I'm no movie star nor am I a Hollywood wannabe but being a hunter has definetly cost me a position.
I had sold my boat an moved back here to the family farms in Pa. . My resume landed me an interview with a public school board as Super. of B&G. On the call back interview I was asked to explain just what I had been doing since leaving the field 11 years prior to my application for the position. I explained I had been self employed as a captain and hunting guide of my own business for big game in Alaska.The remainder of the interview was terse an ended with "we'll be in touch".
Needeless to say I never got another call.
Here I am today years later retired off the sale of one of those farms. Finding myself somewhat bored with retirement at 50 yrs old I sent a resume to the same district to manage a construction project after inking a contract for an offer I just couldn't pass up. I mentioned my previous application several years prior to this date.I could not resist mentioning how fortunate it had been for me the district hadn't hired me afterall. As this contract cost the district another set of zeros and a comma!
Alls well that ends well!

That's a good article. Thanks for posting it.

I just have to tell this story. Like Cats, it has cost me something, but not anything I can't afford to lose. I do slide shows about my book and about my trips to Africa, North American hunting, etc. I called the district in which I taught for thirty years and asked if they would be interested in my doing a slide show about my two hunting trips to Africa for an assembly. The principal asked if I had any photos of dead animals or hunting with guns in the show and I told him I did. After all, these were two hunting trips. Frosty silence. "I'll get back to you," he told me. I never heard a word. Strangely enough, I have done slide shows for a number of local groups and have been asked why I don't do a school assembly. I am always truthful in telling them that I would have done one for free, but the PC crowd that runs our schools didn't want it.

Cats:

Good for you! As a quite old man I am sickened at how this country has changed about hunting. PA, where a quite famous bunch of rifles were turned out once that helped settle this country and where some of the best deer and bear hunting in the eastern US is still available has people like this in positions of authority? (Oh, well, why am I not surprised? Rumor has it that US F&G is infiltrated by bunny huggers so why not a school board?) I'm just real happy for you that things worked out. (I'm afraid,though, that other applicants who answered a standard question on forms about "Hobbies or pursuits" and put down "Hunting" probably never guessed why their application was deep sixed)

gerry if you think school boards are anti gun/hunting you would just cringe to see what some "teachers" have to say about the subject to their students.
The district I'm affiliated with borders another where gun fire is a nightly occurance, have failed the No Child Left Behind quotas several years running placing them on probation. Yet a local Rod & Gun club was refused space to hang a bulletin inviting young adults with adult permission to a Hunter's Education class free of charge...why??? because it promotes "gun violence" in the words of one anti gun Board member.

I guess in her eyes it is better for the kids to learn gun use on the streets!

Thank you for posting that article. I grew up in NJ and always took the first day of deer season off. I always gave my teachers an advanced warning that I would not be in school on the next Monday and could I make up the work. All always said yes, and then asked what I was doing. I got a few looks of disbelief, and a few stares. I also got a couple of "The tenderloins can help your grade out...." I always got a big kick out of that comment.

I think one of the biggest problems with hunters is that they don't talk about the sport more to people. The anti's have protests about hunting. I think hunters should follow some of the PETA or other anti groups around and when they go to buy vegtables in the stores they should Protest and Ask them questions like.

"Do you know how many animals died in the harvesting of the vegtables."

"Do you know how many fawns and little bunnies get chopped up in farm equipment?"

"Do you know agriculture hurts open land for animals?"

Hopefully then they will all starve to death and we won't have to worry about them anymore!!!

One thing I must saw for our state of Taxsylvania I do believe it is almost state wide that the first day of Deer season is a school holiday. I can't tell the number of people from out of state who move here are absolutly baffeled at this fact. I also do slide shows but have never offered them to the school. This has rung a bell in my head - about 8 or 9 years ago I said to the Super of school (at Rotary) I had thought of hunting Buffalo out west and would donate to the school a life size mount if the school would agree to keep it displayed behind glass. He never got back to me - oh by the way the local teams are the Bedford Bisons! Our next door school district are the Lions and they have a life size mount donated to the school by a hunter but that was about 30+ years ago.

