Just outta curiousity....
How do real-life actual hunters here feel about Cheney's hunting sojourns?
I've never hunted, but would if the opportunity presented itself (as long as it ain't gofers - that just struck me as too goofy). I'm an avid angler, and it's through my involvement in that leads me to ponder something about this quail shoot.
Short background: I'm a fly fisherman. It's different than dropping an army of down riggers and dragging them along with a boat. It's different than spin casting some fancy new spoon. We
hunt fish. We turn over rocks to look for what the fish might be eating. We spend large amounts of time on the banks just watching the water, watching the movement of the fish. We look at the bug hatches for clues as to what the fish might be feeding on. We have fly-tying vices, hackle, thread, and hooks to be able to sit down and actually create the things that the fish are eating. When we throw our line into the water, we do it in ways that mimic the behavior of whatever it is we have tied to the line.
To me? That's hunting.
And when we do it? There are ethical guidelines that serious fishers know. Like code. We scoff at spin casters. We're disgusted by those fishers that bang any dang fish they catch over the head with a club. We're embarrassed by the guys who hang fish on a scale causing them even more trauma; harming the viability and productivity of our rivers. Guys that don't clamp down their barbs are idiots. Etc.
Now, I'm not really sure what's involved in hunting with guns, but I'm pretty dang sure the same kind of things go into it. Like knowing how to track. Knowing where to look. Knowing how your prey behaves. And on and on (...about things and terminology I have no clue of.
)
But I'm curious.
For all you seasoned hunters, how does it strike you that the hunts that Cheney goes on amount to nothing more than birds raised in captivity on private land, are under nets, and when he shows up they release them and BOOM! He kills, like 70 of them? A couple years ago his group killed something like 470 birds in one of these "hunting" trips.
This last trip was the same thing. Birds raised in boxes, released when the so-called hunters show up.
Like I said, I don't know much about hunting.... but this strikes me more like
shooting than hunting.
How do actual hunters feel about this practice?
