All,

The bullfighting thread got me thinking about how effectively the PETA crowd has been in dividing us. I currently feel somewhat under siege in virtually every sport and activity that I like, because it doesn't fit the non-violent, government-guarantees-your-safety profile we operate under today.

I volunteer in a youth wrestling program and the high school program. The principal finds wrestling "barbaric", so we are constantly having new administrative and facility-scheduling challenges created for us by the school administration to get us out of the practice room.

Folks are trying to outlaw the 67 Camaro I built through innocuous-sounding emission and safety equipment laws.

I am a gun owner in Maryland, and we've got waiting periods, shell casing requirements, internal locking device requirements, etc to effect a virtual ban on various types of guns and a re-tooling hardship on manufacturers.

In addition, last year I went to RSA on a plains game hunt. My dad and a host of folks I bird hunt with constantly belittle the hunting experience there because there were paid guides, fenced land, and vehicles used in the hunting. Some of the folks in this group are so pure that they look down their nose at bird hunting on a preserve.

I know some guys who shoot at the trap and skeet range I go to who go to live pigeon shoots. Other guys at the same range get very haughty when talking about it and use words like "slaughter".

I bowhunt with a compound bow, but have started working again with a recurve. The compound bow people find the gun hunters unsporting, the recurve people look down their noses at the compound bow hunters, the longbow hunters hate recurves, and the self-bow crowd can't stand even the longbows made of laminated fiberglass.

Similar cliques exist with in-lines, percussion cap, and flintlock muzzleloaders.

These groups actively work against each other defining who gets what season, which equipment qualifies, etc.

Here on the board, we are quick to attack anybody here who shoots game at what any one of use considers too long a distance.

While we all argue and pontificate, Pat Schroeder's disciples not only have made it illegal to ride in the back of a pickup or ship a gun economically to an out of state gunsmith, but kids up to 6 or 7 years old have to have car seats and portable suits of armor are required to cross streets in designated cross-walks (well, not quite yet).

I fear for the future of boxing, wrestling, rodeo, hunting, trucks, and "dangerous" power tools in the hands of private citizens. I like fair chase and don't like wasted meat. But I'm going to try not to be overly selective in the types or methods of hunting that I support. And I think we'd all be better served by resisting additional regulation of sports and activities and voting to restrict lawsuits that are designed to gut manufacturers that support those sports and activities.

Okay, off the soapbox now.

Steve

I know what you're saying. We live in a chillingly naive, theory-driven, and frustrating age.

Jack O'Connor descibed stuff like this as "getting nibbled to death by jackrabbits", and that's pretty much how I feel about it myself. I'm glad I wasn't born any later.....

AD

I don't think it is PETA that has created these opinions, at least not solely. We all have different kinds of ethics and cultural environments and that makes us see things in different ways.

For example, I don't regard hunting with hounds immoral in any way (which has been prohibited by law in some countries), but I very much dislike bullfighting and using live animals as shooting targets (like live pigeon shooting), no matter how legal or traditional it may be somewhere.

These opinions I base on my personal ethics, which include that animals should be killed as quickly and painlessly as possible (which means for bullfighting) and that animals should be the object of hunting, not just means to get to shoot (pigeon shoots).

After all, I think these differences are just inevitable consequences of the freedom to think and speak, and as such, only for good.

skl1,

Excellent post. There is a natural tendency for people to try to conform others to whatever they themselves believe.

skl 1
I must be a throw back. I have shot live pigeon and loved it (not good at it)...never been to a real bull fight but being raised on a ranch I have had a bull after me more than once...probably good I did not have a gun handy.
I shoot what I damn well please on my ranch and right out of the pickup window if I please. That pickup is the best rest I could find to make a quick and humane kill. Better than a shaky tripod or moving mesquite limb.
Go on and enjoy what you are doing and wipe off what all the other folks think about you and your sport. The bunny huggers will always be around and be a fly in the soup..but they will never win in the long run.

