If Looks Could Kill, It Would Have Been Us Instead of Him, Parte Deux
Tomorrow is the day when manly men around here dismiss the primal urge to pull fish out of the water by their lips, put on their finest Elmer Fudd's, grab a case or two of Leinenkugels and some extra ammo (the gun is always ready), and head out for The Great Outdoors to stand in a tree and hope a deer comes close enough for them to blast it to kingdom come, whereupon they gather the sportsmanlike courage to grab the beast by the horns, take a snapshot and then try to figure out what the hell to do with the damn thing, cuz if they eat it they may suffer a horrible death from a brain-wasting disease..Okay, I admit I come from a place where "nice rack" puts in mind an altogether different form of hunting (and a pretty funny Michael Keaton role), but I listened in for a while today to descriptions of a bittersweet season in these parts. You see, last year some guys came across a Vietnamese Hmong guy hunting on the wrong private property and decided to put a little scare into him. This they accomplished very well, as he proceeded to kill six of them.
Which gets to the point of, well, it's getting a little crowded out there for the 650.000 deer licensed hunters in Wisconsin. "Conservation" groups are voicing their disgust over the growing restrictive nature of private lands. To their horror, hunters have looked up to find that Wisconsin has become civilized to the point where landowners are a little leery to allow a half a milliion high-powered rifle armed people unlimited access to their lands. Someone could get sued.
Huge corporations with nothing else to do with their wealth are buying up lot of land and don't want the hassle. Private owners are seeing the advantage of leasing hunting rights. The deer get chased off the public lands but nobody's chasing them back.
Now, I don't want to excessively over-generalize (sure I don't), but I'm thinking that this particular interest group is fairly heavily populated by your "Don't Tread on Me" libertarian, "you'll have to pry my gun from my cold dead hands" NRA kind of guys. I'm guessing when the talk around the old fire finds its way to politics, the "guvament" takes a pretty big beating from this bunch.
Are you sensing a dilemma? Where can they turn to?
Just like the "law and order" conservative who goes after the school administration when his kid is suspended for a beer party;
Just like the "free market" championing supermarket owner who goes after village hall for stricter license laws for roadside produce vendors;
Just like the "strict constitutionalist" who wanted a "one-time" Terri Schaivo law;
...our guys went straight for the nanny, in this case the US Congress, for a 50 million dollar (for starters) handout for the states to use to grease landowners to let them come play.
It's not the money, that's a pittance to this regime.
It's the unmitigated gall.
posted by sequoit @ 8:23 PM
1 Comments:
Animal hunting is a pastime that is just that--past time, as in the past. I can't quite figure out the frenzy over the ritual part of it nor the forming of a special interest group to perpetuate an activity that is no longer relevant.
Now, I am a fly fisherman (come-lately)and fisherman get lumped into this group, especially those who seek the meat--gotta have the meat if you are paying X dollars for the guide, gas,lodge, alcohol and food.Yeah,and the bonding is fun with those who think and play like you. And, that may be the problemo with the quintessential deer hunter; their sense of entitlement whose stink pervades like an abandoned carcass. Fly fisherman-the good ones- are more concerned about getting the catch back into the water alive,even as we may tear up their lips a little--than how much meat to bring home.And,often, they band together to report stream conditions, monitor pollution, work on stream side conservation projects, etc. Leave as little trace as possible.
That's the kind of grease I'm working on these days; grants to fix up neglected and abused watersheds. Much better use of time for the outdoorsman.
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