sumpnz
Member
So there I was, home after a day of work and picking up my wife's car becuase she can't tell the difference between fouled spark plugs and a blown head gasket, and what do I see but a show coming up a 9PM on National Geographic TV titled "Hunting in America."
"Cool" says my brain, not quite thinking entierly like it should have even though it was only 1 small glass of wine that I'd drank.
Then the show starts. Not too bad - it's a group of women out on a pheasant hunt. Then the warning bells start when they focus almost entirely on the woman who became a little conflicted emotionally after killing her first ever pheasant. I can understand the emotion, but they didn't even begin to interview the other women who did not have that reaction.
Then they go to a segment on a trophy hunter and taxidermist. The basically make it sound like RileyMC's understanding of trophy hunting prior to this thread . No mention at all of the benifits of such hunting as described by H&Hhunter in this thread .
To make it even worse they then interviewed some loony professor at UC Boulder. Can't remember his name and couldn't immediatly find him on the UC Boulder website. He essentially advocates a total ban on "sport hunting" with no concern apparently given to the fact that without hunting large numbers of these animals would wind up killed either by starvation, or government culling teams without the predation from sport hunters. In his opinion the "ethics and morals" of this country would be greatly improved by people entirely giving up hunting
. Too bad he puts the fact that deer experience fear when hunted at a higher priority than the pain the experience when they starve to death.
Then they featured an ex-hunter who "converted" to anti-hunter when he witnessed what I think all of us here would only describe as a display of wonton cruelty and waste as an annual pidgeon shoot. Many birds were shot on the ground, and then beaten to death by children. While it was a despicable scene, he used and continues to use it (nevermind that it's been stopped) in his crusade against hunting. He apparently even uses a paraglider to ruin the legitimate hunting activities of others. Aside from mentioning that such activities landed him in jail they made it sound like a good thing.
After that they ran a segment on the bear problem in New Jersey. The "talent" must have made at least a half dozen comments on how sad it was that a particular bear had to be killed by the wildlife department and kept patting and stroking the corpse of the bear. In the end no real mention was made that resuming hunting of the bears would be good or bad, just that the "controversy" would continue.
Finally, about the only really decent part of the show, in terms of how the treated the hunter (and even this was not that great) they filmed a guy who goes out each year and hunts for an elk to provide all of the meat he and his wife eat throughout the year. When he finally spots an elk and fires at it the guy sitting with nearly crapped himself at the blast. But he either missed or wounded the elk. He tried hard to find it but was unsuccessful. At that point, although they did show him visably upset at not being able to track the presumably wounded animal they simply left him.
All in all I have to say I was pretty disgusted with how they treated the whole subject. I'm thinking of writing a letter cancelling my subscription to their magazine over this.
"Cool" says my brain, not quite thinking entierly like it should have even though it was only 1 small glass of wine that I'd drank.
Then the show starts. Not too bad - it's a group of women out on a pheasant hunt. Then the warning bells start when they focus almost entirely on the woman who became a little conflicted emotionally after killing her first ever pheasant. I can understand the emotion, but they didn't even begin to interview the other women who did not have that reaction.
Then they go to a segment on a trophy hunter and taxidermist. The basically make it sound like RileyMC's understanding of trophy hunting prior to this thread . No mention at all of the benifits of such hunting as described by H&Hhunter in this thread .
To make it even worse they then interviewed some loony professor at UC Boulder. Can't remember his name and couldn't immediatly find him on the UC Boulder website. He essentially advocates a total ban on "sport hunting" with no concern apparently given to the fact that without hunting large numbers of these animals would wind up killed either by starvation, or government culling teams without the predation from sport hunters. In his opinion the "ethics and morals" of this country would be greatly improved by people entirely giving up hunting
. Too bad he puts the fact that deer experience fear when hunted at a higher priority than the pain the experience when they starve to death.Then they featured an ex-hunter who "converted" to anti-hunter when he witnessed what I think all of us here would only describe as a display of wonton cruelty and waste as an annual pidgeon shoot. Many birds were shot on the ground, and then beaten to death by children. While it was a despicable scene, he used and continues to use it (nevermind that it's been stopped) in his crusade against hunting. He apparently even uses a paraglider to ruin the legitimate hunting activities of others. Aside from mentioning that such activities landed him in jail they made it sound like a good thing.
After that they ran a segment on the bear problem in New Jersey. The "talent" must have made at least a half dozen comments on how sad it was that a particular bear had to be killed by the wildlife department and kept patting and stroking the corpse of the bear. In the end no real mention was made that resuming hunting of the bears would be good or bad, just that the "controversy" would continue.
Finally, about the only really decent part of the show, in terms of how the treated the hunter (and even this was not that great) they filmed a guy who goes out each year and hunts for an elk to provide all of the meat he and his wife eat throughout the year. When he finally spots an elk and fires at it the guy sitting with nearly crapped himself at the blast. But he either missed or wounded the elk. He tried hard to find it but was unsuccessful. At that point, although they did show him visably upset at not being able to track the presumably wounded animal they simply left him.
All in all I have to say I was pretty disgusted with how they treated the whole subject. I'm thinking of writing a letter cancelling my subscription to their magazine over this.
was when the idiot doing the interview asked the loony prof what he would do if came down to killing an animal for food or starving he responded that would get get biggest thuminblitzenmagnumboomer rifle he could find and shoot the animal from the greatest possible distance. (Sidebar: This typing with one hand while holding a baby is getting tough.) That way the animal wouldn't know what hit it and therefore wouldn't experience the fear of being stalked. He also seemed at least to think that such a rifle would kill the creature DRT better than another gun.