Patrick has a looong and -- profound, subtle, exhaustive-- post on what hunting is and isn't, prompted by the moronic nouveau country singer Troy Gentry's arrest for shooting a caged bear. It must be read by anyone-- any adult-- who cares about these things. Its title, naturally, is "Hunting and Fishing Like Adults". A few excerpts:
"The issue here is not "animal rights." The issue is fakery and debasement of a true set of skills. Shooting brain-addled pen-raised birds under the umbrella of "hunting" debases the art of true hunting. When we snap-trap a few mice in the garage, we do not talk about a "holocaust of mice" -- to do so would be to cheapen the horror of the Holocaust while dramatically inflating the status of rodents and denigrating the lives of millions of once-vital human beings.
"Language matters.
"And so it is with guaranteed bird shoots and pay-pond fishing. Angling is an art, and hunting assumes an element of field craft not evident when birds are purchased as units like Chicken McNuggets."
(Snip)
"Zoos routinely over-breed animals because tiger cubs and baby zebras boost attendance and generate profits. Cute baby animals quickly grow up, however, and that's a problem. It turns out that the world has more caged lions, tigers and zebras than it knows what to do with.
"What to do? Answer: canned shooting preserves in Texas. It's not an accident that at one point nine board members of the San Antonio Zoo owned hunt preserves."
(Snip)
"A lot of people will find some of these questions easy to answer, but will pause at others.
"The brain dead Vegan and the knuckle-dragging slob-hunter will find all of these questions easy to answer."
(Snip)
"Just as we have the Playboy channel and Hustler magazine selling the fantasy that every woman is a lesbian-curious nymphomaniac waiting to be unbound, so we have TV hunting shows and magazines selling the idea that every foray into the field should result in a trophy buck, a monster bear, and a bucket-mouth bass. In this sense, "Rack "Em Up" and "Antler King" feed supplements are to the game farm industry what silicone implants are to porn producers."
And finally, re famous "hunter" Ted Nugent:
"It turns out that Ted Nugent is not just a sunshine patriot, he is also a canned hunter. In fact, Ted runs his own canned hunt facility in Michigan called Sunrize Acres where, for a hefty fee, you can shoot tame buffalo that have been trucked to his 340-acre spread.
"Along with buffalo, Ted's farm is a pay-shoot for whitetail deer ($2,000 for a doe!), wild boar, “exotic ram” (that would be farm goats for you who are wondering), and Sika and Fallow deer.
"These are not wild animals -- they are trucked-in farm stock. The bison are no better than glorified farm cows, the Russian boar are no better than glorified farm pigs, the "exotic rams" are just farm goats, and the deer are corn-fed dependents."
This is a mere skim of a rich post. RTWT, and send it on.
3 comments:
That is really disappointing to hear about The Nuge... He seemed to be an eccentric yet charismatic advocate for the Hunt and valuing the fruits of the kill... Canned hunts, true ones, are ultimately bad for hunting. I think there is room for someone with large areas of wilderness to make money off hunting since places to hunt freely are harder and harder to find. It is better than otherwise developing the land.
Teh gun rags and TV shows don't help. I have seen many reports promoting this or that ranch, encouraging the canned hunts. The ones that really peeve me are the South American (Argentina IIRC) bird hunting lodges. Routinely bagging hundreds of birds in a day. Trap/Skeet shooting with live animals, basically... I don't understand how this passes their ethical sniff test.
A side note:
a recent American Hunter piece on Benelli shoguns reported that several house guns at the South American ranches have upwards of a million shells through them. That speaks well for Benelli guns.
Yes, I always thought Nugent did some good-- but you have got to go where the facts lead. That ain't hunting.
I wonder if those big bags are sustainable-- they SAY yes. Some of those Argentinian spreads have been known to use poison-- there was a notorious case of secondary poisoning of Swainson's hawks a few years ago-- when they can't shoot the so- called agricultural pests.
Does anyone eat these? Anybody know?
Have heard the same about Benelli. When a load of guns were stolen many years ago, Patrick and Carol Hemingway, who hunt more birds than anybody I know, got a 12 and 20 Benelli and have done all their shooting since with them, without complaint.
In the reports about the Argentine ranches they never say how they get that many birds on the property. One of the video pieces claimed that much of one days shooting was done from a single place overlooking a bunch of scrub and bushes. Ranch hands below flushing the birds. Just a guess but I imagine the ranch is seeding the population.
Another story about the Benellis was from an Austrailian pest contol ranger, controlling introduced rabbits. Hundreds of thousands of shells through his gun also. They mentioned that the gun furniture was in pretty bad shape though, bailing wire and duct tape holding it together.
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