#76
Post
by boing » Mon Oct 19, 2015 7:06 pm
I consider myself to be an ethical hunter. I do not know where my ideas put me in the general mass of hunters so I can only speak for myself.
First, there is hunting and hunting. If I go duck hunting with a group of friends it is more to enjoy the company than to hunt, we get endless hilarity in remembering the time Jim took a step in the water and moved from water one foot deep into a four foot deep hole. It took us an hour to dry him out in a temperature of goodness knows how many degrees below freezing. Great times but I can't remember whether we actually shot any ducks. However, if I hunt larger game I go alone much to the consternation of the wife. There are things about being alone in the forest hunting that are not easy to share.
Second, serious hunting does not necessarily include killing. The reward is in the hunt, in outwitting a cunning animal to the point where you could have killed it. The final result could be capture I suppose or it could merely be a photograph. The decision of life or death occurs at the final moment of the hunt and it is not, for me at least, the purpose of the hunt. I have hunted in areas where I knew full-well that I could not recover the meat if I killed an animal so I took the opportunity to fire into the ground near the animal to show I had won rather than kill it. Sort of like saying checkmate and au revoir.
Third, hunts differ. I happen to be on a list of hunters that the State uses to cull excess deer and elk. On a State hunt I am given a special tag and a description of the area I am to hunt and the animal I am supposed to kill. Sometimes you succeed sometimes you fail. On the other hand I might make a personal hunt using a public tag I purchased at a sporting goods store. On this hunt I have a choice whether to kill or not. The point is that, apart from the tag, both hunts proceed identically, there is no difference between the two in the way the hunt is carried out, the only difference is the result. In one case I can choose not to kill, in the other I am supposed to kill - bit like being in the military really.
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the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.