Posted on 10/26/2014 10:18:08 AM PDT by cripplecreek
An 11-year-old hunter from Oceola Township, Michigan, took a rare albino 12-pointer with a crossbow last week while hunting with his father. The albino buck was well known in the area, but Gavin Dingman ended up being the lucky hunter to harvest it. Sadly, the celebration ended for Dingman and his family, as they became the subject of death threats and social media backlash.
"My dad was just like, 'Take a deep breath. Are you sure you can take the shot? If you're not 100 percent, we don't want to injure it,' Dingman told the Livingston Daily on Monday. The boy explained that he'd been quite nervous, but he harvested a six-point buck last year, and his father, Mick, was confident in his abilities. Quite a few of the guys in the neighborhood were trying to get it," Mick added.
The family was making arrangements for a full body mount of the animal to be made as a (very large) reminder of the young hunters success. The Livingston Daily story even quoted the boy's father as saying, "He kind of feels like a rock star right now. Everyone is calling, all of the hunting shows and hunting magazines." But social media backlash had cast a dark pall over the boy's experience by the time OutdoorHub spoke to Mick Dingman on Tuesday. "We've had death threats and everything else that you can imagine," he said.
The OutdoorHub reporter expressed his regret and wrote, "Hopefully not too long from now, Gavin and his family can look back on this hunt with only pride and good memories."
What a beautiful animal.
Silly cracker. Albinos are reserved for hunting by “indigenous pipples.” You know, the Great Circle of Life and all that (which no cracker can ever be a part of).[/sarc]
Thats a rather liberal point of view. You think it’s special so the world must conform?
It would have been cool if they could have captured it an put it in a zoo or something.
Of course not, I just said why not wait for the next one?
When I lived up north it was still a good place to live fairly independent. Odd jobs could pay for electricity for your house and gas for your car. Between the steelhead, salmon and walleye runs you could fill a freezer. Deer, turkeys and geese hunting could fill another and most did exactly that. I used to take my S-10 pickup out and fill it with 5 gallon buckets of morel and beefsteak mushrooms for canning.
BTW I’m getting Oceola township mixed up with Oceola county where I lived.
Oceola Township is 30 or 40 miles NW of Detroit. I lived in Oceola county a way south of Traverse City.
Why wait for the next one? There is a reason You want him to wait for the next one. And you said what it was. You see it as something special. So “Of course not” isn’t applicable here. “Of Course” is. Because that is exactly your rationale. It’s special/cute/rare...all comes down to your belief in it’s greater value over other deer based on a birth defect.
My belief is not. So should your belief or mine be the decider here? Answer, neither. The decider made his decision. Because he didn’t have any good reason not to.
Personally I would not want to kill such a unique animal.
Spare me the “gene pool” issues; I am aware. I still would not do it. Better an animal that needs it get it, FTM. Easy pickings for them. Although, with 12 points, seems he’s reached some level of maturity.
But I certainly would not disparage this boy much less disgusting death threats! It is just an animal, and a wild one at that.
It is what it is. Macht nichts.
Taste the same.
Black bears, cougars and gray wolves!!!
It sounds like you need to get out more. I bet it was tasty.
It won't be, it's trophy hunting. I don't care for it, personally. Hunting for food is one thing, taking a life for a stuffed, mounted animal hide is another.
There are "hunters" down here who will shoot a buck, saw off the rack, cut out the tenderloin and leave the carcass where it fell to rot. That, imho, is disgusting and wrong, and for similar reasons.
Honor the life, use the meat and as much of the animal remains as possible. Dispose of what's left in a respectful manner, both for the creature and for the neighbors who don't particularly want to have to clean up animal remains dragged up into their yards repeatedly.
Do you seriously believe that very many at all eat meat from an animal sent to a taxidermist? It just doesn’t happen much at all, the practice is controversial.
It is a very common practice for the taxidermist to freeze the meat for their customer.....do you hunt? You don’t sound like you know a whole lot about the sport.
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