Happy Hunting

WyoJoe

I hate all the pseudo spiritual mumbo jumbo that some go into, but I will say there is something to be said for "getting in touch with nature" It is not something that can be dryly and accedemically discussed, it is something one has to experience.

I wished I'd grown up hunting, next best thing is making sure my kids do.

Suggest folks who ask this question to read Ruark's Old Man and the Boy.

Or the North American philosopher, Sitting Bull, who is reported to have said:

"I decided that unless I become a vegetarian I'll get my meat by hunting for it. I feel absolutely unabashed by the arguments of other carnivores who get their meat in plastic with blue numbers on it. Anyway I've seen slaughterhouses, and anyway, as Sitting Bull said, when the buffalo are gone, we will hunt mice, for we are hunters and we want our freedom." Thomas McGuane, An Outside Chance, 1980.

For me our species is about 250,000 years old, and it is only the last 10,000 years or so that the farmers came into the picture. I hunt because grew up hunting. Now that I have been doing it for some while, and thought about the why of it and my experiences with animals in the field I hunt because I am a hunter. If the Animal Rights Fanatics succeed in banning hunting, then I will hunt them too.

jim dodd

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"if you are to busy to
hunt, you are too busy."

I presented this same topic a few months ago and got some good replies.

I had a different angle however. I asked the question to prepare you for the answer when you are asked to give it, whether it be to a small child or a grown adult. Our heritage is in our hands and it is solely up to us to protect it. Unless we can competently answer this question, we are finished.

I look forward to hearing others chime in on this one.

Good topic.

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Wendell Reich
Hunter's Quest International

[This message has been edited by Buffalobwana (edited 12-27-2001).]

Why is Malthus so misunderstood?

Why the need to explain yourself?

I hunt because I am a hunter.

There is always a market for making the clear complex.

So I often pose the question to these people, how would you feel being on the end of having something you love and enjoy being taken from you, such as dope, dreadlocks and welfare payments???.

Regards PC

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1)Hunting is ingrained in my personality.I have been hunting since infancy (in a backpack carrier on my father's back).If you had been say,a classical pianist since infancy,my bet is you'ld probibly play until you simply couldn't anymore.Same with me and hunting.

2)I like to eat wild game.Sure beats eating drug fed cattle.

PC is correct,the anti's will not stop after firearms and hunting are banned (and trust me,they will be some day).Once firearms and hunting are gone,they will stop fishing and all outdoor activity.Then they will try to close off all the forests to ANYTHING.Why?Well,99% of all anti's live in big citys which they've never been out of.They could care less about the forest,since in reality most have never seen one other then on cable.BUT,they simply cringe at the thought of a snail being stepped on,and they just won't stand for that.

One day,hunting will be gone.PETA is already jobbying congress to have the law against harrassing hunters dropped,as in their own words they say they are "defending the wildlife".You cannot legally harrass someone on the street,so I see no reason why they should be able to do the same thing but only in the woods.

We are having quite a few problems with PETA folks here.A bunch of them will drive out on a ridge during deer season,and simply blaze away to scare the deer off.This season I hunted most every day,and every Friday or Saturday,from one location (different each week)there would be a minimum of 1,000 rounds fired,and in a fairly short time.There is no way someone even blazing away could do this-it was simply shooting done by PETA to scare away game.I tried to chase them down several times but they were always a step ahead.I have heard about this happening in other locations as well.What really frightens me are the extremists-like the ones who skied between hunters and buffalo a few years back.Some PETA and PETA related orginizatiosn have even threatened physical harm to hunters.I don't know about you,but about the last person I'd try to threaten or hurt would be someone with a rifle or shotgun in their hands.

Ok,my ramblings are done!

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I'm out to wrong rights,depress the opressed,and generaly make an ass of myself!

Happy Hunting

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Good Shooting!

Most of the normal human beings have one or more passions, hobbies or interests in their lives. Everyone has the right to choose his/her hobby/interest UNTIL & UNLESS that hobby (or whatever you call it) does not harm any other human being or exploit the Natural Resources.

IMHO this planet earth and its all resources (and for that matter whole of universe) is the property of God and we the human kind are its custodians. All human beings are created equal, thus have equal share of these resources. We have to pass it to our next generations, after the PROPER UTILIZATION of it. All of these resources are created for OUR benefit, be it by consuming them or conserving them or both. We cannot survive without utilizing any or all of these resources.

