Many of my friends are Sport Hunters.
What I hear a lot is, “I was raised around guns and hunting.”
And, “In my family, we all hunt.”
I’m am only one generation off the farm. My grandfather was a farmer. My father was Military Career. I was raised around guns so fucking big they could take out tanks. My Grandfather’s “deer rifle” with a “deer slug” loaded, could blow a hole you could bowl through. When I was about six, I was in an Armed Forces Day Parade. There is a photo of me (little boy) sitting on top of some kind of bomb like two car lengths long on a flatbed trailer. My older brother was too scared to do it. Like 30 feet off the ground.
Being from Utah and Idaho, I know “hunting is in my gene pool”.
I don’t sport hunt. I don’t own a gun. Included in the “real hunting gene”, from down on the farm, guns and hunting are not for “sport”. Pistols and sidearms are for the cops and robbers. Animals were shot for one of two reasons; they were caught killing livestock, or you were gonna eat them.
There was no “sport” involved and ammunition was expensive. Hunting tended to take place in the fall when crops also needed to be harvested. So if you were gonna take time away from the farm, there was a real good reason. Basketball was a “sport”. Shooting animals was “work” to put food on the table.
Now some 60 years since then there are two big differences to consider. There are over twice as many people running around (hunting?) and less than half as many animals. And! The available “woods and forests” where hunting is permitted or on Government Land is @ about less than 1/10 of what it was.
The Gallatin River was once a prime trout fishing river. Now because of agribusiness and the run-off of pesticides, you can't eat anything you might catch, due to mercury poisoning. And because of fracking and other industrial uses, the cattle raised up there are cordoned off so close to the river, you can’t even drink the water due to giardia from all the cow shit.
What does that say about eating venison shot within yards of where people are living or out in the woods where who knows what industry may be doing. I was hiking with a buddy in the mountains in Colorado years and years ago. Back maybe ten miles from the nearest road we came across a “Nuclear Waste Disposal Site” sign!,!.?
I suppose putting a bullet into some wildlife is a “sport”, but the real “sport” is now that you’ve killed it, what are you gonna do with it? Go ahead! Gut it, burn it and eat it. The reward seems like you’ll either get the screamin’ shits or pancreatic cancer.
Personally I’d rather play basketball.
And, what did that living breathing creature ever do to you, that you feel it is “your right” to kill it.
I won’t get into the “Amendment” business right here. But, it’s an “amendment”, it’s NOT a law. There is a difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amendment
