I hate to see 2 people whose ideas mostly match go after each other tooth and nail over a small detail. Perhaps this rift is caused by an age difference, maybe it's caused by the differing views of the sexes, maybe it's a country person vs a city person thing, maybe it's just because this is a seriously icky subject.

As icky as it is we eat things. If Vegan is true to her name, her food is less icky than mine. I eat things that formerly walked around and looked at life with 2 pretty eyes. I just belly up to the table and have a banquet with no thought of the suffering my hunger has caused a living creature....I'm a carnivore, I eat meat.....I like it. Feed me!

I used to hunt with friends and relatives growing up. I never enjoyed it like a true sportsman, I don't like nature, I don't like hunting for things, I don't like walking mile after mile....things bite me and I'm allergic to green leafy stuff, oh and I never felt good about killing animals. In early adulthood I decided as long as there were grocery stores, I had no need to shoot, skin and eat things out of the woods. I hope that is the case for the rest of my life.

However.....as icky as it is, I am not against teaching kids the facts of life and how to put food on your table should we revert to Mad Max World. I can see how this is an important lesson to a lot of folks. Using anything to end the life of an animal is grizzly.....killing is grizzly. But 60% of what I ate today was killed for my culinary pleasure. Though I hate to think about it, a nail gun, a 22, an arrow, or throwing the raccoon into a tub full of water with a plugged-in clock radio amounts to the same thing. Death to Rocky Raccoon.

The teacher dispatched Mr. Raccoon offline, so how he killed the raccoon wasn't the lesson he was imparting to the students. Skinning and dressing the raccoon was the lesson. Especially due to the direction this country is heading now, learning to skin and dress a woodland creature might be an important skill to learn. Icky as it is. Lord knows I don't want to see it or think about it, but I can't really say this teacher was wrong anymore than I can condemn the teacher who passes out dead creatures to dissect in biology class. More icky memories!

So...I side with Eureka, while at the same time understanding how distasteful (no pun intended) this whole subject must be to a vegetarian. The base components of this raccoon business are just about the same as the pro-choice vs pro-life arguments. So I hope both of you will let this drop and move on and when the day comes that Cheney-Bush are vanquished, I will personally see to it that at the big celebration party we have 2 complete buffets, one with meat items...one without.

DBI and Eureka - Sorry to disappoint you, but until Max moves this thread to the archives, I will continue to maintain that nail-gunning a raccoon to death in order to skin it in front of a class of agri students who don't need to know how to do that anyway is, to say the least, unnecessarily cruel.

And considering what happened next -- a dog killed, skinned and used to threaten a teacher who had reported the whole sorry spectacle -- the lesson learned was not about survival, it was just about the torture and killing of animals, and, at least at this stage, the bullying of anyone who might get in your way. That is not teaching legitimate agriculture-related lessons, and approving of it is not pacifism. If it is not stopped at this stage, it will likely escalate -- maybe next time they will think it more fun to perform these "survival skills" on a small child, an old person, a woman, or even on one of you men.

The argument that "we gotta teach 'em to nail-gun raccoons now, 'cause we might have to live on raccoons tomorrow" is about as valid as Bush saying "we gotta fight 'em there so we don't have to fight 'em here." Your testosterone-fueled fantasies of going back to nature and living on raccoon meat (killed, I presume, with your own hands or maybe teeth) and wearing raccoon fur are probably very satisfying to you, but should a catastrophic event occur in this country, the woodland creatures will likely be glowing green just like the rest of us, and you will be too weak and sick to catch one anyway.

The dog they killed to make their point with the teacher probably walked right up to them, expecting to be petted or fed. What big brave guys it took to commit such an act, and how they probably enjoyed it. Yessiree, these are obviously people you want in your foxhole when those dire straits come and you have to start eating dog and raccoon to survive, at least until they get really hungry and start eyeing you.

This is not a case of a well-meaning teacher just preparing his students to make their way in the world. This is unnecessary cruelty to an animal; it is sick, and the ensuing dog killing was even sicker. I recently had a problem with a raccoon tearing up one of my bird feeders. A cattle farmer friend offered to trap it for me -- in a humane trap -- and take it over in the woods and release it. I declined his offer, but his action shows how a decent human being deals with animals -- with as little violence or harm as possible -- not with a nail gun.

