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Girls and Boys, Meet Nature. Bring Your Gun.
NY Times ^ | September 18, 2005 | PAM BELLUCK

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Extended News; Front Page News; Government; Politics/Elections; US: Colorado
KEYWORDS: banglist; hunting; juvenilehunting
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To: neverdem

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.


61 posted on 09/17/2005 9:42:20 PM PDT by DouglasKC
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To: neverdem

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.


62 posted on 09/17/2005 9:42:22 PM PDT by DouglasKC
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To: albee

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.


63 posted on 09/17/2005 9:42:22 PM PDT by WKUHilltopper
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To: M1Gunnut

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.


64 posted on 09/17/2005 9:42:24 PM PDT by cyborg (Thank you dear Lord for my new job and the breath in my lungs.)
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To: ChefKeith

No I don't eat meat.


65 posted on 09/17/2005 9:43:12 PM PDT by cyborg (Thank you dear Lord for my new job and the breath in my lungs.)
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To: Cannoneer No. 4

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.


66 posted on 09/17/2005 9:43:37 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: rjp2005

""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.


67 posted on 09/17/2005 9:44:20 PM PDT by LauraleeBraswell
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To: mmercier

Wow. Well I wouldn't disown my child *lol*


68 posted on 09/17/2005 9:44:29 PM PDT by cyborg (Thank you dear Lord for my new job and the breath in my lungs.)
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To: LauraleeBraswell

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.


69 posted on 09/17/2005 9:46:18 PM PDT by cyborg (Thank you dear Lord for my new job and the breath in my lungs.)
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To: cyborg

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 !


70 posted on 09/17/2005 9:46:21 PM PDT by Squantos (Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet. ©)
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To: neverdem; cyborg
They're under adult supervision. What's the problem?

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.  :-)

71 posted on 09/17/2005 9:46:32 PM PDT by Racehorse (Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.)
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To: LauraleeBraswell; cyborg

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.


72 posted on 09/17/2005 9:47:08 PM PDT by djf (Government wants the same things I do - MY guns, MY property, MY freedoms!)
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To: cyborg
Bless yer heart, I understand. I hunt, I eat, but I understand.

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... ;-)

73 posted on 09/17/2005 9:48:05 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: cyborg


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!


74 posted on 09/17/2005 9:48:14 PM PDT by LauraleeBraswell
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To: cyborg

>> Well you are welcome to disagree with my opinion.

I am not necessarily disagreeing. I ran too.

I go to Stop&Shop.


75 posted on 09/17/2005 9:48:22 PM PDT by mmercier
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To: cyborg

What's the difference between being a vegan and and vegetarian?

Watch out for iron deficiency anemia. You may want to consider iron supplements.


76 posted on 09/17/2005 9:48:32 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: Squantos

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.


77 posted on 09/17/2005 9:49:39 PM PDT by cyborg (Thank you dear Lord for my new job and the breath in my lungs.)
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To: cyborg
I just think it's strange to have a child hunting down and shooting an animal to death.

It's a cultural Red State/Blue State, rural vs. urban thing.

78 posted on 09/17/2005 9:50:02 PM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4 (Kandahar Airfield -- “We’re not on the edge of the world, but we can see it from here")
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To: 1rudeboy
Is hunting bear with a 20 gauge advisable?

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.

79 posted on 09/17/2005 9:50:59 PM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
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To: 1rudeboy
Is hunting bear with a 20 gauge advisable?

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.

80 posted on 09/17/2005 9:52:02 PM PDT by Aarchaeus
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