Now if someone utilizes nature's resources throughout his/her life i.e., eating grains, vegetables and fruits, drinking water, inhaling oxygen, using wood, coal, oil and gas, wearing cotton, wool and leather, smoking tobacco, sitting in the shade of trees, enjoying the sun, ploughing the earth to grow crops and animal fodder, digging the mountains to extract metals and minerals, using rivers to generate electricity, using chemicals and plants for medicines, erecting our homes on the face of earth, burying our dead in the soil or burning them to ashes to be flown in water or scattered on earth, disposing our wastes in earth, water and space.... THEN WHY ON EARTH cannot eat meat and harvest animals, birds and fish. Can any of bunny huggers or so called animal right activists deny ALL above mentioned utilization of natural resources? NO. If not then why criticize a hunter? Hunters equally own natural resources, including wildlife, and no one has the right to remind and interpret to us about any rights possessed by animals.

If one could understand the process of nature, order of food chain, importance of wetlands and forests, impact of wildlife and its habitat on human life and agriculture, it will be obvious that legitimate hunting & fishing in no way harms natural resources but is a must to conserve them. Hunting do provide funds to manage these resources.

Hunting is a hobby that is healthy and natural and does not harm other human beings and does not exploit natural resources. If I have the right to choose my hobby and I care about its impact on others, on nature and on our future generations, I will choose to hunt. If anybody wants to play football, I do not object. But if anybody wants to use his/her ideology to stop me from practicing my hobby, I will object.

Saad

It is indeed spirital. I also enjoy the meat a great deal, but I truly love the animals I pursue or respect either way it it has been in me since a young age and I have no idea what I would do if I were told I couldn't anymore.

God Bless and good shooting!

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NRA Life member

Best response, if you know the person, is to question their favorite sport. Such as, "Why golf?" "Why Racquet Ball?"

I mean, I love golf myself, however I see less reason to repeatedly hit a ball, follow it, and hit it again, when compared to a hunt.
A hunt supplies people with food, a hide that can be used for numerous things, and an "adventure". I mean, you never know exactly what is going to happen on a hunt.

When was the last time anyone brought something home you could use from a day golfing?
And I don't think I have ever seen anything edible on a racquet ball court.

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Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!

Only difference is, I decided I would rather take a picture, but, I understand the hunting urge.

My experience with surfing, scuba, and snorkling are about as close as I could get to the gentlemen here and their hunting.

I surf because I like trying to chase down waves, catch and ride them.

Snorkling, I enjoy chasing fish, seeing if I can catch, or spear them.

Only thing is, I usually decide the fish should be allowed to live another day, or, they are way better in the water then I am, and stay out of range.

I think it's a really primal essence of our being to hunt, and stalk food. It goes to the core of who we are, and, what we are.

As long as that urge doesn't over power, or destroy the object of our hunt, on a spieces level, no one's right to hunt should be abriged.

One caution. When you combine hunting, and great economic gain, you have a recipe for destruction.

gs

Theres many reasons for hunting but I agree with socrates, its the thrill of the chase, the CHALLENGE of bringing home a trophy, and also the pure pleasure of everything it involves. The gear, the strategy, the outdoors and the wildlife. Never have I been more "in tune" with wild animals than when Im hunting them. We visit their homes, their young and observe everything about them.

Its the same reason that people play sports, the same reason that many sick individuals enjoy their jobs. Its a great and wonderfull challenge.

Happy Hunting

While surfing outer reefs, with one or two friends, we are hunting monster waves, and the beauty and thrill is beyond imagination.

I used to go surf a place called Keana Point, with one friend, and it wouldn't break, unless the swell was at LEAST 20 feet.

The experience was really draining. It was so beautiful, yet, at the same time, so stressful.
The best way I could describe it is you have a certain number of hours, maybe 2, where the adrenilin overcomes the fear. After that, you had better come in...

We saw the most incredible things...
You guys want to hunt? Try watching a SIXTY foot whale, breach, with 50 feet of his body out of the water, and come down, less then a 1/4 mile away, with the sound and impact of a 105 cannon(easy comparision, since we could hear 105's going off in the mountains over the surf spot).

Getting out was an amazing experience. You had to weave through huge waves, on a path about 5-6 feet wide. It was a sand path through the coral, and it was like following the yellow brick road.

