[natedog]

Somehow, we got on the subject of hunting in my Social Sciences class today. A young woman behind me said, "The only reason why people hunt is because they have low self-esteem, and killing little animals makes them feel more powerful and better about themselves." Yes, that is a dircet quote. I raised the question, "What exactly do you know about hunting? I woud suspect that the majority of your 'knowledge' comes from the news media and movies, which is biased and incorrect. If you were to actually try a hunting outing, maybe you would find that it's more about good eating, kicking back with friends and family, and just having a good time. Plus, if anything, hunting lowers my self esteem because I shoot so poorly. As many great people before me have said, 'People mock what they do not understand'". I thought Art and some of the other big hunters hear would get a kick out of it. I sure did. Except, I was kicking myself in the face due to the stupidity of these people.

[spacemanspiff]

theres an anti-hunter forum i peruse from time to time, when i want to induce vomiting, you know? an argument was made over there that 'there is no need to hunt, people can buy their meat at the store'.
i asked 'so you can find meat that has not been pumped full of chemicals, perservatives, and growth hormones at the grocery?'
"yes, you can buy any meat you wish at the store".

my next counter point was those who utilize subsistance hunting, as in natives. the woman still couldnt understand that hunting is a necessity.

never mind the ecological damage that letting animals like moose overpopulate would cause. maybe 50 yrs ago wolves and bears would keep moose population down. but wolves and bears have had their natural habitats reduced, and if they remain in areas where humans live, eventually they are killed or relocated. no one relocates teh moose however.


you want to know how to really get under the skin of your class natedog? agree with them. admit you have an inferiority complex and you use your guns and hunting to compensate for the cruel joke god and genetics played upon you. all those kind of people really want is to irritate a person, and the more frustrated you become at their assinine viewpoints, the more satisfied they are.

[Ian Sean]

You should also mention that Hunters and Fisherman pay through license fees and excise taxes on firearms, ammo and fishing gear (Pitman-Robinson act and Dingel-Johnson act I think?) for ALL the conservation efforts in this country, this is one of the few taxes I don't mind paying. The USFWS gets this money and apportions it to the states for conservation efforts.

I got into a brou-haha with some anti's about hunting. Prior to hunting season last year I went out with a friend scouting out some areas on state gamelands here in PA. A middle aged couple was coming out of the woods hiking as we were going in. She was complaining about the sorry state of the trails and that they should "do something about it".

I said, "yeah you have to be careful hiking around in there, but I don't think they will make any permanent trails for hikers". She says, "
why not?" So I mention that well these are gamelands for hunting and they probably don't have the money for it. She got pretty indignant and I had to explain that while hiking is allowed when its not hunting season, the purpose of the gamelands is for hunters and hunters pay for it not her. I kept my cool but her jaw did drop a little.

This came on the heels of people who wanted to have the state make mountain bike trails in the gamelands in another area. The hunters came out in full force and put a stop to that.

Many of the enviro-wackos are very ignorant of these laws and the USFWS.

[Dizos]

A clean shot is a much more humane death than being raised in a box and then killed by a sledgehammer. Funny how folks don't feel accountable for killing when someone else does it for them. Any meat eater who condemns hunting is a hypocrite. It was only after I shot my first buck, gutted it, hauled it miles back to camp, hung it up, skinned it and then butchered that I learned to respect the animals I eat.

-- Dizos

[Riphalman]

If she's not a vegetarian, she's simply paying someone else to do her killing for her.

[243_shooter]

Most of the dedicated hunters that I know have a better, and more meaningfull understanding of the woods, and nature, than a volkswagen van full of tree-huggers.. If you want to talk to someone who understands the true meaning of conservation, and preservation, talk to a serious hunter.

She's probably just spouting off something she heard Dr. Phil say on Oprah, it seems that most folks are only capable of repeating the opinions of some talking head from the tube.

Remind her that it's a GOOD thing to be sitting at the top of the food chain :D

Leo

[joyadecarolina]

WOW!
thats kind of strange to hear from a female from CA in a college setting. i would have thought w/ the conservative views in our education system and in CA in general that type of mentality wouldnt exist.
hummmmm...
maybe she's from TX.

[DigMe]

Another good response is to ask that person how much money he/she personally gave towards wildlife conservation this year. I can tell them that I gave exactly $59.00. The cost of a master combo license. Hunters do more for conservation than these ninnies ever will.

brad cook

[Sisco]

Anti hunters would prefer that animals die of starvation and disease caused by overcrowding.
It should be pointed out to them, if necessary, that rarely does a wild animal die a quick painless death from "old age". When a wild animal does reach senior citizen status they become weak and slow and usually die a violent death in the jaws of a predator.

[Duncan Idaho]

"The only reason why people hunt is because they have low self-esteem, and killing little animals makes them feel more powerful and better about themselves."[FILTHY HIPPY VOICE]Oh wow man! It's like she has a window into my 7th chakra or something man![/FILTHY HIPPY VOICE] LMMFAO :p :p :p

[natedog]

I raised the point that hunting does keep the population of the animals down, and it prevents extinction from overcrowding. After giving all this evidence, the good doctor just scoffed and said, "Oh so we help them by killing them?". I wanted to say, "Are you deaf, ignorant, or just stupid? My guess is all three." :banghead:

[Art Eatman]

"Ignorance is curable; stupidity is forever."

The separation of city and rural in our population has led to the loss of knowledge of such things as "carrying capacity" of the land. Thus, ignorance. The real problem is that folks with preconceived notions of their morality of dealing with wildlife are strongly resistant to learning the realities.

