Posted on 03/03/2005 10:15:30 AM PST by SmithL
NASHVILLE - An e-mail advisory to media Wednesday said that Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson, would demonstrate "Internet hunting by shooting a goat today at 11:30" during the Senate Environment and Conservation Committee meeting.
Jackson, D-Dickson, did no such thing, though he announced at the outset of his presentation, "We're going to go hunting."
Instead, he used a laptop computer to go to a Web site - displayed on a screen in the committee room - where a person, for a fee paid by credit card, can take control of a specially rigged rifle sitting in a Texas field.
If an animal - Barbary sheep, Blackbuck and Corsican sheep are listed on the Web site - comes into view, the "computer-assisted hunter" can aim the rifle through the controls and shoot the animal. The ranch owner then collects the "harvested" animal and sends it to a taxidermist for mounting and subsequent shipment to the long-distance shooter.
"I'd call it more of an assassination than a harvesting," said Jackson.
"Such practices are demeaning to the sport of hunting," he said, hurt the public image of hunting and "give ammunition" to those who want to abolish hunting.
After the presentation and speech, even without a goat-killing, the committee voted unanimously and without debate to approve the bill to outlaw "computer-assisted hunting" operations in Tennessee, where none exist. A similar effort is under way in Texas, where the ranch that operates the Web site visited by Jackson is located.
The committee action clears the bill for a Senate floor vote next week. The House companion bill, sponsored by Rep. John Tidwell, D-New Johnsonville, is pending in the House Conservation Committee.
Andy Spears, press secretary for the Senate Democratic Caucus, said Jackson had paid a $175 fee that would have allowed him to actually shoot a goat during the presentation.
"But it turned out they don't come into the food plot until 3 or 4 in the afternoon," when the committee would have been out of session, Spears said.
"He was going to shoot a goat. Well, maybe he would have missed one on purpose."
Jackson is also sponsoring three proposed amendments to the state constitution designed to establish a constitutional right to hunt and fish in Tennessee. Similar proposals are sponsored in the House by Rep. Glen Casada, R-College Grove, and Mike McDonald, D-Portland.
Can they target spammers?
This isn't hunting anymore than posting on FR is voting.
Anybody who hunts this way is a wimp.
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