5465
Split_G3
don't know if anyone has read this or maybe already put it on here, but i thought i would share it with ya'll. i personally feel that there is a lot of truth in this article.The future of hunting: Where we’re headed
Mick Bohonis - Outdoor Life
Web Posted: 1/14/2005 1:22:54 PM
The hunter haters are getting smarter. They’re increasingly well financed and well organized. Over time the antis have learned how to use emotional rhetoric and graphic images to stir up societal sympathy for “defenseless wildlife.†They’re masters at using the liberal media, legislators, and the acts and words of some “hunters†themselves to turn the voting public against hunting and conversation are incompatible.
Today’s savvy antis understand all too well that public initiatives and the ballot box are perhaps the most effective means of ending certain kinds of hunting, and each year they succeed in legislating some now legal form of hunting out of existence.
Today their focus is outlawing the bear hunt and the use of hunting hounds to take bruins, and possibly retrieving waterfowl.
Tomorrow they’ll be lobbying to save the deer and abolish bowhunting. In the end they’ll try to stop us evil hunters from hunting all wild animals because of the pain and suffering they claim hunters inflict on North America’s wildlife. Make no mistake about their announced agenda.
Some people alive today will see the end of hunting as we know it!In my earliest hunting memories, I’m trailing after my grandfather for flushing grouse and and zig zagging cottontails. Although he never owned a bow, he did carry a battered 12-guage shotgun afield, and he paternally welcomed the presence of a gangly, tall leaned out, curly-haired youngster who pestered him with a thousand questions about the outdoors interspersed with requests to shoot his old Winchester model 50 shotgun, or at least tote the game out of the woods.
A practical hard-working provider, my grandfather hunted for meat and the meat only. He wasn’t interested in the antlers or any form of taxidermy. It was during our excursions during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that he planted the seed that over time blossomed into the garden of hunting that I tend to this very day. Later, grateful for his patient tutelage, I dutifully introduced my eager children to the outdoors and the hunting and fishing activities.
Out of all the Bohonis’ alive today including uncles, cousins, and nephews, it only remains that my son and myself continue to share my burning passion for wildlife and wild places. This personal situation, I fear, is not an atypical family history of hunting in this increasingly fast paced world with its myriad leisure activities. In truth, I see each successive modern generation drifting further from our ancestors’ relationship with the land and its creatures. This bodes ill for the future of hunting.
I will see the end of hunting as we know it. While I pray this prediction is wrong, I do not see public hunting surviving the midpoint of the coming century unless some unexpected miracle occurs.
Its ultimate death will be the end result of several inexorable trends. Modern man’s growing estrangement from the land; an ever increasing loss of wildlife habitat and available public hunting areas; an ever shrinking number of hunters; society’s changing attitude toward hunting and hunters; increasingly vocal outside criticisms and pressures, including successful anti-hunting ballot initiatives based on emotion rather than on sound wildlife and biological management practices, that chip away at the foundation of all hunting and most of all our spineless governments as has been proven already a few times over. It seems that money and votes are far more important than the wildlife management that they claim they are so concerned about.
Half of the politicians who have the power to make or break our heritage have never ever held a shotgun, and a select few have never ever held a fishing rod. Some have never seen a live black bear.
Pretty pathetic situation if you ask me; and finally, widespread hunter apathy and a lack of organized effort to combat the anti hunting machine.
A nationally respected writer I am aware of as a knowledgeable professional, who makes it his business to keep a finger on the pulse beat of the hunting heritage, predicts that within the next 10 to 15 years we’ll see the first successful state ballot initiative to outlaw public hunting.
Other people I know are somewhat more optimistic, giving hunting another 20 to 40 years before it fades forever into history. Regardless of who’s perdiction may be correct, you can bet the ranch that whenever the precedent to ban hunting is eventually established in some small single state, the antis quickly will gather like circling vultures in other states, seeking to pick clean each and every bone from the carcass of the North American hunter.
My forecast: Although some forms of hunting likely will survive well into the 21st century, the days of public hunting as we know it now are probably numbered. Unless major changes occur and public attitude and support shifts more in our favor. All too soon expensive, privately owned and operated hunting areas may be the only option left for 21st century hunters.
So when you sit down to the next sirloin tip roast or roasted chicken dinner, I want you to think long and hard about this. It seems that we will all eat meat that is processed for us in the future and the thought of taking your son or daughter on a grouse hunt, or going on that annual moose hunt will be a thing of the past.
It’s uncanny to think that man by nature is a hunter and has been for thousands of years. He ate what he harvested with a hand made spear or bow and that was the way it was. Today we are a society of fat, lazy drive-through addicts whose passion for nothing else except a triple by-pass burger and soft chair with a remote control has set a precedent for the future of potential outdoorsmen. We will be hunting on our computers rather than in the woods.