I was amazed that the Atlanta Constitution published my letter to the effect that only the gardeners and hunters are "do it yourselfers" in acquiring food. When any of us shop for any food at a grocery, or eat at a restaurant, we have hired somebody else to do our own scutwork.

For many, I think, the issue is less the hunting than it is the dirtying of hands...

Art

[H&Hhunter]

Tha amazing thing is...........

I've caught this exact same type of attitude right here on this forum from members. Some people seem to think it's ok to kill whitetails for all of the above mentioned reasons but since an elephant is often the star on National Geographic that they are to be left to overpopulate and die of all of the above metioned ways.

Did you know that as we speak the Kruger national park is over it's carrying capacity by nearly 5000 elephants?

In Zimbabwae they have so many elephants that you are premitted to shoot a non-trophy elephant (tuskless adult) for less than $2000.00 trophy fee.

In Botswana since they have cut the lion licenese from 50 to 19 that animal control personal have tripled their kills on nusiance lions 119 last year.

When the moutain zebra was declared endangered ranchers in Namibia and South Africa immediatley started to kill them off because they had so many of the "endangered" zebras around that they couldn't afford to have them competing with other animals and they couldn't hunt them anymore so they were a huge liability rather than an assett. You can now hunt and import them on a CITES permitt.

That through out sub-saharan africa the leapord is the most common predator alive more numerous than any other predator. It is a major stock and man killer yet it's still considered endangered?

In the swampy areas of Tanzania, Zimbabwae, Botswana, Zambia and most other African countries it's not uncommon to see hundreds of crocodiles a day just cruising around and an estimated 14,000 yes that's thousand people a year are killed by crocs in Africa every year. Yet it can only be hunted under the strictest regulations and with a CITES permitt. I had a friend who spent 6 months in the slammer and lost his hunting privilidges in the US for 5 years and paid a $50,000 dollar fine for trying to import a perfectly legally killed croc without the proper paper work.

So yes all of your comments are true and correct. But it is true and correct the world over not just in the back woods of our great nation. No matter how royal the WWF has protrayed the animal. And just because it's on the endangered species list does not in any way shape or form actually make it an endangered or even threatened animal it's often times purely political.

[MeekandMild]

WARNING! This is a really cynical thought, not at all my usual kindly, altruistic, happy thoughts:

Enjoy her stupidity and learn from it. You must realize she is being turned into a domesticated animal and she loves it, so let her enjoy her stupidity as well.

Your children will own her children as slaves. They probably won't call it by such a barbaric word but the net result will be the same.

[4v50 Gary]

BTW natedog, what was the woman's response?

[ScottsGT]

Just give her Homers response " If God didn't want us to eat animals, he would'nt have made them out of meat!"

[Dr.Rob]

You are what you eat, invite her out for lamb, or veal.

Meanwhile to all those that rant about what bad evil folk we are (when I get done telling them to slip out of their $100 leather shoes and 90 of the other animal products on their person.. you get the idea.)...

Try these simple lines.

I'm not hunting I'm just carrying a gun to make the dog feel important. (That's Jake cartoon a few years back)

Sometimes fishing is about sitting on a riverbank and drinking beer. How was thefishing? Fantastic! Catch anything? The catching wasn't so good but the fishing was excellent!

I started hunting to spend time with my father. Shooting bambi has very little to do with that. Suggest reading Ruark's "the old man and the boy" stories.

Or on a more serious note:

I don't hunt to kill anything. In fact, the work starts when you actually kill a deer. The hunt is about the stalk, using your primitive lizard/hominid mind just to sneak up something as well suited to outdoor living as a deer is in and of itself a pretty remarkable thing for a hairless ape to achieve in the fast food prepackaged culture we live in. Killing the animal is a bonus, and a rare oppurtunity to remind ourselves of the interconnectivity of things. I brought this to my table of my own two hands... and yeah its not CHEAP. I could easily have gone to the super k and brought home some faceless hunk of cow, but I chose this path knowingly. When people say grace are they really giving thanks to the provider of this bounty? I know I say 'grace' everytime I pull the trigger. And yes, its a powerful thing, an emotional thing to kill a large animal. If it didn't affect me every time.. if it didn't give me pause, if it became.. nonchalant. I would no longer hunt.

I don't expect everyone to "get" that, but you can sure turn the opinions of the new age tree hugging crowd by the power of your convictions.

[M67]

H&Hhunter, if you think the elephant is the holy cow of the tree-huggers, you should try to be a Norwegian when the subject of whaling is brought up... One might think that the Cult of the Great Whale-God is the fastest growing religion in America.

Interestingly, when discussing this with sub-saharan Africans, a common reaction is: "The elephant is our whale."

Yeah, it's political. Most of the animals on the endangered species list are probably endangered. But most of those animals are probably also ugly, smelly and no one has ever heard of them. Tree-hugging is big business, and big business will sooner or later attract the interest of politicians. The big bucks (if you will excuse the pun) in this business are not generated by ugly, endangered animals, but by those with pretty eyes.

[HankB]

I live in an Austin suburb which is greatly overpopulated with semitame urban deer. I once was speaking with an "anti" who was against "killing these beautiful animals, who were here before we were and and have just as much right to life as we do."

She wanted "nature" to control things, so I asked her if she'd be willing to reintroduce predators - you know, wolves, mountain lions, and Indians - to control their populations.

Her response was . . . rather rude. :D

[inGobwetrust]

Enjoy her stupidity and learn from it. You must realize she is being turned into a domesticated animal and she loves it, so let her enjoy her stupidity as well.

That post made my day!:D Thanks, MeekandMild!