Hunting is only boring if you worry about the law, nature, your safety, and the welfare of others.
You get to go out in the woods. Hunting is a bit like golf in that there are a lot of boring bits, but then you get to fire a rifle or use a bow and arrow.
Hanging out in the woods is fun.
1: I have the impression it's more or less an excuse to get drunk.
And, unlike in golf, you can get meat to eat too.
4: Same for bowling, Canada, boating, and embroidery.
I've only ever hunted for birds (quail, dove, pheasant, and whatever was nearby). You get a great deal more shooting in than when hunting for deer or something. Plus, dove season was early in the year so you didn't need to worry about a deer hunter with cataracts.
I've never had any interest in hunting, not so much because it's boring as because of the whole killing-stuff thing. (Boring I can handle.) I have, however, come to learn a lot about hunting in the past few weeks. It's very complicated!
(Boring I can handle.)
We all know you've been to graduate school.
Last week, somebody killed a bear in Allegheny County (population 1.2 million or so). That's a bit alarming.
This isn't directly on target, but I found out my about-to-be-newly-minted-cop-little-brother was concealed carrying during thanksgiving dinner.
Did somebody frisk him or did he mention it later?
11: Assuming the turkey was already dead, that seems like overkill.
We all know you've been to graduate school.
Graduate school for planning, no less.
At one point when I was applying to schools my mom was talking to some friend of a friend who is an architect. My mom mentioned that I was applying to planning school and the friend said "Oh dear, does he know how boring it is?" My mom assured her that I did.
If the turkey was dead and still moving, that's when you really need the gun.
12: We were discussing guns today and he mentioned it then and said he had been carrying the other time I saw him recently too.
15: Or when my uncle cheats at cards.
I honestly can't see any practical value in owning a firearm, given my current situaton. Maybe on a farm. But knowing someone who gets the NRA newsletters is funny. You get to hear some crackpot bullshit: "Obama's gonna limit the amount of ammo you can have!!!one1!!"
Last week, somebody killed a bear in Allegheny County (population 1.2 million or so). That's a bit alarming.
At the Thanksgiving dinner I attended, which consisted mainly of cross-country skiing enthusiasts, much of the conversation involved a couple of bears that have apparently been hanging around the local ski trails. This was a matter of considerable concern.
Stanley will have to rent a gun if he goes skiing in Alaska.
Thundersnow went on a foxhunt yesterday. Apparently, they pretty much ignore the part about slaughtering the fox at this point, which is, I guess, nice. Foxes need to live, too.
The paperwork is probably easier than the form for renting skis.
One suggestion was to have the biathlon team take the lead at ski team practice.
My uncles go hunting; my dad used to go with them, but I don't think he's done much hunting for decades. They go for a few days up in the mountains and usually get an elk. Now that I think about it, it sounds kind of enjoyable, but I've never been invited, and living on the East Coast I don't spend much time with people who hunt. I'd rather just go hiking and camping for a few days, but I imagine that going hunting with people who are knowledgeable could be enjoyable. Lots of new skills to learn, plus maybe you get some meat.
Apparently, they pretty much ignore the part about slaughtering the fox at this point, which is, I guess, nice.
I guess, but in that case it starts to become unclear in what sense it is still a foxhunt.
22: You're agreeing you won't sue them if you die, that's all.
26: If you chase it, you're still hunting it.
I think the point is that it's fun to ride horses chasing after something. If you're into riding horses that is.
26: I gather it's fun to let the dogs lead you on a chase through a given "quarry", their term for the area they're in on a given day. You and the horse get to jump fallen logs and fences and such. Then there's a picnic with whiskey cider and champagne and cheese and fruit.
If you ride fast enough, all your commas fall off the horse.
31: Is there still an actual fox involved?
People hunt foxes in the U.S.?
No. They pretend to hunt foxes in order to ride horses and hang out in the wood and socialize. With dogs.
