I don't hunt, or at least I haven't for years, and probably won't again unless I get hungry and broke at the same time. I've killed a pretty enormous amount of stuff in my life from one end of the food chain to the other, and it just doesn't "grab" me anymore, if it ever did. In fact, the only hunting theme that's made sense to me for years was addressed by Hemingway in '36:
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
Amen, amen, and amen. I totally get that. But I just don't see the point to aggravating wildlife as a standalone project, y'know?
That's not to say that I oppose hunting - I don't. And more particularly, I'm not opposed to killing. I'll kill wild hogs or raccoons anywhere I find them, although unlike most around here, I won't clip coyotes or possums, even though possums eat a fair percentage of the cat food, and packs of coyotes hunting the river bottoms behind my place eat a fair percentage of the cats. Circle of life, and all that.
Hunting's just not my thing (well, maybe the wild hogs a little - they're tough, mean as a snake, dangerous, hard as a coffin nail and wicked smart, which makes them interesting.)
It would probably be politically correct to say that I don't do it because I'm against the cruelty of the kill. It would be a lie, but if I explained it like that I'd probably get laid a lot more.
The fact is that Walt Disney©™® and PETA have lied to you your entire life. Regardless of Uncle Walt's anthropomorphic mythos, wild (e.g., not pet) animals do not spend their time roaming around being majestic or godlike or furry or cute or having wonderful lives of adventure and romance in the sunlight-dappled meadows and fields. And no matter what PETA says, people are NOT a major factor in whether Thumper's having a good day or not.
In fact, to the degree it's quantifiable, life is in the main short, brutish, and generally painful, particularly as to wild animals and to a astonishingly large percentage of humans. Those of us here in the West think that we're the normal ones and the rest of the world is just like us in some not very well defined way. We have mostly lost sight of (or are rose-glassing) the fact that WE are the 1% or whatever they're calling the miniature slice of humanity that's existed throughout history that doesn't spend their entire lives fighting, killing, starving, slaving, and broken.
We whine and bitch because we aren't being self-actualized to our internal potential, and spend our lives in a white panic because the corporate news panic-mongers say some complete stranger ten states away ran afoul of a serial killer. In the meantime, most of the animals in the world (including the humans) are a bit more worried of THEIR future because they've twisted an ankle while chasing a few calories, and can't hunt for awhile, which is bad because they're already in borderline starvation mode, and will now very soon be caught, dragged down, crippled, and eaten alive by something/someone who hasn't twisted THEIR ankle. This, it turns out, is marginally worse than even starving.
We whine and bitch because we aren't being self-actualized to our internal potential, and spend our lives in a white panic because the corporate news panic-mongers say some complete stranger ten states away ran afoul of a serial killer. In the meantime, most of the animals in the world (including the humans) are a bit more worried of THEIR future because they've twisted an ankle while chasing a few calories, and can't hunt for awhile, which is bad because they're already in borderline starvation mode, and will now very soon be caught, dragged down, crippled, and eaten alive by something/someone who hasn't twisted THEIR ankle. This, it turns out, is marginally worse than even starving.
Making car payments, relationship difficulties, no big-screen TV, and not being able to decide between "sacrificing" for art and concentrating on business is pretty far down their "to do" list, which generally boils down to :
- Monday
- Find something to eat.
- Don't get eaten.
- Don't fuck around and get hurt or killed.
- Find hole to hide in, kill whatever's in there, and eat it.
- Snuggle up in the hole and get a couple of hours sleep with one eye open.
- Tuesday
- Find something to eat.
- Don't get eaten.
- Don't fuck around and get hurt or killed.
- Jazzercise
They don't call the world a jungle for nothing. In a real jungle Mowgli would have crushed the head of one of those Stepin Fetchit monkeys with a rock in order to eat its brain and suck its bone marrow, unless Baloo got there first and ate Mowgli's face.
Having said that, I do try to not add to the general pool of misery to the degree I can (conveniently?) avoid it, believe it or not, but the raw fact of the matter is that chasing down and killing a deer, even if you wind up beating it to death with a lead pipe instead of making a relatively clean rifle/shotgun kill, probably increases the general horribleness of it's life about .02%, a number insignificant in the calculus of morality involved in obtaining yummie deer jerky.
I am hugely more opposed to the concept of eating feed-lot cows than I am hunting because there's industrial-scale cruelty involved.