I am sure getting close to massive animals, like buffalo, and elephants, is similar, if on a MUCH smaller scale(dig, dig, dig;-)

We only had to worry about Tiger sharks eating us, and they only get 25 feet, and the size of a small submarine.

None the less, nothing can come close to sitting in the middle of the Pacific, around a 1/2 mile or more from the beach, and experiencing these things. Simply incredible.

I'm sure hunting in Africa is the same.

It evokes the primal nature of man.

(Steps on to soapbox)
It never ceases to amaze me that we try and legislate away patterns of behavior that have been going on for 10,000, or more years.

We try and tell 14 year olds they can't have sex, when 100 years ago, or less, and in many other current countries, the age of 14 is old enough to both marry, work, and setup a family...

We try and tell people that hunting, something ingrained in the DNA of man kind, is no longer permited. How long has man hunted, 500,000 years?
Our audacity at trying to tell our fellow man what he should and should not do is truly amazing.

gs

Paladin

[This message has been edited by Recono (edited 01-03-2002).]

For uncounted millions of years -- since long before they were fully human, in fact -- people have hunted animals. If there's anything for which we human beings are best suited, anything for which evolution has naturally selected us, it is this.

For better and for worse, not only in my own opinion, but in that of such diverse thinkers as Robert Ardrey, Jose Ortega y Gassett, Louis B. Leakey, and Ernest Hemingway (to mention only a few), hunting is what made us what we are. It's often regarded by the ignorant and naive as a source of evil; far likelier it's the source of whatever kindness, nobility, and aspiration we possess.

Unfortunately, just like a lot of other basic, earthy human activities -- like sex, for instance, like childbirth, like Cuban cigars -- it can't adequately be described to the uninitiated, and can be understood (if at all) only by someone who has experienced it.

I'm a hunter. Although I fail to fit the popular image of a loudmouthed beer-guzzling machinegunner of the countryside which the media have invented (and have come, themselves, to believe). I'm a scholar, a philosopher, the author of seventeen published novels, many short stories, and numberless essays like this one. Unprovoked, I'm a relatively gentle soul, a reader, a student of economics and history, a writer, a husband and father, a changer of diapers.

Yet I've held big game animals in my rifle and pistol sights and felt my pulse throb, felt my blood sing with a melody vastly older than the human race. I've pulled the trigger and ended the life of a creature my own size. (Understand that "sportsmanship" has nothing at all to do with it. The animal is prey and I am a predator, from an ancient, honorable line of predators whose natural weapon, from slingstone to scoped rifle, is technology. Is the cougar concerned with sportsmanship when she breaks a rabbit's frail neck with her massive fangs? Then why should I -- an organism just as natural as she is -- be any more concerned than she is?)

I've butchered an animal my own size with a knife, been steeped in its blood up to my elbows (certainly not the most pleasant of experiences, but one you accept as a responsibility of the hunt), smelled its hot viscera steaming into the morning mountain air, and taken it -- my own weight in meat -- back home to nourish my family. No camera "hunt" can touch on this primal experience, any more than a trip to the grocery store can. I am a "killer ape"; I acknowledge it; I accept it; I rejoice in it. Hunting has given me the place I occupy as a creature of history and nature, it took men to the moon, and it will take them to the stars.

In localities where people don't hunt, they often kill each other by the thousands, instead. People who won't hunt animals -- people like the anti-hunting simpletons infesting the media -- usually spend their time and energy hunting down and murdering other people's dreams. Don't talk to me about animal rights -- animals have no rights, only humans do, since rights are a purely human idea which without a doubt arose in bands of humans hunting together. People who claim to speak for the rights of animals are no more entitled -- and no more credible -- than those who claim to speak for the non-existent rights of the not-yet-human fetus.

To deliberately hunt members of your own species (especially at the behest of man's natural enemy, the state) is a perversion. However, to murder the dreams of others in order to aggrandize yourself is even worse than a perversion, and there may be no adequately disgusting word for it. So leave me and my dream, my primal experience, my communication with my ancient heritage -- alone.

And I will leave you alone to pursue your own dreams and experiences.

[This message has been edited by csj (edited 01-03-2002).]

Yes, MADONNA

http://msn.espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/2001/1126/1284670.html

I use the following line "against" non-hunters that purportedly do not understand an instinctive urge:

I will stop hunting the day all non-hunters stop making love except for breeding purposes. (I.e. Why do you make love? You can after all adopt a child...)

They normally change the subject immediately...

Antonio