While Beloved Bride was out of town last week, I did a little grocery shopping. I ran into a guy I used to work with, and we passed a couple of minutes talking about the upcoming deer season.
While we were so engaged, another former coworker we knew casually happened by. Once she unnderstood our topic, she blurted out, "Oh, HOW can you kill such a beautiful, gentle creature?"
I couldn't help but answer truthfully: "Mostly with a .30'06 or a .257. Haven't used a pistol in several years." She left without another word.
18 comments:
What a lovely nature photo.
And whenever I see one like that, I can't help but mentally superimpose a set of crosshairs, right...about...there.
Loved you answer.
Last year during deer season, our pastor arrived a few minutes late still wearing jeans, boots, hunting jacket and carrying his Marlin lever-action. His first words were that he had a ten pointer in the back of his pickup.
Glory Alleuhia, to be in God's Country.
It's different here, in the suburbs of Byzantium-on-the-Potomac. Here, we keep making ideal deer habitat. Suburbia.
Suzie Soccer Mom, walking her 1.25 children through the local park, sees "a cute baby deer." .25 child races off to pet said baby deer. 3-year-old Momma deer has little fear of humans, and none of Suzie-Soccer-Mom.
Let's all have an adventure in the County's emergency medical system.
Then the witless nanny-state county supervisors wanna make what they call "Urban Villages." Don't get me started.
Then they wonder why a six point buck goes racing through the local Latte shop. Must have acquired a taste for that Mocha-Grande what the hell ever it is they pay $5.95 a cup of, or is it for?
Nope, here in the Suburbs of Byzantium-on-the-Potomac, they cull the deer herd by automobile. Call it an urban village experiment.
Part of why I get outside the Beltway as often as possible.
His honesty and wit are but two of the qualities I love about this man. When my older Bro asked, "Do you shoot pool?" Well, I'll let him tell you about his answer...
I ain't never thought much of hunters myself. I can see it if you are hungry and poor and need to put food on the table. That's one thing but to kill just for sport or for a trophy to hang on the wall takes a very sorry human being in my book. I think trophy hunters should have to hunt with a bowie knife and no other weapon should be allowed for hunting large game. Make it fair so the animal has the same chance the hunter does. I also think trophy hunters should be hunted theirselves once a year. Let's have an open season on trophy hunters. How long would it last if you saw human heads and carcasses hanging on the wall. Don't get me wrong. I am pro-gun. I am not a tree hugger. I am even pro-hunting if there is a need for food. I hate people that hunt simply for the bloodsport of it to get a trophy on the wall. I think they should all be lined up and shot with a 30.06 or .257. There are so many better things to do with guns than hunt animals. If we got rid of the trophy hunters, most of the tree huggers and anti-gunners would shutup and stop trying to take our guns away too. My 2 cents. I know there are millions of trophy hunters out there that have no qualm about killing for nothing. Your day will come. Good luck at the Pearly Gates. I'm sure hunting is good at the River Styx.
assrot,
(what a lovely handle!)
I guarantee you that all the deer ever hunted in this country, or anywhere else, have much more of a sporting chance than the pigs and cows that went into your breakfast and dinner and shoes.
a.) Venison is tasty, and a freezer full will feed a family for a while.
b.) When you make an assumption, you make an ass...mostly out of yourself, actually. You know precisely dick about the man onto whose blog you're spreading your digital urine, or why he hunts, or what he does with the deer he shoots.
c.) Learn to use paragraphs.
Thank you, Marko. Perhaps sometime we can have y'all over for venison pot roast, or chiicken fried steaks. Or, if we're really lucky, maybe we can get Elder Son to cook for us. He has an artistic touch in the kitchen, as does his lovely bride.
assrot, how about we make a deal? You don't enter any more comments on my blog, and I'll write none on yours. Okay? No, wait - - Please, don't reply. I'll gladly take your silence for assent.
Hey Assrot, hunter's license fees, and everybody's ammunition taxes pay for the vast majority of US wildlife conservation efforts. Have you heard about places like Yellowstone National Park? Yup. How about wetland restoration, which brought so many species of migratory birds back from the brink of extinction? Same again.
By the way, frogs, turtles, and all kinds of other non-huntable species are back from extinction because of habitat paid for by hunters, and the ammunition taxes of all shooters. JPG helped pay for all this, and you didn't.
