.

I agree ALF, and btw, good to talk again, haven't been posting much in 10 years. There are a lot of changes coming I think. Possibly I worked too long in 3rd world warzones... but this time I came back to the so called developed world I barely recognized it. Politically motivated doctrine attached to everything, reasonable debates being deliberately polarised, fringe groups getting funding to go head to head, they have even dusted off the old "Left vs Right" and put them in the average man's mouth again. Each group gets funding and a specific list of issues for its side( one gets LGBT, save the trees, vaccination, anti-gun, pro abortion, the other gets guns, capitalism, anti-abortion hetero sex etc) its almost like two written contracts. A lot of smart people being sucked into even smarter peoples schemes..

Anyway getting back to topic. In that we seem to have some over riding requirement to feminise men as well- apparently indoctrinating kids in "choosing genders" at grade schools( someone pinch me, is this actually happening?)and guns obviously don't fit that contract. We can only hope the next breed of androgynous royals and the rest of the kids in society will rise up in their uni-sex knickers and demand to be allowed to own a 375 H&H.

I feel your pain, Bro (as they say in the classics ).

The shrinking-world problem goes both ways, of course. I was just a working man but, with cheap airfares and land transport, was able to afford a safari. In times of yore the rich and nobles had those great hunts over several months, the rest of us just read about them.

Yes, hunting is now the love that dares not speak its name, but I speak it anyway, to show I'm not ashamed. I note shooting is being deleted from the 2022 Commonwealth Games for some reason - and they are being held in Birmingham. That's not only ironic but Brummy.

Can the sixth great extinction of life on this planet be far off?
I feel like a dinosaur that somehow survived the last great die-off, and I am watching the rats take-over the planet.
Where is an upheaval of the mantle, or an asteroid or comet when you need one?

Rip ...

Just look at the gun magazines and you get the idea.

I just cannot identify with all the ultra modern gear and tactical junk. It is not the same sport anymore.

All the hunting gun manufacturers are now swallowed up by giant corporates.

How many people have just fun hunts with friends and family - plinking, rabbits, small game, ????

Truly we are entering the "Sixth Great Extinction of Life on this Planet."
We "gunnosaurs" must evolve, figuratively speaking, just as the dinosaurs became birds, the gunnosaurs must become birdmen.
The birdmen must soar!
Soar above the over-multiplying rats squeeking and chittering among themselves that "guns and hunting are for the birds."
Yes! For the birdmen!
I leave this topic with just two words that we must tell the rats.
We must tell them:

"I'm Birdman."






Rip ...

I know from reliable sources that both Prince William and Harry are keen stalkers.

That makes sense to me, Reddy. It is my belief that over the two-to-three million years (at least 100,000 generations) our ancestors have eaten meat, hunting evolved into another instinct and that 5-10,000-odd years of farming has not undone that instinct.

The problem in Britain and other European countries may be that, over about 1000 years, the nobles gained ownership of most of the land and reserved it for themselves. The poor people were disenfranchised at pain of being hanged by the neck for poaching. And so, ego generated the compensation of saying they didn't want to do it, anyway. Alternative voices from Chaucer to Oscar Wilde to Peter Singer have reinforced this attitude by suggesting or arguing that it is wrong to hunt or even eat meat. They gained the ear of the media and most people now accept that hunting is wrong.

... Meanwhile the Royals hunt because they can - they have not needed to suppress their instincts.

North Americans and Australians are much more into hunting because the new lands gave them the freedom to reinvent themselves as the hunting animals they were. It has been typically the working men who go hunting here, the rich being more interested in golf.

Harry likes not only African safaris, but also driven boar hunts with Prince Albrecht , but it is a,paradign change, but if there is someone that can hold the fort and pass it on, its the 2 Princes. Picture of them have been the happiest whilst in the field i have seen.

Yes ALF, the royals look good publicity for hunting, even to republicans like yours truly.

I find Charlie's outlook on hunting and ecology good, and analogous with Aldo Leopold's philosophy.

Wait till we get synthetic meat - next 20-40 years

Then the last societal defense of Hunting will he gone. We will be true pariahs.

Mike

quote:

Originally posted by Beretta682E:
Wait till we get synthetic meat - next 20-40 years

Then the last societal defense of Hunting will he gone. We will be true pariahs.

Mike

Thank the good Lord I will not be around in 20 to 40 years, maybe the 20 but definitely not the 40.

Synthetic "meat" in the form of soya nuggets has been around for decades.

Synthetic bacon has been around using chicken as well a vegetables.

If you are referring to cloned or lab grown GM tissue cultured meat, then you are probably on the right track.

quote:

Originally posted by Beretta682E:
Wait till we get synthetic meat - next 20-40 years

Then the last societal defense of Hunting will he gone. We will be true pariahs.

Mike

Birdmen consider turkey bacon akin to cannibalism!


Rip ...

Actually Soulent Green is STILL a good alternative IF we last another 50 years as a species.

Besides who cares what the "Royals" do...we are all so wrapped up in our own little worlds we can't see beyond blowing away every 4 legged beast we encounter so we can go on forums and exibit our prowess and not look at the REAL "MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL"..the two legged kind.

Reduce the human population by 75%, let the animals recover and there would be ample "dangerous" animals available for the "next generations" to blow away in persuit of "hairylegged manlyness".

I know. Thursday I had Range Safety Officer duty at our gun range and only three over sixty members showed up. But I must admit how many working age folks can afford to shoot on a weekday? The economy is better but most folks need to work to stay above water.

It's definatley a world wide movement. Began in the 60s with the beginning of the liberal movement adopted by the Democratic party, and moved on from that point..Gun control, liberal views being taught in our schools of higher learning, the loss of integrity and respect and so it continues..I won't list details, we all know them..