That tendency is especially strong when one can hide behind a computer screen and let it all hang out. I know that I often will type something one way and would probably say it in another if face to face. It's also funny how compartmentalized the ethics are. Someone who eschews pigeon shooting may kill feral cats just because. Another person who dislikes bullfighting (me) has no problem going to a pidgeon shoot (again me) and someone who pontificates endlessly about the inhumanity of anything less than a clean shot on game and then for food only seldom has a problem eating a factory-farmed pork chop. Lastly, some of the most ardent "sportsmen" in my circle of friends would never varmint hunt, pidgeon shoot or bullfight but are active trappers for fur. Go figure.

There are various hunting and shooting prusuits that don't suit my tastes, but you know what you will never know which ones, I won't inject my preferences on others.

I think they ought to outlaw everything I don't like, or do! If they outlawed all hunting for everyone except me, then I would have the woods to myself! If they outlawed all the hunting tools except the ones I like, then the prices would be a lot cheaper for me to collect, and shoot! I'm opening a disposal plant, so all you guys will have a place to send all the outlawed guns, and bows!

Same old song, if it ain't what I like then it's wrong!

Excellent post!!! As a fisherman, hunter and a trapper, I cannot tell you the times that i've been attacked (verbally) by duck hunters while trapping. Had my traps shot, crushed, or thrown into the river by these moral superiors. Yet they have no quaums about shooting and wounding otter because they eat the trout and ducks they're after. So far no organization has really gotten these three endangered groups together, sort of a Super-NRA. Wouldn't life be so...

Here's a little reality check on your memory's.



To the Kids Who Survived the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s
and '70s


First, many of us survived being born to mothers
who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.


They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and
didn't get tested for diabetes.


Then, after that trauma, our baby cribs were
covered with brightly colored lead-based paints.


We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles,
doors or cabinets, and when
we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to
mention the risks we took hitchhiking.


As children, we would ride in cars with no seat
belts or air bags. Riding
in the back of a pickup on a warm day was always a
special treat.


We drank water from the garden hose and not from a
bottle.


We shared one soft drink with four friends, from
one bottle and no one actually died from this.


We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda
pop with sugar in it, but
we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS
OUTSIDE PLAYING!


We would leave home in the morning and play all
day, as long as we were
back when the streetlights came on.


No one was able to reach us all day. And we were
O.K.


We would spend hours building our go-carts out of
scraps and then ride down
the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the
bushes a few times, we learned to solve the
problem.


We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes;
no video games at all, no
500 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no
Surround-Sound, no cell
phones, no personal computers, no internet or
internet chat rooms. WE HAD
FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!


We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and
teeth, and there were no
lawsuits from these accidents.


We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and
ate worms, and although
we were told it would happen, we did not put out
many eyes, nor did the
worms live in us forever.


We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and
knocked on the door or rang
the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!


Little league had tryouts and not EVERYONE made the
team. Those who didn't
had to learn to DEAL with disappointment. Imagine
that!!


The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the
law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!


This generation has produced some of the best
risk-takers, problem solvers
and inventors ever!


The past 50 years have been an explosion of
innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and
responsibility, and we learned how to
deal with it ALL!


And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! Please
pass thi s on to others who
have had the luck to grow up as kids, before
lawyers and government
regulated our lives "for our own good."

You forgot a few important items on your list that I enjoyed or not atleast once in high school.

Taking shotshells apart for the gunpowder - so we could make our own explosive devices.

BB Gun fights

Getting an attitude adjustment for being a smart ass not once but twice - once by the principal of the school and then again when we got home, because the school actually called to make sure someone knew I was in trouble.

Minkman,you nailed it 110%
Thank you.
Dan

Great post and so true!

I have one more.
If someone got in your face and said they didn't like something youd did? You replied, "mind your own business"! And they did.

quote:

Originally posted by Ropes:
You forgot a few important items on your list that I enjoyed or not atleast once in high school.

