Posted on 09/17/2005 9:08:12 PM PDT by neverdem
GREEN MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, Vt. - Chomping wad after wad of Bubblicious Strawberry Splash gum and giggling as she tickled people's necks with a piece of grass she pretended was a spider, Samantha Marley could have been any 9-year-old girl.
A couple of things set her apart, though. She was cloaked in camouflage from boots to baseball cap. And propped next to her on the seat of a truck was her very own 20-gauge shotgun.
Samantha, a freckle-faced, pony-tailed fourth grader, was on a bear hunt. Not the pretend kind memorialized in picture books and summer-camp chants, but a real one for black bears that live in the woods of southwestern Vermont and can weigh 150 pounds or more.
She had won a "dream hunt" given away by a Vermont man whose goal is to get more children to hunt, and she had traveled about 200 miles from her home in Bellingham, Mass., and was missing three days of school to take him up on his offer.
"Almost everything you hunt is pretty fun," said Samantha, grinning and perfectly at home with a group of five men, the youngest of whom was nearly three times her age.
At one point, as the group crossed a wooden bridge, Samantha's father, Scott, who had accompanied her - and had filled out her application for the hunting contest - teased her that trolls lived under the bridge.
"Dad," Samantha said with bravado, "I got a gun."
The dream hunt - all expenses paid, including taxidermy - was the brainchild of Kevin Hoyt, a 35-year-old hunting instructor who quit a job as a structural steel draftsman a few years ago and decided to dedicate himself to getting children across the country interested in hunting.
His efforts reflect...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wow that's amazing. Thank you for your service!
Wait until a major social disruption happens. Then we'll see whether it's good or not to have a gun, NYT.
Do ya fish ?
Well you are welcome to disagree with my opinion.
No. I don't eat fish but even if I did, I wouldn't eat anything fish from around Long Island that's for sure. Too much poison in the fish.
Kids with guns OMG. What people do not realize is that those kids in WWII saved this country because they could shoot.
Do you eat meat?
Some people never understand that there are only two types of humans: Predator and prey.
Once you have the mindset of the former, you seldom if ever become the latter. Once one assumes the latter, they never become the former.
Our forefathers didn't claw their way to the top of the food chain in order for us to eat our vegetables. We're carnivores by design.
The meek shall inherit the $hit.
Hunting your own food teaches you a reverance for life that a non-hunter will never fully know.
Until you have killed, dressed and eaten your own animal, you can't truly appreciate the sanctity of all life.
After that, you'll never look casually at the store-bought beef steak laying on your plate.
You fully -understand- the significance of what you're eating and are never less than completely grateful for it.
The Indians had a good point when they "thanked the spirit" of the animals they had just slain.
To each his own but I thank my father for teaching me all that.
I started at 9 and I still do it at 52.
Beautiful, magnificent dogs.
Thanks for the info..:)
[off to Google Plott hounds, now]...;))
I am a vegetarian, but not a vegan though I will be for health reasons. If someone needs to hunt for food well that's fine. I would rather someone who is hungry hunt their own meat than buy that processed crap in the stores.
"The NY Times, who'd a thunk it?"
The NYT sees this as the opposite from the way you do.
Great. And the "boy with his mother learning how to make curtains and fluff drapes article with photo" is right next to it. Time to get back to teaching our boys to protect and our girls to nurture.
My 12 yr old daughter can take you down at 500 yards... ;)
Hell yeah. I love steak. I know the cow gets slaughtered. But that doesn't mean I want to do it myself.
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