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Some of the best bird watching I have ever done, is sitting in a boat with a 12 guage across my lap, a black lab retriever in the boat and thousands of snow geese just out of gun range. Some of the nicest times in the woods I have had are taking a nap at mid-day during a deer hunt with no one around for miles and being wakened by the sounds of birds moving my way in advance of an animal walking toward me. It has given me pleasure to go hiking in the mountains with non-hunters who stop to take a picture and say that is beautiful, have me agree and point out the deer 50 yeards away standing still that they had not seen.

Most people expect nature to provide them with an MTV experience and are disappointed. Another problem with most American's today is that they have no concept of what it takes to provide themselves with food. They don't really understand that milk doesn't come from plastic jugs. They have no concept that cows need to get pregnant, that they need to be taken care of, that someone needs to milk the cows on a regular basis. People think that "meat" comes in nice little plastic trays. They don't understand that the hamburger or chicken was once a living breathing animal, that was cared for, killed, and butchered, before it was placed in a plactic tray. If you asked most people what a potatoe plant looked like they might say a McDonald's Golden Arch.

People in the US are very, very fortunate to have the food that they do. People in this society need an exerpience at least once in their life to grow some of their own food in gardens and to kill some of their own meat, otherwise the will have no appreciation or understanding of what it means to be blessed by such a bountiful harvest.

Contrary to the information published in your post, hunting is a great opporutnity to get out into nature. To be successful in hunting, one also needs to shed many of the trapings of civilization and get in tune with the ways of nature. Whether one is setting up a string of duck decoys based on winds and current or whether one is blending in with nature and learning to be quite while hunting deer, hunting, if done properly, is an opportunity to be at one with nature in a very special way and the bring the cycle of life and death and the food supply into a new focus.

What seems to be the focus of the article is an image of hunter as someone who never goes in the woods, except for one weekend a year and then does so 500 to 1000 miles from home having huge travel expense. Such hunting is not usually productive as the hunter has little understanding of the area and the habits of the native animals. Hunting is a dying practice in this country, just as are backyard gardens, fishing, and outdoor skills acquired in real wilderness camping. These changes in shared experiences are changing our culture in ways that most of us do not understand. I for one think that this society would be better off with more people who know firearms, firearm safety, hunting skills and wilderness skills.