Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Friday, January 22, 2010

On Hunting (a Gentle Remonstrance by a Reader)

I received an e-mail which said, in essence, that if they had not bothered to click on a link of an earlier post, that the reader would not have read a post I wrote almost two months ago about hunting, which I posted to my blog annex. The unspoken comment was that I should have posted it here in its entirety.

OK, I can do that:

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It has been a very long time since I last took to the woods with a rifle. I used to hunt fairly regularly. But my opinions on it have not changed.

As I see it, there are three broad categories to hunting: Trophy hunting, meat hunting and varmint hunting. To my mind, the latter two categories are honorable, the first is not.

Meat hunting is honorable, far more honorable than going to the supermarket and buying a shrink-wrapped portion of a critter. The hunter, at least, is intimately familiar with where his or her meat is coming from, as opposed to the supermarket shopper, who usually has barely an idea of what a steer even looks like, let alone how the steers are treated. In some rural areas, the only meat that appears on the kitchen table was taken by hunting, store-bought meat being too costly.

Varmint hunting is done to control population levels or to stop predation. It can be combined with meat hunting, such as in areas where the numbers of deer have exploded. There once was, and may still be, a predator control law in Vermont that was passed in the 1850s, when the state was a major producer of wool. It allowed farmers to kill predators by any means other than nuclear weapons, which were not permitted only because they didn't exist back then.

I have problems with trophy hunting. It would seem to me that going out and deliberately removing from the population the fittest adult male members of any species is counter to the long-term health of that species. It would be like identifying the smartest students in a college and then killing them so that someone could have a collection of the heads of valedictorians.

I've done varmint shooting to control predators and pests. Not much to say about that, it's what needed to be done at the time. Electric fencing around the chicken coop worked well, too, and was far more reliable.

Opening Day of whitetail season in some states is an unofficial holiday. I lived in one of those states for a time and would go back for years afterwards. We'd meet at the house of a friend who lived adjacent to a forest. It would be full dark, around 5:30 AM. Eggs, bacon, toast, fried potatoes and coffee were what was prepared and served up in copious amounts. Everyone pitched in to help prepare, cook and clean up, so that the pans and dishes were washed and the kitchen was clean when it was time to go into the woods. (For those hunters who did not have a place to go for breakfast or who didn't want to make one, the volunteer firehouse served a hunters' breakfast on Opening Day, beginning at 4:30.)

As soon as it became light enough to see, we would make our way into the woods to where each one of us wanted to be and wait for sunrise, which was just after 7AM. Usually, nobody would see a buck, only does. I've had does walk right by me and look at me as if to say "we know you can't shoot us." Every few years, somebody would manage to shoot a buck, which would be dressed out, taken to the game-check station and then butchered.

The bucks were smart as hell. You wouldn't seen them out in the fields during the day from just before the beginning of bow season, through rifle season and then to the end of muzzle-loader season. After hunting season was over, you'd see bucks during the day. One year, I was out in the woods several days after Opening Day. I managed to get a glimpse of a buck and he saw me at the same time. He ran for a few seconds, bounding through the woods, and then dropped to the ground, completely invisible against the leaf litter, brush, rocks and sticks. I tried walking him down, but whenever I got close, he'd bound up and run, weaving through the trees. He seemed to know how long it would take me to bring up the rifle and get a bead on him, for just as soon as I managed to swing the front sight onto him, he'd drop to the ground and disappear. That buck, a six-pointer, also seemed to work it so that the one time I had a clear shot, there was a house down in a valley which was in the line of fire. I gave up then, it was almost sunset.

Another year, it was cold, lightly snowing, and I was in the woods with a Garand.[1] I had been sitting on a log, which was a remnant of a fallen tree, with the rifle in my lap. It was sort of under the boughs of a pine tree, out of the snow fall and it was pretty comfortable. A red squirrel's curiosity overcame its caution and it came out to investigate me. It walked down that log, jumped up onto the handguard of the rifle and looked me over. I guess it was satisfied that I posed no threat to it, for it jumped back onto the log and sauntered away.