33: The Hound Master or whatever he's called saw a couple foxes on Friday but couldn't get the dogs to pick up the scent. Purportedly, the hot weather (72° the day after Thanksgiving) affected their ability to smell foxes. I'm not really sure I understand why.
They'll be hibernating soon.
I know a lot of people who hunt, men and women. Best story of the year: a guy saw a bull elk maybe 60 yards from the road, and his girlfriend was really excited for him to shoot it. Looking in binocs, though he became convinced that it's horns were not big enough. The elk turned to watch them walking around the truck to get a better look. As they were talking about why this was an illegal animal, a game warden stepped out of the brush: it's stuffed, and neck is radio controlled, and a couple guys had already shot it and gotten cited that day.
Get some bacon and you could probably make the horses run into the WalMart parking lot.
Is it like the hipsters who play croquet in Prospect Park, wearing plus-fours and similar outfits? Or like reënactment of wars stuff? Or maybe an actually existing vestige of landed gentry?
So, what are the dogs chasing?
Their dreams. The highest aspiration of most hounds is to eat food and smell things.
Bears, obvs, not foxes. I've never seen as many foxes as in the Pribilofs. No natural enemies, I suppose.
They'll be hibernating soon.
The bears? One of the main causes for concern is apparently that it's not clear why they aren't hibernating yet when by all indications they should be.
38 to 36.
37.2: I'd heard of using a stuffed deer to get people spotlighting, but never knew they graduated to motorized fakes.
Or maybe an actually existing vestige of landed gentry?
Oh, this, totally. It's all very formal. Very much like this (rather long) video.
6: I had an uncle (in Canada) who used to spend a lot of time up at the deer camp. We (my snarky sisters and I) used to refer to him as The Beer Hunter.
I used to be anti-hunting (as in, vehemently anti-, and openly scornful): I took the practice to be an affront to the principles of feminism, vegetarianism, non-yahooism, and etc. I've since mellowed out, to the point where hunting doesn't bother me at all, though I'm still profoundly irked by gun-nuttery and political yahoo-ism.
Is it like the hipsters who play croquet in Prospect Park, wearing plus-fours and similar outfits?
Ah, let's not say anything about tweed enthusiasts that we can't take back.
I took the practice to be an affront to the principles of feminism....
It wasn't sexism; "Big Doe Hunter" just didn't look as good on a video game console.
Plus, dove season was early in the year so you didn't need to worry about a deer hunter with cataracts.
Does this mean you are just allowed to shoot the pigeons in the parking lot?
45: The people who don't need to hide problem drinking have fishing cabins in Minnesota. Those who do, Canada. (It probably works different for actual Canadians.)
I was going to say that as long as there are hot, pale English boys rustling the hounds, it can't be all bad, but the bit where the hounds all tear into the fox was kinda unnecessary.
I was going to say that as long as there are hot, pale English boys rustling the hounds, it can't be all bad, but the bit where the hounds all tear into the fox was kinda unnecessary.
Thundersnow was certainly put-out by the actual fox killing. That's not the point. The point is an excuse to ride horses.
I just wanted to speak up for those who find pale, skinny guys desirable; otherwise some of us would have much more trouble getting laid.
If this post is really about Thudersnow, the title is troubling.
57: I do my best to protect the blog from my unremitting love for Thundersnow (whom I met through OKCupid; did I ever tell the blog that? I think not), because sappy is boring. This post is about food.
I just wanted to speak up for those who find pale, skinny guys desirable; otherwise some of us. would have much more trouble getting laid.
Right on.
Count on a hurse?
If only you could. These days you have to drive yourself to the cemetery.
(It probably works different for actual Canadians.)
My 10-year old son (an American who spends about a month of the year in Canada, where he has grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, first cousins once removed, second cousins, and etc.) has already noticed the difference. He recently told me that "drinking beer is part of your culture." Er, what?! "Well, you know, how they all drink beer up there, and make jokes and stuff."