The problems we have today can be reduced to one word...OVERPOPULATION...most of the places I hunted in the 60's are now covered with tract homes...and NO huntable animals for miles around. Roads I traveled and saw only a few cars on are now dangerous to travel. A tract of homes 3 streets wide and two blocks long is now gone and an "autobahn" and overpasses cover an area 5 times larger...homes, humans, farms, cattle, alfalfa fields all gone and that's just ONE of many in the several miles of asphalt/concrete highways that link various population centers.

You can simplistically blame political parties..ALL OF THEM...or religion or some other favorite "thing/person/entity"...but it STILL boils down to TOO MANY HUNGRY MOUTHS TO FEED and all the garbage we throw away...on land or in the sea and too many not taking care of business...not that anyone cares...it's too easy to point the finger then go about running around in our infinitesimal individual worlds.

Think it's bad now...just wait until the water starts running or or gets too polluted to drink...that's happening as I speak...how many of you even THINK about that????

It's just way to easy to sit on your duff, in front of a monitor, loggerd in on some mundane forum, and wax poetical.

What kind of a world are we leaving to are children and grand children? Pictures of Rhino, Elephant, Giraffe, Griz, Wolf in videos because we have exterminated them in nature. We've become worse than the "cavemen"...at least THEY ATE what they killed because they didn't have much choice.

I still think Soylent Green is the best solution in the short term.

Yeah...I know. Be glad I'm just a mindless old Phuk and not "God for an hour".

Nonagonagin- Your position is very incorrect politically, but consider this: The greatest surge in science, political ideologies benefiting the less powerful, and improvement in standard of living took place immediately following the great plague wherein about a third of all humans in Europe died, putting the resources/users ratio back in balance so that there was sufficient surplus food/stuff to allow for people to utilize other skills.

SCREW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS..political correctness got the world in the mess it's in...no balls to do what needs to be done WHEN it is patently obvious. I KNOW what the history books say written by basically the upper crust who were "users and shakers" We called it progress but look what it did to us....basically turned us into cannibals and gluttons while not actually eating each other.

Basically whether it is/was progress or digresson depends on where you are standing and how you view the results.

And SCREW what happened in the "olden days"...that just showed how gluttonus we humans are...the very fact that we are using up the non replaceble consumables at a prodigious rate, the oceans are full of plastic and so are the fish and fish eating birds AND will soon use up all the food fishes that feed the larger fish that WE USED to eat and have almost exterminated certain species of tuna and are basically screwing ourselves out of arable land AND the rest of the animal world into the "next great extinction"...and VERY FEW GIVE A RATS AZZ...YOU and I will be dead only a few yearS before the tipping point has been passed, IF IT HASN'T ALREADY BEEN PASSED....so what do you care about your progeny?

Companies are putting up acres and acres of "sun powered" electricity generators on land that WAS was used for food production. Soon we will have lots of electricity to run our stoves but NO food to cook on them...not counting the effects of reflected energy not getting to the ground... This is PROGRESS????

A civilization such as we have today(in some parts of the world) could NOT BEGIN again if we somhow decimated ourselves...we have used up all the natural resources. The progress of Homo sapiens is a tale of wanton destruction that continues today...the ONLY animal that has the ability to destroy itself and all around through it's abilities and opposable thumb.

You know the old saw "we either hang together or we hang separately"...we will ALL hang if we don't ALL wake the PHUK up.

OVERPOPULATION, GREED AND AVARICE and most NOT wanting to hear, see or think about the consequences. Par for the human race since we climbed out of the trees and left the Savanna. WE "Paved paradice and put in a parking lot"...so a few could get rich.

SOYLENT GREEN is looking better and better..you have your supply yet.?????

It will all feel better when you realized that the course of human events have only a small blip on the screen of activity not only on earth but on the Universe and what Carl Sagan referred to as the Cosmos. Regardless as to human efforts, something will mutate to a higher or immune form and will takeover for humans, then the next stage in the Earths history will begin and later it will end when something else comes along to out-compete it, of the several steps until the Sun burns out and life on Earth goes dead. Then the only question will be if their is sufficient matter in the Universe to outlast the decrease in momentum from the original expansion, and if so, the expansion of the Universe will stop followed by gravity pulling it all back together for a repeat, repeat, repeat. So relax, whatever you or any other human or total humans do, will have no effect whatsoever on the course of events.

All of my favorite hunting spots as a young man are now sub-divisions. IMHO overpopulation is the major problem and we are powerless to control that. Just beating our heads against a brick wall.

Don’t forget the good old interweb for closing shops. Just order it on line. Ask Potterfield

Boy, aren't you guys a positive bunch. I feel like going out and cutting someone's wrists

quote:

Originally posted by Ray B:
It will all feel better when you realized that the course of human events have only a small blip on the screen of activity not only on earth but on the Universe and what Carl Sagan referred to as the Cosmos. Regardless as to human efforts, something will mutate to a higher or immune form and will takeover for humans, then the next stage in the Earths history will begin and later it will end when something else comes along to out-compete it, of the several steps until the Sun burns out and life on Earth goes dead. Then the only question will be if their is sufficient matter in the Universe to outlast the decrease in momentum from the original expansion, and if so, the expansion of the Universe will stop followed by gravity pulling it all back together for a repeat, repeat, repeat. So relax, whatever you or any other human or total humans do, will have no effect whatsoever on the course of events.

... and they're out there already, Ray. In 1968 my family and I and neighbours a mile up the road saw what could only be described as a flying saucer, quite close up. The science writer at my newspaper said years later there was no way anything could get here from another world - but this thing was doing stuff I doubt Earthlings could manage now or in another 100 years.