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 ...
"Is hunting bear with a 20 gauge advisable?"
20GA. sabot slug would work nicely.
"Guns don't kill people, I kill people"
One of my favorite bumper stickers, guaranteed to PO a liberal.
Only if the bear is sleeping and you can get really really close so you can stick the gun in his ear.
I love it!
The problem is I live in Liberal San Francisco and one of my neighbors might see it and slap me with his purse.
My friend went to Chinatown and bought one of those illegal turtles!
"Avid shoppers probably fail to realize that the reason they love their hobby so much is because of that basic hunting instinct."
So *that's* why I jump into the freezer case with a blood-curdling scream and wrestle a Butterball turkey into my cart every Thanksgiving.
[I just thought I was crazy]...;))
It's something how it becomes second nature, isn't it?
Have a look at my dogs on my homepage.
They can literally "hear a mouse peeing on cotton", as the saying goes.
Yet they start barking when "daddy" comes in the back door to the bathroom attached to the downstairs bedroom which is quite a distance from the living room.
I can come down the upstairs steps that run right outside of the living room and still make them jump when I come through the living room door.
The house is 270 years old the steps have a closed in pantry under them that acts like an echo chamber so every noise on those steps is amplified.
[and yes, I do get a perverse kick outta being able to sneak up on *them* because theoretically, it should be impossible]...;))
Whoa.
I think maybe I need a better 'hobby'....LOL!
I've been reading the history of the breed.
Amazing hounds.
Sneaking up on a dog that thinks it on guard. Tends to embarrass the heck out of them at times.
What illegal turtle?? The places I am talking about are neither illegal nor clandestine. They are something that exists in the neighborhoods mentioned.
nope- but wait we do have Belmont. good times.
If I had to kill an animal for food I would. However, I don't have to, so I won't.
Nassau
It does....:))
They startle and then they all get this weird goofy "grin" on their faces like "woops...ya got us"....;)
"Since the invention of vitamin pills, I think the nutritional rationale for meat eating is weaker."
Not at all true.
"Whole" foods have intrinsic factors that scientists don't even fully understand yet, let alone have the ability to identify or synthesize.
Take garlic as one example.
Whole garlic has amazing antibiotic/antiviral/antiseptic properties and scientists *thought* it was due to the presence of the compound allicin.
So, they separated the allicin and used it for experiments on bacteria and viruses and got terrible results.
Applying whole garlic "puree" on the bacteria and virii killed them.
Now scientists admit they have no idea *which* of the many active compounds in garlic is respnsible for its curative powers.
That "unknown quantity" in whole foods is charmingly referred to as the "X Factor".
Soy is another example.
It contains phytoestrogens and Asian women have remarkably low incidences of estrogen dependent cancers such as breast or cervical.
So, they "separated" the phytoestrogens from the soy, stuck it in tablets and capsules but it just doesn't work as well that way.
In fact, divorced from the whole soy bean, soy "supplements" can actually be harmful, especially to the thyroid.
The whole bean works wonders but when "scientifically diddled with" soy can actually become "dangerous".
Meat contains much more than just protein, vitamins and minerals.
Their are mulitudes of enzymes and macrobiotics that make it such a "perfect" food.
""Whole" foods have intrinsic factors that scientists don't even fully understand yet, let alone have the ability to identify or synthesize."
Thanks much for the excellent post. I had started to grasp this principle but your info has moved me quite a bit further along.
What started to clue me in was when the gov't said to start eating 10 different vegetables a day and I did it (for about 6 months or so, till I got sick of it.) The thing that clued me in was what happened the first time I did it. I got a rush, the like of which I had not gotten since I was doing drugs.
I still believe the daily Centrum tablet is a very good thing, though. Agree? It's just that you still have to be eating real foods of various types. A recent headline I cut out: "Cereals, beans, nuts might help halt cancer".
"It is more honest than eating beef and thinking no one killed that cow."
Good point. My uncle was part owner of a slaughterhouse. I never really observed anything of note, but I was there, smelled things, realized things were going on. It's a more negative reality than hunting, in some ways.
"Wait until a major social disruption happens."
Like Katrina?
"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, growing up in NYC would not create much of a feel for what hunting is about. Hunting is about space, and you don't comprehend space too well.
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