62: That reminds me that a British DJ I met last night told me the English equivalent of Americans' beloved "I'm just sayin'" is the Londoners' "At the end of the day".
whom I met through OKCupid; did I ever tell the blog that? I think not
Excellent. That's how Smearcase and I met.
Huh. Maybe I should give OkCupid another shot.
65: I think I sold my parents on the concept. Not that they're dating, but just as a thing people do.
You answer questions about stuff you do, and then compare. It's the internet being awesome again.
- What do you do?
- Drunk Canadians.
- Me too!
- Um.
Eh, not particularly, but it's not a big deal. I mostly just don't like answering questions about myself.
You've got a great story you can tell about yourself. You should tell it.
I don't mind telling it, under the right circumstances. When people ask me questions, though, they usually don't come anywhere close to the parts I would prefer to tell.
Well, I'm going to sleep. Night, teo.
So anyway, I guess I win this thread.
Not so fast! What parts would you prefer to tell?
Josh, hint: it starts with teo wearing a ranger hat.
...and then? is concealed carry involved?
Only a coat and a ranger hat? Hmm, smoking!
I hear he's also tall, thin and pale. I'm eager to learn more.
Wait, Bave and Smearcase are a couple? That's fantastic, and I totally missed it.
Now we need to see teo in a Mountie outfit.
An official real-animal-mascot, a black bear cub named Smokey, was saved from a forest fire in 1950, but of course is not associated with a hat.
The American people can't be trusted to see a real bear in a hat?
Yogi Bear wears a hat. And a tie.
As does the cartoon Smokey (well, no tie. He doesn't work in an office). And yet real bears are denied head-covering's sweet succor.
31: I gather it's fun to let the dogs lead you on a chase through a given "quarry", their term for the area they're in on a given day
Unless the term has morphed into something completely unrecognizable in Virginia fox-hunting circles (and I don't think it has), the "quarry" is still the thing you are after. Now if there is no actual quarry maybe they are using it metaphorically--after all life itself is surely everyone's quarry--but I suspect you simply heard wrong on that one.
There is fox-hunting in Westmoreland County east of Pittsburgh in and around Rolling Rock Farm which was owned by the Mellons. Quarry aside, it is actually a somewhat demanding and dangerous sport what with big horses crashing through the woods and over fences and ditches and the like; I do know one person who sustained a nasty multiple leg fracture during one. They were trespassing and suddenly these rich people on hoorse rode them down whooping and hollering the whole time.
And yet real bears are denied head-covering's sweet succor.
It's better to seek succor than quarry. Our Lady of Prompt Succor. Also yet another Love and Death quote opportunity:
- We have had a long... a hot journey.
- A hot journey.
- Our throats are parched.
- They're parched.
- We seek succour. Succour.
- Succour!
- Yes. Is Succour here by any chance?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq6wYSo9uPM
Sometimes a bear with a hat suggests succour.
102: A simpler, more innocent time.
Bear in a hat. (artists's conceptions)
It is customary for the citizens of New Orleans to pray before the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, asking for her intercession whenever a hurricane threatens the cityHeckuva job, Mary!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSHo3j72fIo&
Ad people really do catch a Zeitgeist sometimes, even if the grown-ups shrink from what is revealed.
Around here coon hunting replaces fox hunting. Can't remember if they use horses, but definitely there are hounds. Not enough foxes, I think. In Europe hunting is an upper-class relic of the time when aristocratic brutes ruled the world, but coon hunters tend to be fairly prosperous farmers with rough manners, sort of like the more brutish gentry in Jane Austen.
That kind of hunting is sociable outdoor exercise involving considerable skill by the leaders of the mob. Other hunting and fishing is quiet time getting away from it all and involves a lot of waiting and, if desired, drinking. Some kinds of hunting require remarkable woodsman skills and are a sort of mythic and veldtish escape from the actual bureaucratic commercial world.
and are a sort of mythic and veldtish escape from the actual bureaucratic commercial world.
