What Would PETA Say to This?

[Harlock]

IMHO, as a member of PETA, the goal is simply to make you think about what you eat and how you live, not change everyone's opinions.

That's the goal, huh? Interesting. I say that because just now when I went to http://www.peta.org there was a little Banner ad at the top by the logo that seemed to contradict that PETA is simply trying to make us think. They have an agenda. Their goal most certainly is to change peoples' opinions. If you disagree still, allow me to describe the banner. It fades in and out with pictures of animals. The main phrase that is unchanging is: Animal are not ours. Then, it fades in and out with ideas that follow that line and here they are.

Animals Are Not Ours:

• to eat
• to wear
• to Experiment on
• to Use for Entertainment
• to Exploit

Don't get me wrong. I agree that animals have a right to be protected from abuse. I do not think someone feeding their family, or culling a herd to make sure it can survive and not be overcome by disease and famine is abuse. Leaving deer to a fate of Chronic Wasting Disease because some misguided, agenda-pushing radicals get squeamish about culling or hunting is abuse. Sorry, PETA's agenda is not to make us think, it is to change our thinking, and I think that is patently obvious.

 

[christopher1260]

I am not only a hunter, but a graduate student who works in a molecular biology lab that uses recombinant mice. I hunt because it is a tradition in my family, a good source of relaxation, and the meat is delicious. I hunt every type of animal that is in season, because I wouldn't dare descriminate. Every time I try to explain that the reason that everyone hits deer with their cars is that the habitat is being destroyed, people just respond by saying, "Deer are cute. Don't kill them." Nothing angers me more than this. Apparently, the only animals that should be protected are the cute ones. If the radicals want to solve the problem they should all live in a single skyscraper and replant their land to form prime deer habitat. The deer have always been there, people are the problem.

Just a thought-- We have a poster in our lab that I find hilarious. It has a picture of a bunch of animal rights protesters on it. Below this it says, "As a result of animal research, these people will be able to protest for an additional 20.8 years. The time is yours. How you spend it is your decision." This always makes me laugh

 

[happychem]

Christopher! You work at NIMH!


...man I hope someone gets that...

 

[Harlock]

Christopher! You work at NIMH!


...man I hope someone gets that...

I do. I'm what the kids these days call "old skewl". I must've seen that movie a dozen times when I was a kid.

 

[greeneyedlady]

Gee I cried when Nicodemus died and I was kinda hoping that Justin and Ms. Brisby would get together at the end, but I guess they just couldn't overcome their race differences, so difficult to be a mixed couple ya know

 

[aknif]

Wow!

I guess I'm surprised that there are so many hunters on this forum!! How exciting! So I'm gonna toss my two cents in too:

My name is Amy, and I am a hunter.

I also love fishing! My family are all big game hunters, elk, deer, antelope and even caribou on occasion. I grew up eating all these meats instead of beef, so I can hardly tell the difference. My hubby's family are bird hunters, mostly pheasant, but also dove, turkey and "chuckers"?? He got me into pheasant hunting and I love it! Big game hunting was never my thing. I think it has something to do with waking up at 3:00am, putting on every piece of warm clothing you own, then hiking straight uphill for 2 hours so you can sit in a stand of trees freezing your cookies off for hours while hoping like hell some big animal come strolling by... then you get ONE CHANCE to shoot it.

Pheasant hunting on the other hand is much more up my alley! You get to wake up AFTER the sun comes up, eat a big breakfast and BS over coffee for a while... Then stroll on out to the field and crash through the corn until you get to those exciting last few steps when the birds realize that they have to fly and they're going to come out right in front of you! Then, you get to let the lead fly and argue with Uncle Fred later about whether you hit the biggest one or he did...

Ahhh yes.... Such fun! I miss it terribly... Being pregnant and/or having small children is not conducive to hunting trips at all.

 

[Harlock]

Ahhh yes.... Such fun! I miss it terribly... Being pregnant and/or having small children is not conducive to hunting trips at all.

My wife hunts as well. We're lucky that my mom or her mom is always willing to watch the kids if Heather wants to go and take a doe. Actually, for the past two years in a row, she has shot more than I have. Ahh, I'm a kept man.

 

[aknif]

I wish we were so lucky...

My parents are more of the "call us when they're both fully potty trained and can verbalize what they want" kind of grandparents... And my hubby's mother has always been a "only one grandkid at a time" grandma. That doesn't much help a couple with two kids!

That's ok though... Mine are 4 and almost 2, so i'll be out there again soon! And i've been to the shooting range! I'm still lethal with a shotgun!

 

[aknif]

The thing that really chaps me is that it seems you can hardly tell people that you enjoy hunting. People come to my house and see pictures of me with a mountain goat that my grandpa took (we helped pack it out for him) or me with my shotgun and holding my first pheasant and they have NO PROBLEM telling me that it's mean or gross or whatever...

God help us when my husband gets his first elk hunting with my family! We will have it mounted and it will be hung in our front room! Probably right over my 125g! HA!

Guess it will just help keep the riff raff out, huh?

 

[Harlock]

You know Amy, that's why I referred to "outing" myself as a hunter. There is a big stigma on it these days. Part of that is because of the ways people handled hunting in the past. Hunters got a bad rap as gun rack-having, beer-swilling, gun-toting, shooting anything in sight, strapping dead bloody carcasses to the front hood so everyone can see, kind of people. Truth of the matter is, most hunters (Oh, please let it be most) take some responsibility now.

Anti-hunters will always exist. People like PETA get in the news far more than responsible hunters. We have to accept that. What responsible hunters have to do is take ownership of the hunter image. Not for the radicals. Again, we're not changing their minds, but for the people that are hunter neutral. We have to transport our harvested animals covered and out of plain sight. We need to not describe the hunt to people. We ought not drive and walk around in clothes we hunted in that may be dirty from dressing an animal.

It's really hard in Texas right now. Texas has so many white tail deer that people from up North regularly come down for expensive 2-4 day hunts. People that own ranches are hard pressed to turn down the kind of money people are willing to pay to come and harvest one buck. I can tell you from personal experience that since the oil bust back in the 80s, you make more money on leasing land to hunters than you do on oil and mineral rights. And when you are talking about ranches with square mile upon square mile, those property taxes add up, so you have to pay for them somehow. So, now the problem is that people come from out of state, usually business people with quite a bit of money, who don't understand the values or respect the land (after all, they paid their $2500, not including flight, to be here and they'll do what they please) and they turn even more people off.

I think, as hunters, we have a special responsibility to put our best foot forward at all times in regards to the shooting sports. We have fewer and fewer allies as the baby boomers age and get too old to hunt. Kids just don't get out in nature like people used to. My dad, a baby boomer, grew up where hunting and fishing put food on the table when otherwise they wouldn't have any. my mom grew up seeing her dad and his friends going out for weekend hunts, even though they lived smack dab in the middle of the Dallas Metroplex. There was still land then. People could afford to go out and enjoy it. Not so anymore. And less and less young people are going outdoors because the outdoors keeps moving farther and farther away from where people have to live to work these days. I know one thing, both of my children will have hunting and outdoor opportnuities. Of course, we have a ranch 45 minutes away, so it's easy for me to say that. I hope though, that their friends will want to come too. This lifestyle will die out without new blood and without people having access to places to engage in it.