Cats:

As I said, I am a quite old man - but reading a post like yours makes me fearful for the country. I hope I am simply an old man who is just too much afraid. Where and how did we let these people get control? ( Yes, I know, I should be looking at my own state -and I just don't know the answer)

listen to the news about Iran posted today....makes hunting issues seem rather silly

Many of the faculty at my medical school really postured their liberal views far and wide (though they never put their money where there mouth was).
One vascular surgeon got up and gave a talk (this was the mid-eighties) about the evils of Glock pistols that didn't show up on X-rays at the airport. I stood up and told him and the auditorium that Glocks were mainly steel and showed up just fine on X-ray. Talk about a turd in his punch bowl.
The dean found out I also flew F-4s in the Air National Guard. He asked me how I could justify "killing people" while I was "applying to enter the high calling of medicine". This was about a month before graduation. I smiled sweetly and said, "Kill a germ, kill a commie; what's the diff? I then reminded him that the State of Illinois and the feds, who undewrote the cost of operating his school would take an incredibly dim view of him being hostile to a veteran. The wanker's face went from sneer to terror modes in about six nano-seconds.
Now my patients show me picture of their deer, their kid's elk and their grandkid's antelope. they all take off the first few days of the big game seasons, so all is not lost in this beautiful country.
lawndart

As a psychology/sociology professor, I hear these stories all the time, and the questions, "How can you do such a thing?" The dean of instructors at our university, once she heard I was a hunter (and that tag line on my postings), told me we would be politically correct and that I should say nothing about hunting. Needless to say, I've ignored her remarks and even reported her to the university for having me peer-evaluated four times in one year (average is once every two years). The evals? All were excellent. her off.

I like the answers that were on an older topic here on AR. My current answer to why I kill animals is, "Because they taste sooo good!"

Nick,

Great article, and I can tell you first hand Jamison Parker is one of us a hunter..He has hunted on my close friends ranch in S.Dakota many times..the Krull Ranch for upland birds with trained dogs...

Mike

I'd love to get my hands on that list of celebrity hunters that Heston alluded to. It's high-time they came out of the closet in open support of the shooting sports they enjoy.

Nickudu,

Thanks again for posting a very thought provoking article. But then, if you posted it, it would well be among the best on AR anyway!

In Wisconsin where my wife and I lived for a year and a half (she regrets moving to Chicago to this day) the first day of hunting season was a holiday and women seemed as enthusiastic as men were in hunting. Very positively, when I visited my good friend and business partner Mark's place in Michael Illinois, the atmosphere was equally pro hunting with "Welcome Hunters" banners all the way through the town. The manager at the local bank where we went to open our account started talking about her husband's hunt the day before.

We had a great time there and my normally gun shy wife was coaxed by Mark and his children to try her hand at shooting, something that she became very enthusiastic about after a few shots at a piece of wood bobbing in a pond behind Mark's place. No, I did not get a doe or buck but did it matter? Not at all. Now, if only the antis would understand this sentiment!



What made the hunt a success even though I didn't bag anything. Now my wife appreciates my love for hunting. In the future, she would hunt along with me!

It doesn't end with actors.... A lot of the CEO's and upper management of many of the companies out there hunt. Some of them would never dream of letting the public know they hunt becasue of the possible repercusion's(sp). It really is too bad that our country, and most of the world, has come to this.

It's a sad story, but I too was so close to being a movie star until I mentioned my gun and hunting fetish. I was dropped as the lead in 007 just before we were scheduled to start filming. Then Angelina found out and she dumped me as well. It made me want to go kill something.

quote:

Originally posted by ForrestB:
It's a sad story, but I too was so close to being a movie star until I mentioned my gun and hunting fetish. I was dropped as the lead in 007 just before we were scheduled to start filming. Then Angelina found out and she dumped me as well. It made me want to go kill something.

Originally posted by mehulkamdar:


Mehul, my friend ... how on earth did you manage to get that beautiful woman to marry you?

Gentlemen,

You have to remember that just one negative article, regardless of how true, will kill someone's carrier in thsi day and age.

We had a famous golf player here at home for dinner one day - he won the "green Jacket" a number of times.

He told us about his friends, also very famous golfers, who regularly go hunting in Africa, but like to keep it out of the media.

Such is the public look at hunting nowadays.

I used to get a few nasty jabs pointed at me at various places. But, they seem to have died down now, as I started to tell those who object to my hunting what sort of hypocrites they are. As they sit on teh dinner table, and start devouring all the meat and fish laid for them.

It is very easy to reminds them that SOME had to kill the food they are enjoying.

I know Jack Nicklaus has hunted South Africa a number of times, along with family.


Quite recently, in defence of my interest in hunting, I asked a young woman, a school teacher mind you, where it was she got meat for the family table. Her terse, razor edged and poignant response was "from the butcher!".

When Adelaide had an International Formula Grand Prix race it was dropped into the news one time how several of the drivers holidayed in Africa on the way over for a hunting safari.

Most celebrities don't want their private lives in the media, especially if they are pestered about it.

Thanks, Nick.

This is why I love irreverent rock star Ted Nugent. He is unapologetic and proud of his interest in guns and hunting.