Well in the spirit of.. good spirits.. I just went to the fridge grabbed a few organic baby carrots and set them free in the yard. it's colder outside than in the fridge and about 7 rabbits live in my yard..so I don't know if it was the humane thing to do.. maybe I will do a google search for a three musketeers chat room and seek further advice.

I do think Max ought to consider dispatching V4H to cover the dog trial in Madison County.. for some passionate reporting...maybe even live blog it. I'll pop over and shoot the photos..heck I can get there without leaving dirt roads, except for the last couple of miles.... could pretty near get home from there by kayak in the dark if need be. To bad they don't teach that in school as well.

Save the carrots! (at least don't skin anything alive)

Allah knows there is no way I would defend killing and skinning a dog unless BushWorld gets so bad that we have to eat our pets. I guess I should say I wish the teacher had shot the raccoon with a 22, but in all honesty what difference does it make what is propelled thru your head to cause death? (see No Country For Old Men.)

I'd also have to think that the teachers demonstration turned off more kids to hunting than it turned on. I can't get my kids to sit on the front porch in the open air....I can't imagine them becoming hunting enthusiasts after watching a raccoon skinned and cut up. Like I said....it's all too icky for me. I will only revert to hunting in order to feed my non-porch sitting kids and I hope everyone I know is 6 feet under before it comes to that.

I like my bloody meat in white Styrofoam containers wrapped in plastic. I want it cut up and not recognizable. I like it best when it's cooked by some high dollar chef in the back part of the building where I can't see. So never think I have hunting fantasies in order to feel more manly. Porn watching makes me feel manly, and that's enough!

Eureka seems to be mightily offended by the fact that I am a vegetarian, but I would have been just as horrified by these incidents of animal abuse before I swore off eating animal products.

You can joke about carrots all you like and also argue that it makes no difference how these two animals died, but I would beg to differ. When your time comes, do you want to be dispatched by a doofus agri teacher wielding a nail gun, or die in a more peaceful manner? When you have a beloved pet that needs to be put down, do you take it to the vet for its life to be ended in the most humane manner possible, or do you just nail gun it to death?

While it is true dead is dead, no matter the method, I would venture that raccoon's last moments of life were something no animal should go through. I hope that nail-gunning Gomer was at least a better nail-gunner than he is a human being, so a minimum number of shots were fired by the dumb shit in order to achieve his goal. Considering the nature of raccoons, I doubt that Gomer was holding the raccoon still while shooting at it. The big brave guy with those gigantic cojones was more likely shooting through a cage the raccoon was in, or maybe it was tied up. This will probably start a new sport for you guys -- hell, I bet Cheney will want in on this, as it really sounds like something he would enjoy, too. Why don't you guys start a support group for Gomer, since he's being picked on by me; and it can double as a nail-gunning hunting club. You can invite Cheney down and sit around tossing back a few, shooting animals with nail guns (animals that have already been completely subdued and secured so they won't hurt you) and making jokes about freeing carrots.

As for absolving Gomer of all blame because he at least did not do the dirty deed in front of the students, apparently he was quite willing to brag about his kill since it appears all the gory details are common knowledge. And you've got to give it to him -- he is an effective teacher -- already they've moved up to killing dogs. No telling how good these guys will get -- lock up your pets and small children.

And, as I said before, just because Eureka finds the spectacle of nail-gunning and skinning raccoons enjoyable does not make it a legitimate subject for agri class. Apparently this is also true in Huntsville, since I believe one of the news articles on the original incident stated the school board there had instructed Gomer to cease this type "lesson." At a time that we have children leaving school unable to read, I say it is a better use of class time and our tax money to concentrate on the basic curriculum and spare animals and students being subjected to the baser proclivities of Gomer, Eureka and DBI.

I suspect these horrific crimes are being perpetrated by just a few sickos. As with everything, the loudmouths will express support for them and shout decent people down or frighten them into not doing anything -- a dead, skinned dog draped over your gate would send a pretty clear message. In the meantime, the entire town of Huntsville will be blamed; and people like you two will find in this an opportunity to make jokes about how this really amounts to nothing, and only the silly veggies care, anyway.

I predict there will be no arrests, no trial, and the little pervs that get off on torturing animals will continue with their sick little crimes until they finally kill something or someone important enough that the authorities can no longer turn a blind eye, and even people like Eureka and DBI will find it offensive and unacceptable. I feel sorry for the victims who fall prey to them in the meantime.