Let me be the first to tell you that folks like JPG have done more in their lifetimes, to do good things for wildlife, than you and your fellow travelers will do in a thousand lifetimes. Without folks like JPG, there would be no deer for you to say we shouldn't hunt. They'd be extinct way before you born.
Another point that Marko touched upon. When you go to the grocery store and buy a porterhouse steak in vacuum packaging, someone else cut your food up for you. Big hint: you won't find vacuum packed porterhouse steaks grazing in someone's pasture. The cow had to be raised, killed, and cut up, by someone else.
Have you ever owned, or even used a piece of leather? It came from some animal someone else had to kill for you.
All-in-all, JPG is WAY too nice to you. Then again, he's a gentleman. You ought to learn something from folks like JPG.
Hey, if we were inundated with rotting buck corpses with just the heads cut off, ol' Ass would have a good point. But I guess I know a hundred hunters, and there's not a trophy hunter in the lot--unless you count groundhog, "Ohio's big game," and we have a little campaign going on that, based on the state motto "They're good eating if you fix them right."
The closest I've met to a trophy hunter was a Minnesotan who went on safari in (where else) Africa. He didn't bring any meat home; his party of 6 instead fed a village of 140 for two weeks. It's a fringe benefit for the porters. Both labor and management seemed satisfied with the arrangement.
In line with Mr. Griffin's observation, some people are satisfied to have the Dodge 1500 Magnum be their deer harvesting tool of choice. I've never considered it a gentleman's weapon.
Mmm...venison. Love it. Love the time in the woods, but all that steroid and antibiotic-free meat that I have the intellectual honestly to take myself is a bonus.
***rot, a couple of points;
1) If you ARE "pro-gun", PLEASE REFRAIN FROM THROWING BRICKS AT PERSONNEL ON OUR SIDE OF THE BARRICADE. There are plenty of targets on the other side.
2) Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. I'm guessing the only thing you've ever butchered is the English language..... "hunters should be hunted theirselves once a year."
Poorly thought out, Assrot.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.
We are predators, we human beings. We also displace native species by our existence, even if we are vegitarians.
Bloodsport is a heritage that has noble ends, and acceptable goals.
And, damned if I don't like my health food venison and wild pork.
If I may chime in here...
Deer have few natural predators.
The game wardens in my state (Michigan--opening day of deer season is an unofficial State Holiday) use hunting to manage the herd.
As beautiful and gracious as white-tail deer are in nature, they aren't harmless. If unchecked, they will overeat, and over-reproduce. Several things can result from this--severe destruction to farmer's crops, cycles of overpopulation and starvation for the deer, and the above-mentioned interactions between cars, deer, and people.
In some parts of Michigan, wolves help manage the deer herds. Every fall, half a million hunters do their part.
Another benefit of hunting is that the men (and women) who hunt learn to respect the environment more. There are few things which can get people more interested in the environment, and in managing the habitat for wild animals, than hunting.
Ambo Driver said:
"And whenever I see one like that, I can't help but mentally superimpose a set of crosshairs, right...about...there."
Yeah, I saw them right about... there..
Matt, that's exactly where I'd
aim, too.
Late coming into the discussion after Assrot's comments...
Obviously the man has never hunted, if he thinks it's that easy.
Equally obvious, he knows zip about herd management and population control, otherwise he'd realize that those "trophies" are by and large the most difficult to find (that's how they got to be trophies, Assrot), but many of them are old enough that they no longer contribute significantly to the gene pool.
I have contributed more to the conservation of every damned species I hunt than I have to their extinction. Ducks Unlimited, Audubon, Pittman Robertson taxes, license fees, habitat management...the list is endless.
And Assrot, if you think poor people could actually obtain food cheaper by hunting than by grabbing some chops from the grocer's freezer, you are seriously deluded.
If you can spew such inaccuracies, and say with a straight face that you are pro-gun and yet anti-hunter, then you are "pro" at one thing only.
Ignorance.
Actually, for a few centuries, the aristocratic sport in Britain was to kill deer with a knife much smaller than a Bowie. Man against beast, and all that. Lost a 21st great-grandfather that way....
LM
Seriously, how many people are killed in car accidents because of deer? We'll never know, but I'll bet it's a fairly high number.
Anyway, venison jerky is great.
I'll tell you what kind of trophy hunting there's not enough of: armadillo. Talk about a herd that wants thinning!
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