Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

Check out this award winning picture from David Chancellor.
It's a 14 yr-old chick on a horse with the antelope she hunted.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/...28_634x513.jpg
(I won't paste inline because of the copyright.)

Anyway, sure, it's in the Daily Fail, but I had to have a gander at the comments section. Sure enough, there's a ton of panty-waisted hand-wringers decrying this outrage.

Hunting! How obscene! 14 years old! My God!

How pathetic has the British people become that hunting is simply anathema to them? Even though they're quite happy to go and buy processed, packaged, dyed stuff from the supermarket.

How emasculated and infantilized a people are we that a natural and necessary behavior has become shocking and distasteful?

Do you hunt? I don't yet, but I plan on learning, so I can teach my son. Not just the shooting aspect, but dressing the carcass, preparing the meat etc.
I see it as an essential life skill. And a rite of passage.

I already have my first kill. I was 16 and went beating at a farm in Dorset. We bashed through the undergrowth with sticks to drive the pheasants towards the guns.

When the guns fire, the shot rains down on you in the trees. What I didn't know was the birds are often only stunned. We had to take our sticks and bash the bird on the head to kill it.

I went home afterward feeling queasy, that I was going to hell for killing a bird. Apparently, these are normal feelings. A rite of passage, as I said.

I'm glad I went through it and I think it's an important part of becoming a man.

What do you think?

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

We don't hunt, and have nothing against it so long as you eat what you kill (which is what all the relatives and friends we have do)
We have raised our own meat hens then killed and cleaned and cooked them, the kids were fascinated it didn't put them off dinner at all :lol: We have also caught and eaten rabbits when we lived in UK, times were hard in the 70's

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

I don't do it, but am not against it if its for consumption. We learned to trap/kill/dress rabbits in scouts and venturing in the UK, but I haven't done it since my late teens. I am constantly amazed at how early some of the kids start here...one of the boys in my sons cub den took his first deer at 6 years old, which I find kind of scarey.

My sons enjoy target shooting which they have learned in Scouts - at some point I suspect they may make decide they want to try hunting (lots of their friends families have deer leases) but they haven't mentioned it as yet. At that point I'd need to get a lot more familiar with what is required as there's no way they're going away shooting with their friends/families without me being there!

I don't like the idea of big game hunting for wall trophies - and I think those big game ranches that they have in places where they ship in the "big 5" to be hunted should be shut down.

My daughters Kindergarten teacher has a ranch out in West Texas, and was saying today that he takes 6-8 deer a year from it for family use. Reckons he hasn't bought sausage, steak or ground beef for almost a decade! I'm just hoping he has a good year and hasn't got freezer space for it all:D

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...hic-prize.html

This is the link to the story, and something else caught my eye:

'Barry' Obama's childhood with transvestite gay nanny revealed by visit to Indonesia

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...Indonesia.html

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

Hello There ,
I just Have to reply to this post , I have to say I just cant wait to go Hunting
I just cant wait to own a proper black powder weapon , no i am not a nutter or anything . I am a battle re-enactor who has to jump through hoops to own a black powder weapon in the UK .
I also wish to join the NSSA ( target shooting with black powder weapons)
and the NRA .

John

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

It's not my scene personally but I don't care if other people do it, as long as they plan to eat whatever they kill, otherwise it seems rather pointless.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

There was fox hunting in my neck of the woods when I was a kid. It didn't bother me. Foxes were vermin that killed lambs and chickens. I don't like big game hunting, when it's just for the sake of killing, just to say you have killed that particular animal.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

This is a class issue.

Those that hunt in the UK tend to be affluent, it is not cheap to go hunting in the UK, whether that be birds or deer. A lot of working class and many middle class Britans view those that do hunt as bad, but it sems clearly obvious that there is nothing wrong with hunting unless you are a vegetarian. It is not that the wealthy are bad because they hunt, The shame here is that a large percentage of the population look down on hunting because it is something they have never done, because the landed and afflunet classes never let them. The British popuation has become disenfranchised from the land.

I have never hunted, and only comming to America and seeing what a part of the culture it is (especially with many working class Americans) here, have I realised how much the British have been squeazed off the land, over the centuries.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

There was a story the other day - in the Telegraph, I believe - about how things have changed for foxes in the UK. They were the emblem of animal lovers, and beneficiaries of the cynical class warfare townie/country ban on hunting.
Everything was going right for them.

And then things took a turn. They started eating babies and biting sleeping people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/out...of-Mr-Fox.html

People in the UK have also been conditioned to fear guns, indeed any weapons, which are used in hunting. As Freud brilliantly observed, "a fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity".

I point you to that incident the other week where the cadets were prohibited from marching with rifles during the Rememberance Day services because it "glamorises weapons".
My God, what happened to my former countrymen?

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

Interesting theory. But people have always hunted in the UK.
Rabbits, hare-coursing, ducks, badgers, pheasants, foxes - what-have-you. I lived in Dorset. Yes, there was the "aristocratic"/well-to-do element, but there was also a lot of "common folk", who were involved and enjoyed hunting. Some just enjoyed raising and training the dogs.

I guess there's poaching. I don't know, Kim. I shall have to think on your theory some more. Food for thought.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

Cost and proximity.

Around where I am there are signs saying no hunting without permission. A friend of mine got his Elk on Monday, I have been promised sausages and steak. Never happened in the UK, very few people have any connection with the land, most farmworkers seem to be migrants.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

That's right. The people have been disenfranchised from their heritage.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

Not sure about that, my Grandfather worked on the land, none of my family have expressed any interest in returning.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

I grew up in the city and moved into the country at age 32. I had no interest in killing animals when I moved up here but neighbors talked me into going hunting with them that first year I was here. Now i'm not going to say there is something spiritual about hunting, but I will say that there is something instinctual about tracking, stalking, killing, butchering and eating animals.. We men have been doin it for literally billions of years. It's in us, and its not going away in just one or two generations. It's like how a woman feels the need to clean a house, or cook, it just feels right to them, it's what they were born to do..

Anyway I took my boys that next year and they loved it, we hunted hard together for 15 years and every year we needed bigger challenges.. The first year we were ecstatic to get a little buck mule deer, or a cow elk with a high powered rifle, but by 2007 we were bow hunting hunting black bear from the ground. You want an even fight, try that. You have to get so close to the bruin, you have to sneak up on him, and then you have to hit him in the kill zone with the first arrow because if you don't somebodies gonna die and it's probably not going to be the bear. Now thats hunting

Another thing about hunting. You can't sit at your office desk 51 weeks a year and expect to have fun hunting. It's work. Walking off trail into the mountains and coming back with a quartered animal on your back is not easy. It's hell if youre not in top condition. So if you're thinking about doing it next year, you better get on the treadmill tonight.

Re: Cultural Differences - Hunting
 

Hello there
I am a devon boy , and was brought up around guns and shooting and now of course i live here in germany , where i have been hunting once or twice for wild boar , in fact piggy is hanging on my living room wall !!
In rural devon i never shot anything i wasnt going to eat , likewise i never fished for anything that i would'nt eat .
And hell yeah i am up for heading off into the woods mountains whatever and humping back with whatever game i might catch .
Not so sure about bear hunting though.......but definately a thrill
john