But even so, with the best intent in the world, I have no illusions that there will ever be enough sunny pastures and cow masseuses available to keep Elsie in knee-deep clover and happy-places until she's smacked in the head to fulfill her McDestiny.
So, anyhow, I don't hunt, at least not in the conventional sense and therefore I don't need weapons. The favorite of those I don't need is the one I'm never more than 20 feet from in my house or car.
This is my 12-gauge Winchester 1300 Defender shotgun (or, as I now call it, my "Joe Biden Special" since Uncle Joe has now famously weighed in on his method of self defense):
But even so, with the best intent in the world, I have no illusions that there will ever be enough sunny pastures and cow masseuses available to keep Elsie in knee-deep clover and happy-places until she's smacked in the head to fulfill her McDestiny.
Editorial Addition on Re-reading: Completely sidetracked by a thought - "Cruelty" sounds like something that requires intent and a goal of a specific outcome, like setting a puppy on fire or some such. Is it "cruelty" if it's just an unintentional side-effect of a process? Feed lots and McDonalds don't start out with the intent of torturing animals. In point of fact, I suspect they have no thought one way or the other about it - it's just a side product of the process. No one is interested in making a cow miserable as a goal. In fact, they'd probably rather not, if they think about it one way or the other. They just want to eat it. I think we need another word here...At any rate, I avoid non-local meat where I can (and I usually can, because I can afford it, and as a bone-deep capitalist I pay added value for things that have added value to me) but on the other hand, I am not bashful about sucking down a prime-rib from a steak house where they buy cows which were raised in acid baths and beaten with mallets every day to make them more tender or some such.
So, anyhow, I don't hunt, at least not in the conventional sense and therefore I don't need weapons. The favorite of those I don't need is the one I'm never more than 20 feet from in my house or car.
This is my 12-gauge Winchester 1300 Defender shotgun (or, as I now call it, my "Joe Biden Special" since Uncle Joe has now famously weighed in on his method of self defense):
Uncle Joe Yammers On About Something He Knows Nothing About. As Usual.
People are often surprised I don't have some gnarly-looking assault weapon. Well, for one thing, I didn't say the shotgun was my ONLY weapon, just my favorite. And for another, if I'm in a gunfight somewhere, I'm bringing the shotgun every single time, if I have time to make the choice. Why? Well, here are a couple of gelatin blocks which are mixed to about-human consistency (and possibly flavor) being hit with Number 1 Buckshot which has been shot through an interior wall:
...and rifled slug:
Each of the above consist of two frames - the first either prior to or immediately upon impact of the 12 gauge round. The top picture then shows massive damage being inflicted by a large number of .30 caliber pellets slamming through the ballistic gel. The bottom picture shows a single slug on the instant it touches the gel (where it has already dug a crater twice its diameter) and a fraction of a second later when it comes to a stop, having delivered 100% of its energy creating the astounding damage shown.
Now, ballistic gel isn't 100% like people stuff, but it's safe to say if you're hit with one of these things it's going to be a bad day. My 12-gauge is loaded with four #1 buck rounds followed by three rifled slugs. I can fire all of them in 3.8 seconds, completely reload in 10 seconds, and fire them all again in 3.8 seconds. Fourteen rounds of the most devastating small-arms ammunition in the universe doing stuff like what you see above in less than 20 seconds. Good thing it's not an assault rifle so it doesn't scare people, amirite?
So, no assault weapons, and I don't hunt. All things considered, I'm practically a doofus Portland hipster. We progressives are cool like that.
So, no assault weapons, and I don't hunt. All things considered, I'm practically a doofus Portland hipster. We progressives are cool like that.
In Our Next Episode: Another progressive. It's like we were made for each other.
Did you read my posts about going on the "pig kill?" Or, how I took a firearms workshop (NRA sponsored)?
ReplyDeleteI still want to stay close to the reality of the meat I eat. I'd like to raise chickens and kill some (myself) for meat, for example. I'm not unrealistic, though, and don't expect all my meat to be "happy life meat" as we call it in my family. No matter how they are raised or killed, it's going to be "not natural" and there'll be some misery.
My problem is that after reading "Eating Animals," I can NOT shake the feeling of how gross it is to eat industrially raised/slaughtered animal flesh. I want to be able to still buy the cheaper stuff, or enjoy it at restaurants, or even get a burger at McDonald's. No matter what I do, though, every time I take a bite of that kind of meat, I feel like I'm eating pus and shit. It's not pleasant. I still do it, but mostly don't. It is SO inconvenient.