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Peter Pallotta

Re: Hunters
« Reply #25 on: June 05, 2012, 10:20:13 PM »
Dan - I used to go hunting as a kid with my dad. Occasionally he'd let me fire off a round. Whatever we shot (rabbits, ducks/birds) we'd clean and cook and eat right out there in the forest/country. It was fun, until the first time I got too close to a partridge with a 20 gauge and before my dad could say "no, you're too close!" pulled the trigger...and there was nothing left of that bird at all. Never found the desire to go out again after that.  Interestingly, my dad -- a farm boy and hunter from way back -- is now in his late 70s, and a while ago I realized he hadn't gone out hunting with his friends for several years. When I asked him about it, he said: "Naw, I don't have the heart to do any killing anymore". Dad's not a squeamish guy -- we used to kill our own lambs for Easter, and chickens etc -- so it struck me that he put it that way.

Peter

Dan King

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Hunters
« Reply #26 on: June 05, 2012, 10:40:59 PM »
Yeah, as a kid from the 1960s, killing things as sport never had much appeal to me. I do understand that an animal died to enable me to grill some ribs last weekend. But right now I have a pet spider sitting on my window sill by my desk. I've watched him work on his web for the last week or so and don't have the heart to even disrupt his web, let alone kill him.  It's an impressive web.

Just like I've separated golf from scoring, perhaps I could separate hunting from killing.

Cheers,
Dan King
Quote
Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
 --P. J. O'Rourke


William_G

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Hunters
« Reply #27 on: June 06, 2012, 12:20:06 AM »
Dan,

I'm good with that as I think golf is the hunt without the kill.
It's all about the golf!

Ken Moum

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Hunters
« Reply #28 on: June 06, 2012, 12:32:45 AM »
Just like I've separated golf from scoring, perhaps I could separate hunting from killing.

It is possible, but the parallel continues, because, as Ortega y Gassett concluded, one must kill in order to have hunted.  Not every trip, and certainly not everything legal to take home and eat.

Golf without making holing the ball and making a score of any kind becomes somewhat pointless, but it's not at all hard to play at golf, hit the shots, and make hole scores without the final, total score being of interest or import.

On the matter of understanding where you food comes from, In the Ted Kerasote book I mentioned, he recounts spending time hanging out with Fund for Animals director Wayne Pacelle.

In the end, Kerasote concluded that if he walked out of his cabin in the mountains and shot an elk to eat through the winter, he did less harm to the environment than Pacelle and his posse eating vegetables raised in California and trucked across country to New York.
Over time, the guy in the ideal position derives an advantage, and delivering him further  advantage is not worth making the rest of the players suffer at the expense of fun, variety, and ultimately cost -- Jeff Warne, 12-08-2010

Colin Macqueen

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Hunters
« Reply #29 on: June 06, 2012, 12:53:13 AM »
Gentlemen, Nice thread. The parallels put forward in this thread are very interesting.

I have only ever "hunted" once. I went out with an air-rifle and by sheer luck, and my subsequent dismay, killed a chaffinch, a tiny bird. I justified this "hunt" as I wanted a stock of feathers to hand make flies for trout fishing. I was twelve years old and my parents certainly thought I was Neanderthal! Anyway I found out that making lures for fly-fishing was way beyond me so the wee birds demise was in vain. Ever since I have satisfied the atavism within me by playing the gowf. I have often thought that golfing is atavistic as I get so much joy out of seeing a well flighted ball against the sky.

Cheers Colin
"Golf, thou art a gentle sprite, I owe thee much"
The Hielander

Dan King

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Hunters
« Reply #30 on: June 06, 2012, 01:34:06 AM »
Ken Moum writes:
Golf without making holing the ball and making a score of any kind becomes somewhat pointless, but it's not at all hard to play at golf, hit the shots, and make hole scores without the final, total score being of interest or import.

It was something I learned once spending a couple weeks at Cruden Bay and playing golf with mostly the same lads every day. I noticed they never once picked up scorecards. I always wondered about that. One time one of the Cruden lads had a very good round. After the round I saw him filling out his scorecard. I asked, and he said it was his best round ever at Cruden Bay and he wanted a record.

I learend there was always a big difference between memorizing score and writing it down after your round, and what they did at Cruden. For them score was totally out of their head. It never even occurred to any of them to even think about score. But after the round, they could easily recall every shot that happened, and from there, only if there was a good reason, know what they shot. To me this was really golf I had never known I always dreamed of.  It made golf not about score, but totally about the experience.

It took me ten years, but now I can go out and play golf. I never think for a minute about my score but if asked after the round I can tell you what happened for every shot. If I ever need to I can fill out a scorecard. But it took me years to separate myself totally from score. Try to go to the golf course and not think about score. But these lads never thought about score while they played. They never really understood what we as Americans were doing. They always assumed we just had very poor memories and needed an aid to help us. 

One thing that was strange was by the time I got to were score wan meaningless, I could much better remember the rounds the rare times I had need to. When keeping score, I think many Americans use the scorecard as a way to put that hole behind them. Rather than playing a round of golf, we are playing 18 separate holes. While we often think of match play as 18 separate matches, reality is in America it is often medal that is treated as 18 matches and match play is seen as a round of golf. It's much tougher to recall 18 events that one.

Whew, that was long winded. That's what you get post-medication.

In the end, Kerasote concluded that if he walked out of his cabin in the mountains and shot an elk to eat through the winter, he did less harm to the environment than Pacelle and his posse eating vegetables raised in California and trucked across country to New York.

Yep, I understand that, and still I can't kill the spider. I have no idea how long spiders live, but I'm guessing I'll leave it to the guy who comes and cleans my windows to eventually do something about my spider.

Cheers,
Dan King
Quote
Excessive golfing dwarfs the intellect. Nor is this to be wondered at when we consider that the more fatuously vacant the mind is, the better for play. It has been observed that absolute idiots play the steadiest.
  --Sir Walter Simpson

Ken Moum

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Hunters
« Reply #31 on: June 06, 2012, 12:59:07 PM »
Yep, I understand that, and still I can't kill the spider. I have no idea how long spiders live, but I'm guessing I'll leave it to the guy who comes and cleans my windows to eventually do something about my spider.


No harm in that.  I would have been surprised if it were any different. 

FWIW, when people who really don't get hunting ask me about it I sometimes say, "It's partly about taking responsibility for what I eat. When I shoot a pheasant and then later have to put my hand inside it getting it clean enough to eat, I have to face up to the fact that for me to eat, something has to die."

Farm kids who raise a pig for the 4H competition at the County Fair, and only to see it end up as bacon, ham and pork chops, understand that.

Most of us town kids don't.

K
Over time, the guy in the ideal position derives an advantage, and delivering him further  advantage is not worth making the rest of the players suffer at the expense of fun, variety, and ultimately cost -- Jeff Warne, 12-08-2010

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