Has anyone seen his over the top "survivor" type television program? He takes citified young people, both young men and women, out into the wilderness, introduces them to wilderness living, including the rudiments of shooting and archery, and then mercilessly runs them through various torture tests of their fitness and abilities.

My favorite segment is where he makes them kill their dinner, a chicken, then gut it, pluck it and cook it--or GO HUNGRY!

He typically says something like this to them: "Can't pay anyone to do your killing for you around here! This ain't the supermarket! Dinner don't come wrapped in plastic! Kill it and grill it!"

Ted is also very active in the NRA and various hunting organizations.

I spend several weeks each year teaching firearms classes as well as Safari Prep classes but I am a minister 52 weeks out of the year. I carry a pistol (1911) everyday and have for years. In 1999 I was invited by a congregation in Abilene TX to come down and visit with them about working with their congregation. The elders who invited me knew me and knew that I carried all the time. The gospel meeting went extremely well but both elders began to express discomfort with the fact that I carried, even in the pulpit (Always concealed of course.) I was asked not to carry in the building if I came to work with that congregation. Of course, I said I couldn't do that and so I didn't work with that congregation. Six weeks later a piece of trash walked into a Baptist church building in Ft. Worth and started shooting the teenagers. There was not one good man there with a gun and kids died.

Postscript

In 2000, the Sunday after I returned from my first hunting trip to Africa I received a call from an elder of a congregation I had wanted to work with for years. He asked me if I would consider working with them. Of course I said yes. How did he feel about my carrying a gun? He had no problems with it, he carries one too.

Over the last 5 years I have trained between 20 and 30 members.

My wife and I used to keep our 4 cats in the garage and occasionaly a mouse would enter it during the night. You can imagine how that turned out. If a man came into our congregation to harm someone he would be that little mouse.

Tom

Y'all folks need to move to Wyoming. Where my daughters went to high school they taught hunter safety AS A CLASS!! There are probably more guns in this state than people.

Maybe some independent filmmaker will create a new safari movie with some new hotshot actors and help reverse this trend (Hemmingway's McCumber story?).

Look what Brad Pitt did for fly fishing in the 90's.

Cats:

About Iran - I couldn't agree more. I saw two major wars explode out of nowheres (so far as we civilians were concerned, Pearl Harbor and Korea) As a reader of history of the lead up to WW2, I see a depressing similarity to the way the so called "International Community" treats Iran. I'm not sure I will see it but I think a real nuclear war is in the offing in the Middle East. You're right, of course. Hunting will seem like a trivial matter - but so, also will be the screams about "privacy" or "human rights" because of complaints that we have a US Government trying to track down terrorists under the Patriot Act.

Nickudu,

Isn't feminine emotion a good thing? If women thought logically where would we be?

Good hunting, my friend!

quote:

Originally posted by mehulkamdar:
Nickudu,

Isn't feminine emotion a good thing? If women thought logically where would we be?

Hunting, full time, I suspect!

Interesting thing about the article was that it indicated several actors had not been hit too badly, yet some had been. The time was June, 2001 -- pre 9/11. Bush was still having a hard time getting the press' attention. They were still mourning the exodus of Clinton -- with his inexorable drum beat of anti-gun rhetoric surrounding escallating school shootings.

It has been a number of years, and in many states, the temperment has changed. Not so in NYC, and numbers of urban areas across NY State. San Francisco has re-asserted their anti-gun sentiment. But the majority of the rest of U.S. states have moved towards shall-issue, and some form of frivolous lawsuit protection has passed for firearms manufacturers (except for the federal judge based in NYC, Weinstein, who asserts it doesn't offer protection in spite of its specific intent). There are still overt pockets of resistance -- places where firearms are prohibited (even parking lots where employee put their cars -- like Weyerhauser, etc). Its been that way at many major corporations for years (no surprise -- IBM had their employee club-owned firearms destroyed years ago).

While things don't seem quite so overtly oppressive, the anti's are still out there, and I suspect they still keep their glass ceilings and black-lists in operation. We still haven't seen a good positive character in a movie who simply hunts -- say along the lines of "A River Runs Through It" or "On Golden Pond."

Around here, hunting is an issue. When some folks overhear parents thanking some of us for teaching their kids hunter safety, we have heard complaints that we are abusing those children, that we should be the ones getting shot at, etc. Only thing I can say is "take a kid hunting."

Dan

quote:

Originally posted by cable68:
Maybe some independent filmmaker will create a new safari movie with some new hotshot actors and help reverse this trend (Hemmingway's McCumber story?).

Look what Brad Pitt did for fly fishing in the 90's.

I completely agree. It would have to be done appropriately or it may be a disaster though.