Taking shotshells apart for the gunpowder - so we could make our own explosive devices.

BB Gun fights

Getting an attitude adjustment for being a smart ass not once but twice - once by the principal of the school and then again when we got home, because the school actually called to make sure someone knew I was in trouble.

I went to Catholic School, and got 4 attitude adjustments: the teacher, the principal, my mother, and finally my father when he got home from work.

Minkman- that pretty well sums it all up.

My dad told me once:

"The world is getting to be too damned safe."

H. C.

I knew I was somebody important when Mr. Belz, the assistant principal at my high school used the high velocity drilled with air holes paddle on my skinny little 15 year old ass. This was at a Franciscan high school mind you. I wore those red round welts with pride for two weeks.

When the noids of the world start nattering, just give them a Teddy Roosevelt style grin and walk around with your chest puffed out because you just got them wringing their panties in a knot.

When the dry fly purists start yapping it's time to use a San Juan Worm style wet fly and an honest to goodness red and white plastic bobber.

When someone asks me how I could bring myself to shoot live pigeons I simply tell them "cats can't fly".

When someone asks how you could dare eat Bambi, tell them that liberals are too stringy and taste like Powerbars because of their vegetarian diets.

When someone tells you only "self made bow" hunters are ethical tell him that Robin Hood was a fag.

When a cowboy action shooter tells you that playing with ugly black semi-automatic firearms is barbaric, tell them that the smoke from black powder makes you ill because it reminds you of his wife's cooking from the last time you boinked her when he was at work.

When, well, you get the idea.

dart

Doc,

Great post.

And when a bowhunter belittles gun-hunting, remind him what Deliverance taught us about what happens to bowhunters when they meet gunhunters in the woods...

Steve

P.S. How'd JohnCharlieNoak become lawndart?

Minkman has more than a clue to what is happening to our society. Besides the fact that we must never turn away from our fellow sportsmen/women when under attack, be they muzzle loaders, rifle hunters, bowman, fishermen,etc.; by PETA, Humane Soc, the gun lobby, The Press, etc.; we must all fight as a united group.

But society is changing, uninformed apt dwellers in big cities are passing judgement on our gun and hunting sports and they are people who tend to be "girlie men" for the most part. One positive is the number of women shooters and hunters who now are enjoying these sports. In my extended family we now have a very professional women who is a sucessful business person, who enjoys trap shooting and bird/water fowl hunting. This stops all debates in family gatherings because even the girlie men can't complain about my barbaric hunting life and habits-hunting-guns-shooting-trophies-

Besides all this is the weird concept that animals have the same status as humans and this leads to all sort of warped concepts of civilized life. Then strangely coupled to this is the concept of lack of responsibility for our actions, no accountability. Ever criminal is misunderstood and didn't have a chance, but every gun owner is a potential criminal and when you hunt you prove that you could be violent. Anyway, you get my drift. These people make me sick, but I thank the good Lord, I was born in this era and can still hunt and enjoy the outdoors.

I will continue to go to Africa as long as I can and as sportspeople and gun owners we must never give an inch to these "girlie men/women "

Semper Fi

Dak

Kinda like the movie I just watched with Clint Eastwood wherein he stated "yeah, I've killed women, children, damn near everything that walks and I'm here to kill you Little Bill..Kinda like my way or the highway!!

What does the above have to do with anything is a matter of interpetation, as for my posting it, I have no clue, just liked it......

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
What does the above have to do with anything is a matter of interpetation, as for my posting it, I have no clue, just liked it......

That's my favorite part of that movie too. Love it. Clint's character was one cold, mean SOB.

Cheers,
Canuck

Another thing I noticed is tonight I went to a newsagency to have a look at some hunting magazines and guess where they where now kept.........................

With the Pornographic rags !!

I thank my lucky stars that I live in a State that actually shuts down some of the schools during deer season.

I say that if the PETA and other bunny/tree huggers are the fly in our soup, then just eat the fly. A little more protein that way.