Pete
Mick Bohonis - Outdoor Life
Web Posted: 1/14/2005 1:22:54 PM
The hunter haters are getting smarter. They’re increasingly well financed and well organized. Over time the antis have learned how to use emotional rhetoric and graphic images to stir up societal sympathy for “defenseless wildlife.†They’re masters at using the liberal media, legislators, and the acts and words of some “hunters†themselves to turn the voting public against hunting and conversation are incompatible.
Today’s savvy antis understand all too well that public initiatives and the ballot box are perhaps the most effective means of ending certain kinds of hunting, and each year they succeed in legislating some now legal form of hunting out of existence.
Today their focus is outlawing the bear hunt and the use of hunting hounds to take bruins, and possibly retrieving waterfowl.
Tomorrow they’ll be lobbying to save the deer and abolish bowhunting. In the end they’ll try to stop us evil hunters from hunting all wild animals because of the pain and suffering they claim hunters inflict on North America’s wildlife. Make no mistake about their announced agenda.
Some people alive today will see the end of hunting as we know it!In my earliest hunting memories, I’m trailing after my grandfather for flushing grouse and and zig zagging cottontails. Although he never owned a bow, he did carry a battered 12-guage shotgun afield, and he paternally welcomed the presence of a gangly, tall leaned out, curly-haired youngster who pestered him with a thousand questions about the outdoors interspersed with requests to shoot his old Winchester model 50 shotgun, or at least tote the game out of the woods.
A practical hard-working provider, my grandfather hunted for meat and the meat only. He wasn’t interested in the antlers or any form of taxidermy. It was during our excursions during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that he planted the seed that over time blossomed into the garden of hunting that I tend to this very day. Later, grateful for his patient tutelage, I dutifully introduced my eager children to the outdoors and the hunting and fishing activities.
Out of all the Bohonis’ alive today including uncles, cousins, and nephews, it only remains that my son and myself continue to share my burning passion for wildlife and wild places. This personal situation, I fear, is not an atypical family history of hunting in this increasingly fast paced world with its myriad leisure activities. In truth, I see each successive modern generation drifting further from our ancestors’ relationship with the land and its creatures. This bodes ill for the future of hunting.
I will see the end of hunting as we know it. While I pray this prediction is wrong, I do not see public hunting surviving the midpoint of the coming century unless some unexpected miracle occurs.
Its ultimate death will be the end result of several inexorable trends. Modern man’s growing estrangement from the land; an ever increasing loss of wildlife habitat and available public hunting areas; an ever shrinking number of hunters; society’s changing attitude toward hunting and hunters; increasingly vocal outside criticisms and pressures, including successful anti-hunting ballot initiatives based on emotion rather than on sound wildlife and biological management practices, that chip away at the foundation of all hunting and most of all our spineless governments as has been proven already a few times over. It seems that money and votes are far more important than the wildlife management that they claim they are so concerned about.
Half of the politicians who have the power to make or break our heritage have never ever held a shotgun, and a select few have never ever held a fishing rod. Some have never seen a live black bear.
Pretty pathetic situation if you ask me; and finally, widespread hunter apathy and a lack of organized effort to combat the anti hunting machine.
A nationally respected writer I am aware of as a knowledgeable professional, who makes it his business to keep a finger on the pulse beat of the hunting heritage, predicts that within the next 10 to 15 years we’ll see the first successful state ballot initiative to outlaw public hunting.
Other people I know are somewhat more optimistic, giving hunting another 20 to 40 years before it fades forever into history. Regardless of who’s perdiction may be correct, you can bet the ranch that whenever the precedent to ban hunting is eventually established in some small single state, the antis quickly will gather like circling vultures in other states, seeking to pick clean each and every bone from the carcass of the North American hunter.
My forecast: Although some forms of hunting likely will survive well into the 21st century, the days of public hunting as we know it now are probably numbered. Unless major changes occur and public attitude and support shifts more in our favor. All too soon expensive, privately owned and operated hunting areas may be the only option left for 21st century hunters.
So when you sit down to the next sirloin tip roast or roasted chicken dinner, I want you to think long and hard about this. It seems that we will all eat meat that is processed for us in the future and the thought of taking your son or daughter on a grouse hunt, or going on that annual moose hunt will be a thing of the past.
It’s uncanny to think that man by nature is a hunter and has been for thousands of years. He ate what he harvested with a hand made spear or bow and that was the way it was. Today we are a society of fat, lazy drive-through addicts whose passion for nothing else except a triple by-pass burger and soft chair with a remote control has set a precedent for the future of potential outdoorsmen. We will be hunting on our computers rather than in the woods.
Pete
