Humane, or Proudly Ignorant?

 

Ain’t None of them Cowboys

Feral horses are often a problem on open ranges. They are prolific breeders with few predators. They overgraze the range. During droughts and harsh winters they die slow deaths from starvation.

Controlling their population gets people stirred up. People love horses. Love, without understanding, or even caring to understand facts, is animal cruelty. Cue Emperor Polis.

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Shooting Update

Victor Anthony De Santiago, the man who tried to kill a Colorado State Trooper, was born in California. He was a long time Colorado resident with a criminal record. To date, there is no indication he had any affiliation with Venezuela gangs.

They Raise Them Early in Wyoming 

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Please understand I don’t applaud this hunter; just understand the culture. I was raised with subsistence (poacher) hunters. The ethos was a quick kill. Don’t make an animal suffer. I’m opposed to archery hunting because a quick kill is unlikely.

Rare Earths

This is, hopefully, good news.

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Wolves

Yes, I know, not everyone is interested. 

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Daily Life

From the local rag’s Cop Log. It isn’t all shoot ups and high speed chases. We sometimes forget what law enforcement handles day to day.

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 As always, YMMV

Trophy Mount

My late father enjoyed taking people hunting. For several years, he was a professional guide. After he remarried in 1984, he acquired a new set of relatives to take  hunting.

One of the new relatives was “Lou”. He was affluent enough to have hunted all over the world and had numerous trophy mounts in his large den. Lou’s wife wasn’t a hunting fan. There was a sense of friction between them on the subject of hunting.

While out with my father, Lou managed to shoot a hole through the bed of my father’s new 4x4 GMC pickup. Can you say, “Four Rules”?

Lou’s wife paid a modeler for a model of the pickup, painted appropriately, with tiny holes in the correct places. She had the model trophy mounted and hung in Lou’s den.

Reports were Lou wasn't amused.

Hunting With My Father

From an early childhood, I was involved with hunting. I was part of the group, but it wasn’t until I was a senior in high school my father and I, alone, went hunting together.

For many years, he guided hunters and provided horses and gear. This was a critical component of the family finances. Hunting was, for me, work. Pack in gear and hunters. Pack out game, hunters, and gear. We were always subsistence hunters. Guiding hunters was simply an extension of food hunting. No one worked harder, and put in more hours, than my father. I was expected to keep up. Sometimes, it was just the two of us packing, and we “hunted” as we packed, but the packing took priority.

By my senior year, my father had found a good paying, steady job, at the power plant. My mother had a job with the Forest Service. We had a small ranch but it wasn’t large enough to provide a steady living. With the acquisition of the power plant job, my father quit guiding.

We were hunting elk and were sitting on a rock, on the South face of a scrub oak covered ridge, waiting for the pressure of other hunters to drive something past us. At that time in my life, I had acute hearing. I heard an animal moving quickly from our West and alerted my father. He didn’t believe me at first. I got into position, aiming where my hearing indicated I would get a clear shot, and waited with my Model 94, 30.-.30, open sights. The bull came into view, about 150 yards below us at a trot, with a downward angle of about 45 degrees, and 90 degrees to us, i.e, broadside. Now my pride got in the way. Wanting to impress my father with my skill, and not spoiling any meat, I aimed for a brisket shot. Just as I fired, the bull stopped. I saw hair fly, then he was gone. Had I aimed for a neck or shoulder shot, he would have been meat on the table. We checked for blood and only found a few spots. Nothing to indicate a serious wound.

That day some “Sportsmen” jumped a elk herd a few miles from us and started shooting. They wounded more than they killed. We came across some of the wounded and put them out of their misery.
I came across a gut shot yearling cow who was so exhausted she stood bleating and watched me shoot her from less than twenty feet. Made me feel like a mighty hunter - not.

The game wardens managed to catch and prosecute several of the “Sportsmen”.

Turned out my father and I never hunted together alone after that. We hunted with others, but that was the only time it was just the two of us.

I read about other folk’s hunting experiences and wonder if I missed something. I enjoyed the outdoors experience, enjoyed the successes, the tracking and stalking, but only in the context of putting meat on the table. Always, there was an underling tension of not wanting, not allowing, failure. Hunting just for the enjoyment of the hunt I can understand, at a mental level, but I’ve never felt it.

Hunting

Many blogers write about their hunting experiences. One of the best is Brigid at http://www.mausersandmuffins.blogspot.com/
I enjoy reading their accounts but rarely relate to their enjoyment. My father and his relatives were, simply put, poachers. Not for profit, for food. We ate venison nearly every day, elk when we could get it, and pronghorn when we visited my grandparents in Wyoming. One of my earliest childhood memories was waking up in the backseat of our car as a freshly jack lighted deer was tossed in between the seats. As a toddler, I called deer “bang, bang cows.” Hunting, to me, was always a job of work. Sometimes pleasurable work, but none the less, work. My enjoyment was more the admiration, sometimes envy, of friends and relatives when I was successful. The biggest motivator was parental approval.
My father was a guide for several years after leaving the railroad. This was a critical endeavor, to have money for the winter months, that dominated our lives for many weeks each year. I came to understand the experience his clients wanted and, with his not too gentle tutelage, help him deliver the experience. In later years, he used that skill in real estate sales, and taught it to my sister.
When we hunted for ourselves, the goal was maximum results with the least expenditure of time, money, and effort. We would take a spike elk for the freezer, not a trophy. A fat two point buck; good eating. Only once did I see my father shoot a trophy buck for himself. We still ate the meat. You never shot a deer if you couldn’t drive to the kill in a pickup. Elk we would take where we could and I’ve quartered and packed out, on horses and mules, many animals as a teenager along with the occasional dude.
I never developed a passion for hunting. Instead, my passion was machinery that burned gasoline and could maim or kill you.
I haven’t hunted for years and don’t miss it. My very best wishes to those that do. If I run out of money I may start again.