.455_Hunter
Member
The issue is not when people choose to abstain from hunting related activities, but when the same people think everybody else should be forced to abstain from hunting related activities.
Good point.Only one in five Deer Hunter's score on any given year, but all buy licenses and the Deer herd's here have grown every single year for the past 10 years or so. Last Deer season I harvested one Buck. When I was taking it to be processed I counted four car kills, wasted Deer. How many more Deer would be hit to suffer and die slowly in a ditch if there was no hunting?
I don't think you're odd for feeling how you do. You might think I am, though. If it walks, crawls, or flies in N. Arkansas, I've probably shot it. My family are all hunters, and I like to hunt quite a bit. Squirrel hunting with a good dog is about my favorite thing to do anymore, now that all the quail are gone (quail hunting being my first love), followed by goose shooting. I deer hunt as well, but only with firearms. I've never had a desire to bow hunt. The main reason that I hunt, is because I like to eat what I shoot. Same reason I fish. There's a certain satisfaction in knowing that you've either grown, raised, caught, or shot everything that's setting on the table in front of you. And I think that our Maker put the beasts and the fish and the fowl here for us to make use of if possible. Not to mistreat, mind you. Just to make use of in what ways we can.
It has never bothered me to dispatch a critter, either. Armadillos, possums, coons etc. They're endangering my livestock (or myself) and therefore won't be tolerated. Not saying that I enjoy it, mind you. I almost feel sorry for them knowing they have to eat, too. Sometimes I just wish I could tell them to go find supper somewhere else! Putting down sick or injured animals is a part of farm life that I've never liked, but learned to accept. My dad loves to hunt, but can't stand to put an animal down. I have to do it, usually. There's been a lot of animals sent to the big packinghouse in the sky courtesy of my aught-six. Again, I don't like it. I look on it as a job that someone has to do, and that it should be done as quick and efficiently as possible. Not only for the sake of myself but for the critter's too. There should be no joking about it, etc. Respect and dignity to the end. You wouldn't do that to a condemned man, so why would you do it to an animal?
Like I said, maybe I'm the odd one.
Mac
We're not SUPPOSED to........Good point.
At least here in Oregon they passed a road kill law, where you can pick up road kill for dinner. Though that hardly helps in removing the dent or busted windshield.
Do many other states have that road kill law?
One thing that MAY be bad about that law is, I have heard tails of people running down animals with thier rigs on perpose , though that may very well be a urban legon.
I sux @ the spelling
How true, I spent most of my enlistment at El Toro in the early 70'sI enjoy hunting but don't like to kill. As Jose Ortega Y Gasset wrote, "One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted". That sums it up nicely for me, and I always suggest his Meditations on Hunting to anyone who wants to hunt but has reservations, or is otherwise on the fence about the morality of it.
Frankly, during the past few years I have been considering giving up hunting entirely, as it is expensive and time-consuming, given my location in Southern California. I keep my hand in (if just barely, these days) primarily to remind myself that, as a meat-eater, my food involves death. Another side effect of living in Southern California is that it is very easy to become insulated from reality!
It would be an expensive meal if you figure in the trip to the body shop. An older fellow picked up a road killed deer and got scared someone saw him and called the game warden when he got home. He was honest and told the warden the deer was in his trunk. The game warden reprimanded him and told him he'd be out to pick it up. The guy went out and opened his trunk and the deer jumped out and ran. When the warden got there, no deer. True story.One thing that MAY be bad about that law is, I have heard tails of people running down animals with thier rigs on perpose , though that may very well be a urban legon.
I sux @ the spelling