Snow in November is almost magical, as it often falls with still air. The flakes of a Fall snow are usually fat ones that drift down among the trees and deposit the first coat of white of the season. There is little traffic noise out there, just an occasional vehicle on a paved road over a mile in the distance and the falling snow muffles even that sound. The quiet is only broken by the faint whine of a passing airliner, six miles above. The woods are second or third growth, that entire area was clear-cut in the 18th and early 19th Centuries for livestock and crop farming. The woods began to come back after the Civil War and the building of the railroads, when farmers went to the Midwest to farm land that was neither hilly or filled with rocks. Now there are probably more woodlands in New England since the time of the Revolution.

Several minutes after the squirrel left, I heard heavy steps in the leaves on the floor of the woods. (By Spring, the leaves would have composted themselves and one could move through the woods silently, but that was almost impossible to do in the Fall.) I shifted around, pointed the rifle in that direction, keeping my finger out of the trigger guard.[2] It was a buck and one of decent size, a six pointer. I snugged the butt of the rifle into my shoulder, quietly disengaged the safety and settled the front sight on his chest. As I took up the slack of the two-stage trigger, the thought came to me, or something spoke to me, but either way, the message was clear: "You don't really need the meat." I took my finger off the trigger, thought "bang, I've got you" and clicked the safety on, making no attempt to hide the metallic snick. The buck whirled his head around, saw me, and took off.

The times I went deer hunting after that were for social reasons. I left the Garand at home and carried a 6" Smith Model 29, telling everyone: "Hell, I never see a deer anyway, so I might as well carry something light." But the real reason was that since I wasn't going to shoot anything, the revolver was just for show.

[1]I had some five-round clips for my Garand, which made it legal to use.

[2]Yes, I know, you're supposed to verify your target before you point a gun at it. But if you make that much movement in those woods within eyeshot of a deer, it will see you and be gone before you can fire.

7 comments:

Allan S said...

Been around and am qualified on all sorts of weapons, but I will never own one, I'm not making a statement or a judgement, I just don't care for them. As for handguns, I do have an opinion; The only critter a handgun is good fer killin is a human critter....start poppin off at a bar or mountain lion and you'll just piss it off, who knows, your target just might consider your piece a little foreplay...

Comrade Misfit said...

I'm Jewish, which may color my opinion on the matter.

I will never not own a weapon.

Ruckus said...

Decades ago I went goose hunting regularly. Of course there were ducks as well and they were comparatively easy to shoot. They would fly low and land just past us in the nature reserve. We sat just on the right side the limits as otherwise we would have never hit anything. One day we went up on a nearby hill and watched the geese fly over our normal position and as soon (and I mean within a few feet) as they passed the fence line for the reserve they would dive for the ground. From the air you could see that the geese must have know exactly what they were doing. It looked like hot carrier landings.

Underground Carpenter said...

Comrade,
That, my dear, is some great writing! I've not heard anyone make the distinction between trophy meat and game meat before, but you've convinced me. Brilliant post!

Dave

BobG said...

"The only critter a handgun is good fer killin is a human critter"

I've taken elk, mule deer, rabbits, and other food animals with handguns; all were clean, quick kills. Maybe you aren't as familiar with them as you think.

Comrade Misfit said...

When I was hanging out at my folks' farm, I was popping pigeons with a .22 revolver.

Eck! said...

Trophy hunters, there is a special place in hell for them. The back end of the hills there were a lot of subsistence farms where that meat was
what got everyone through the winter.
There it lies in the woods rotting just for the rack.

I've read this before, and it still resonates with when I realized, yes I can hit a deer with a bullet, and whats the point. I enjoyed the meat same for friends I shared it with. But I didn't need it. From then out I started noticing the forest and all the other things being missed while keeping the sharp eye out for game. It was pretty cool checking out rock faces and following creeks. The wood is indeed a special place. I was lucky enough to share it with my brother and friends.

Varmits,in the Poconos PA there is a problem with wild dogs usually rabid or by early winter very likely so. They are the result of people leaving or loosing their pets on vacation. Terrible waste and worse when you have a pack roaming the local area bothering livestock and sometimes attacking kids
and people outdoors. It was never something I looked forward to but, too often needed doing. I never resolved for myself the idea of a humane kill, only its necessity.

Those years taught me some things, some I miss, others I do better without. One was the importance of the gun, how it can be used and misused. I still have them and one day will get my target skills back. I do hope to never have to take blood with one again.


Eck!