Al....we gotta do the best we can. When we have the opportunity, we sometimes need to jump on it. The other alternative was the author getting some PETA representative to spout their side, complete with red paint. Thank you for putting yourself on the line and trying. Once you have done your part, it is out of your hands and control.
Many, maybe most, of the folks in the big cities, whether New York or Chicago or the like are no longer even remotely tied to the world around us. They don't have a clue what ELSE goes on around them, just their city people thing. I mean no disrespect at all by that statement.
Heck, I live near Madison WI, a not so huge city in Wisconsin, where just last week around 650,000 licensed hunters (gun) took to the field for the yearly hunt. This is not what I would call an anti hunting state, yet I am appalled by what I see and hear in the city itself.
I often hear, people make the statements, we should not hurt the bunnies and the pretty deer, then they cry and think they are really in touch with reality, and you know what...they are....their own reality....which is different from mine.
You see, no matter what we as humans do on this earth, we are taking up space....a lot of it. Whether we eat meat or only bean burgers, we take up space. Don't think so......look around you. Your yard used to house critters. Your neighborhood was probably a field at some point in time. How about that street in front of your house, and the streets that tie into it, and the highway, and the shopping mall, and yes, the golf course and on and on. Heck those bean burgers came from fields that lie barren and naked for 9 months of the year.
For every one of us, we take up the space of thousands of critters, displacing them and endangering them. But, we don't see it that way......they (people as a group, not me or us personally) see hunting, and maybe fishing as abuse that is bad, but don't see , can't see, all the rest.
The fact is, human-kind impacts the whole earth, wild life included, far more, and in far more deadly ways than hunting ever did. But I guess that doesn't count, does it. We all really need another mall...right ?
I am here on this earth right now, and with luck, I may be on this earth for another 20-30 years. With a bit more luck, there will be fields and woods for me to walk thru for all that time. But I sure do worry about that.
All I can do right now is the best job that I can to show another point of view to those that refuse to see it, to teach those that want to see it, and to live my life the best that I can. The rest is outside my control.
Once again, thank you Al, for trying to show that world that we, as bowhunters want to help and care.
Chuck
Topic: Bowhunting article in the NY Times (Read 4420 times)
