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I have a big problem with people shooting animals that are neither meat nor pests.
I have been talking to hunters for a couple of years about getting in on a hunt for meat, and have just about settled on ranch boar because the cost per pound seems good here, and the flavor of the meat is excellent.
I'd also have no problem shooting squirrels (they poop all over my fruit trees), raccoons (they are damned aggressive here), possums (nothing worse than checking out a noise in the backyard in the middle of the night and confronting a hissing 10 pound rat with a mouth full of bent nails), and coyotes (they seem to prefer cats and dogs to garbage). In the desert I'd like to see 99% of the rabbits exterminated because they are stripping the desert clean of all plant life - It's creepy to hike for miles and see nothing but the dried up remains of rare plants and cactus with a pile of rabbit turds next to them.
I also have no problem with shooting cougars or bears in self defense, of course. Though I think this is a rare occurrence these days.
But lions, tigers, etc... I don't understand what folks get out of that. I've looked at the youtube videos of recent Big-5 hunts, and these guys are shooting tame animals from 50 feet. Charles Askins went to Vietnam in the 50's to shoot "dangerous" water buffalo - The pictures he took showed domestic animals in rice paddies. A friend of mine used to ride one of those "dangerous" animals to school every morning in the Philippines. And why in the world would anybody shoot a giraffe?!
I've been reading all the issues of Guns Magazine from 1955-1964, and there were writers back then who shot the neighborhood cats for fun and then chewed out their neighbors when the neighbors complained. And then bragged about it in print! It's no wonder that, at the same time Guns printed those articles, anti-gun legislation kicked into high gear. The writers responding by printing that all of their detractors were communist fellow travelers (I kid you not!) pretty much sealed the debate.
People are actually approaching me now expecting me to defend that shmuck dentist, because owning a gun makes me a fellow traveler of the brotherhood of idiot dentists. Sigh.
I have been talking to hunters for a couple of years about getting in on a hunt for meat, and have just about settled on ranch boar because the cost per pound seems good here, and the flavor of the meat is excellent.
I'd also have no problem shooting squirrels (they poop all over my fruit trees), raccoons (they are damned aggressive here), possums (nothing worse than checking out a noise in the backyard in the middle of the night and confronting a hissing 10 pound rat with a mouth full of bent nails), and coyotes (they seem to prefer cats and dogs to garbage). In the desert I'd like to see 99% of the rabbits exterminated because they are stripping the desert clean of all plant life - It's creepy to hike for miles and see nothing but the dried up remains of rare plants and cactus with a pile of rabbit turds next to them.
I also have no problem with shooting cougars or bears in self defense, of course. Though I think this is a rare occurrence these days.
But lions, tigers, etc... I don't understand what folks get out of that. I've looked at the youtube videos of recent Big-5 hunts, and these guys are shooting tame animals from 50 feet. Charles Askins went to Vietnam in the 50's to shoot "dangerous" water buffalo - The pictures he took showed domestic animals in rice paddies. A friend of mine used to ride one of those "dangerous" animals to school every morning in the Philippines. And why in the world would anybody shoot a giraffe?!
I've been reading all the issues of Guns Magazine from 1955-1964, and there were writers back then who shot the neighborhood cats for fun and then chewed out their neighbors when the neighbors complained. And then bragged about it in print! It's no wonder that, at the same time Guns printed those articles, anti-gun legislation kicked into high gear. The writers responding by printing that all of their detractors were communist fellow travelers (I kid you not!) pretty much sealed the debate.
People are actually approaching me now expecting me to defend that shmuck dentist, because owning a gun makes me a fellow traveler of the brotherhood of idiot dentists. Sigh.