Around here coon hunting replaces fox hunting.
John, word choice.
As deer season starts tomorrow, and my students are psyched for it, my impression is that hunting is like fishing or golf in the sense that it can be a pleasant way to spend a lot of time outside with other guys, getting away from it all. It can also be an excuse to drink a lot. Hunting has the additional benefit of letting you shoot a gun at random intervals. Hanging out in the woods with your friends, drinking and messing around with guns sounds like pretty much the most fun thing ever if you are a young boy and then the custom gets Ingrained. My students sure are fond of it.
These are actual coons, not metaphorical coons. In the same way, citizens of Mexico are Mexicans, not Latinos or Hispanics. There's an actual town called Coon Rapids that Doonesbury made a big deal about a few years ago. Michelle Bachman may represent Coon Rapids in Congress.
The most successful way of deer hunting, as I understand, involves sitting and waiting in a little shed on stilts located in an area where deer pass through. Not tromping through the brush.
Michele indeed does represent Coon Rapids, or part of it.
You have to admire the sangfroid of this Minnesotan hunter. Probably the bear wanted his hat.
111b: I guess the hunter in 113 was sitting on something like this.
Miranda has it right in 110 even without the drinking. It's also a way to wake up in the dark, climb a tree, and watch while the forest and assorted critters emerge from the fog. In the right mood it's magical and killing a deer isn't a necessary condition.
Bears are relatively uncommon here in Wobegon, so this guy took his chance when he had it:
A high proportion of fishermen these days are catch-and-release now, with barbless hooks. It's still a rather cruel support, but it no longer involves killing.
Nobody liked my shoot and release deer hunting idea. Prior to release, I was going to give each deer some morphine, six bandages, and antibiotic-soaked corn.
111.2: In PA, they sit in tree stands to hunt. Back in Nebraska I never heard of that except in the very eastern part or from archers. I've never hunted deer myself, but on the plains where trees are mostly found in thin belts, I think they often actively flush the deer from a shelter belt.
93: Agreed about fantastic, though it appears I could have met him much earlier had I gone to more foxhunts. This may be based on a misreading of the thread, however.
He can't even bait a hook
He can't even skin a buck
116 is a very vivid illustration of the concept "people who think differently."
116: Ah, you know black bears are generally much less aggressive towards people, so it would probably only be dangerous if the bear had cubs or if the guy had put it in what it viewed as a perilous situation with no escape route, something like that.
Can't remember if they use horses, but definitely there are hounds.
AKA coon dogs. I've never known anyone to hunt raccoons with horses.
Having a good deer stand on your property is quite a commodity. Many people curry favor with my uncle on account of his fantastically located stand.
116. Clearly trying out for the Darwin awards.
I thought you hunted raccoons with a spotlight and a rifle.
I've bagged a raccoon with a Kia Forte.
Three don't fit if you want to strap them in properly.
Darwin is now 60+ years old and has been doing this kind of thing for decades. He's reputed to have stolen a police car and hidden it for two weeks once. Plausible deniability. He used to compete to be the last one to drive his car across the lake in the spring. He seems to plan his things pretty carefully.
Think of Darwin and the bear as an avant-garde rural happening. Black bears normally flee unless you get within their attack distance, which Darwin ascertained to be about ten feet.
Though I've heard of several cases of black bears attacking humans. It isn't an absolute rule, they're just much less dangerous than brown and grizzly bears.
Black bears normally flee unless you get within their attack distance, which Darwin ascertained to be about ten feet.
Per 123, rules may be different when you literally have one up a tree.
133: Perhaps he fine tuning the general rule. Experiment is necessary if science is to progress.
115: It's also a way to wake up in the dark, climb a tree, and watch while the forest and assorted critters emerge from the fog. In the right mood it's magical and killing a deer isn't a necessary condition.
