’)Those of us who are not wild about hunting see a cosmic circle of life to this.
A hunter bagged a big buck on the second day of firearms season, but the kill caused him a lot of pain. Randy Goodman, 49, said he thought two well-placed shots with his .270-caliber rifle had killed the buck on Nov. 19. Goodman said the deer looked dead to him, but seconds later the nine-point, 240-pound animal came to life.
The buck rose up, knocked Goodman down and attacked him with his antlers in what the veteran hunter called ‘15 seconds of hell.’ The deer ran a short distance and went down, and died after Goodman fired two more shots.
I’m okay with and actually enjoy fishing, but this running around with a gun thing…
Yeah, but THAT’s hunting. Give him a chance at some payback. None of this helicopter pansy-shit.
But I don’t hunt either.
Gosh, I wish hunting for sport was made illegal (and for those Ted Nugentoids out there reading this, I’m talking fine “illegal,” not jail time “illegal.” Not going to happen, though (sighs).
I’m not a hunter, in part because it was too expensive a hobby where I grew up and we couldn’t afford it, but I understand the impulse to get back to your roots as a hunter-gatherer. (And by definition that back-to-the-woods feeling does not include the need for high-tech overwhelming advantages like helicopters and captive animals in cages. That’s something else entirely, Mr. Cheney.)
And if the objection to hunting springs from principles about the ethical treatment of animals, factory farms are a thousand times worse. One problem at a time…
Once a year I go back with my dad and my little brother to the farm in South Dakota where my dad grew up. We spend a few days there, hunt for pheasants, on the property, and eat 100% of whatever we shoot. We’re not very good so there’s little question of shooting too much; I feel happy to get a half-dozen legitimate shots over 3 days. I do the cooking; pheasant nuggets are mighty tasty. When my dad and aunts and uncles were hunting pheasants out there in the 40s thru early 60s the food was just as important as the fun and they weren’t always fastidious about only shooting the roosters on the wing during the season when licensed.
I really enjoy pheasant hunting. There are places that raise them in pens and stock them out in strips of unharvested corn and fencerows for people to come and flush them out and shoot them; some folks who own a farm nearby make money by hosting hunting parties, and some of the stocked pheasants find their way to our land. But you can really tell when a pheasant isn’t a wild one; it gets up and dithers around in a trifling manner, not flying with any sort of purpose and is fairly easy to shoot. That kind of thing doesn’t really feel right for a whole variety of reasons. If you want certainty of success you go and play World of Warcraft or something. And I seriously doubt that people that go on stocked hunts eat what they shoot.
Reminds me of the urban myth told to me in a gun safety training course.
A rabbit killed a careless hunter. The rabbit was shot, & not yet dead. The hunter tossed the rabbit & his gun in the back of the station wagon. The safety was off & the hunter did not unload the gun before putting it in the car. The rabbit kicked, hit the trigger, & the hunter was shot in the back.
#1- Make sure the critter is dead.
#2- Keep the safety on.
#3- Always unload any weapon when putting it in a vehicle.
I don’t hunt, myself, but we need deer hunters around here in the suburbs of Raleigh-Durham, NC. We call deer “rats on stilts” around here. They are everywhere, eating gardens, knocking down fences, and just being nuisances.
Know the difference between a deer and a rat? A rat doesn’t commit suicide by totalling your car.
I’m not sure I understand why anybody that ate meat would have any problem with hunting. Beats a Concentrated Feeding Operation.
I would love to see a group of the most die hard hunters be forced to hunt with spears and low tech arrows. I bet they wouldn’t catch anytihng.
I agree with Parhenon. If you’re going to eat meat (and I do), you can’t begrudge those who would rather kill their own supply. But as I heard someone on a sports call-in show note, if you have a gun and your opponent doesn’t, it’s not really a sport.
I think hunting is an important skill. I don’t need to have it, but I’m glad for those who do. Syco, I think it would be a better sport lo-tech.