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 ...
It kills me that a story like this even makes the news. Happens every year in Michigan. My brother-in-law had his two daughters deer hunting at an early age.
It kills me that a story like this even makes the news. Happens every year in Michigan. My brother-in-law had his two daughters deer hunting at an early age.
I was shouldering a piece when I was nine years old...had my own gun(s) when I was 11. 35 years later, I've yet to "mow" down my neighborhood.
I guess everyone has their own way of teaching respect for nature. I don't completely disagree with hunting. I just think it's strange to have a child hunting down and shooting an animal to death.
No I don't eat meat.
You may have hit the nail on the head. My husband and I grew up in the city and are not comfortable around guns. We now live in a very rural area where virtually everyone hunts and no one gives a second thought to guns. My teens want to learn how to use a gun and hunt. We need to decide what to do on that cause that Katrina stuff has got me thinking a lot more seriously about it. In our area, some construction sites shut down and attendance at the public schools is down on the opening day of hunting season. And this is central NY.
""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.""
Have you ever heard of a "tailor?" They make a good money.
Wow. Well I wouldn't disown my child *lol*
Neither would I. I suppose if the kids get older and want to go hunting, I'd not like it (I would HATE it) but they could go.
Well that's all and well (as if ya need my blessing :o)....I respect yer right to choose and will stand up for it with ya. I harvest food by hunting and working with the wildlife management and conservation folks to keep herds healthy. I don't trophy hunt. Trophy hunters suck IMO. Each year we cull a cow elk and a couple of mulies for our freezers. I dove hunt and fish and last year we took two feral hogs and made lots of sausage.
Just my opinion now so don't get pissed at me but if ya let kids eat steak or burgers they should know about the food chain and such.....seen lots of stupid people that still think beef grows at the butcher shop. Kids should know how to gather their own food be it from a garden , the waterways or the wilderness.....just my opinion of course.
Stay safe and remember I want wedding pics !
Matter of opinion. Obviously, where she lives the opinion is it is okay to introduce a 9 year old to killing. It is a matter of personal and parental choice.
But IMHO, she's too d$!n young and immature to be on a hunt and she's too d$!n young and immature to be killing things.
I've been around guns and hunters all my life. Don't believe I've come across this kind of father before, nor do I care too.
Others are most certainly entitled to their opinions about it. That's what makes a horserace. :-)
I started hunting at about 12 yrs old.
But I agree with what you're saying. Let's just let the kids be just plain old kids for awhile. There's plenty of time to grow up.
Death is a profound thing for an adult to come to grips with, much less a child. Our sanitized life takes us out of contact with the fact that everything that lives, dies, including us, and that in the wild the means of death is nearly always much crueler than a bullet from a hunter. Wild animals don't die of old age.
All I can tell you is that a respect for life sometimes comes from the taking of it, and the realization that it is no evil thing to participate in the culmination of a wild thing's life knowing that you, in your turn, will feed the world as well. The universal truth is that vegetable or animal, something lived so that you could eat and that you live so that something else can eat, whether it be the billions of gut bacteria that would not be if you were not, or the tiger that chomps down on yer brisket.
Heady stuff. Best to your beau. You're getting a good one, but he's getting a better... ;-)
Maybe it's because we're from New York. The non wildnerness New York. If guns are your thing, that's fine. Not for me!
>> Well you are welcome to disagree with my opinion.
I am not necessarily disagreeing. I ran too.
I go to Stop&Shop.
What's the difference between being a vegan and and vegetarian?
Watch out for iron deficiency anemia. You may want to consider iron supplements.
Rather have a kid eat hunted meat than a awful,crap laden hamburger. Yuck! My future FIL sent fresh sausages, venison,etc. which my mother eats. My non-meat eating is primarily for health reasons. I know that everyone leads a different life and some families are hunting families who get their supply of meat from the forest wild than to be fed hormone,factory farmed meat.
It's a cultural Red State/Blue State, rural vs. urban thing.
Not my first choice, but I'm not a girl her age (for that matter I'm not a girl either). I suspect a 20 with slug/sabot will get the job done. If she wounds the bear, there's plenty of grownups willing to put the bear down.
Actually, the story says she is hunting with a 20-gauge AND 5 (presumably armed) men.
Sorta like my dad. He hunted bears with a club. Well, yes, quite a large club, he said there were about 200 members.
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