Some of the best hunting writing I've encountered frames the experience in this way, and can be deeply affecting, though frankly the killing part -- or at least the tracking and mindful attention and eventual shot-taking, the overcoming, if you will -- seems still to be requisite. People who write about it this way generally aren't drinking along with.
Maybe there are (at least) two kinds of hunters: those who tend to yahoo-ism and those who take it really, really seriously, don't fuck around, and tend to find it more a religious experience. Naturalists and conservationists, who, say, observe bird behavior at dawn and practice stillness and so on, speak of the experience the same way, though. It's the only part of it I understand, not needing to hunt my own meat myself as a matter of survival (which is a whole 'nother ballgame in its turn).
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Vanished down the 'hoo-hole: Any trace of that klezmer band from 10 or 12 years ago that had the "Don't You Shop At Wal-Mart!" song and the "Buns of Steel" song. Does anyone remember them? Can't find hide nor hair of them on the interwebs.
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Can't help with that, Natilo. Meanwhile, McMegan on a tear.
I have a $9,000 gravy boat. I blame society.
Your fellow countrymen couldn't resist the $9000 gravy boat either, Moby. What should we conclude?
Hunters out by my mothers' place have so far been aggressive drunk rulebreakers in really expensive trucks who actually threaten her on her own land; or quiet polite guys on foot & up early who are intent on how much food they can put up. The latter are still hunting illegally and risky to be around, but certainly less infuriating.
_Woman the Hunter_ is pretty convincing about the sublime ecstasy of hunting to kill. Haven't heard the same from the actual hunters, but the quiet ones wouldn't say and from the loud ones I wouldn't care.
Meanwhile, McMegan on a tear.
She really has distilled that particular ... genre? style? tone? -- down to its essence, hasn't she?
I can't bear to read her. She infuriates me wildly out of proportion to how infuriating what she's saying actually is. I end up feeling annoyed at myself more than anything else.
142: Are they from a distant area? Usually locals are not assholes simply because of repeated interactions.
142.last: Yeah, the good writings I referred to in 135 are things written not for public consumption by an old friend: he's quiet about it.
135, 145: What is happiness? The feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.
143: She infuriates me wildly out of proportion to how infuriating what she's saying actually is.
Are you sure what she's saying isn't also wildly infuriating? I catch myself doing this as well: I must be overreacting, surely it is not that bad ... but I think it really may be that objectionable.
Sorry in any case for having linked to it. I just thought we should know, I guess, that if anything she's ratcheting up her game.
144: The jerks in trucks? Not as local as the guys on foot, but probably the same quarter of the county. The collapsing resource economy doesn't lend itself to long-term planning. We hope the small-farm economy is going to be stronger tha" retirement -exurb.
Are you sure what she's saying isn't also wildly infuriating? I catch myself doing this as well: I must be overreacting, surely it is not that bad ... but I think it really may be that objectionable.
One speculates that her usual tone, admonitory yet cringing, irritates.
I don't think I've ever seen _Luxury Fever_ addressed directly. IIRC, it only attacks consumption of positional goods; Mcmuddle's food tool might be completely irrelevant.
148: I'm twenty years out of touch by now, but back home people were afraid of irking the land owners as the law is on their side, they were quite likely to know each other, and wouldn't hesitate to bar people they didn't like.
148: the jerks kill does from the road on posted land and threaten the landowner. Really short-term thinkers, or connected somehow. Takes some careful phoning around to choose the appropriate strategy.
Doodz, I've got some heady nugs right now.
149: Her defensiveness? Yes, there is that. I'd begun to write earlier that she reminds me increasingly of William Kristol, smarmy, juvenile, and glib.
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James Joyner's wife died in her sleep for no discernable reason last night. She was 41 and they have two very young children.
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143/147/149/154: The P.J. O'Rourke of the new millennium?
156: are you kidding? Way too insulting to PJ O'Rourke. He could actually be kind of funny, plus he made no pretense to being anything but a red-meat conservative. But a key source of Megan's infinite capacity to irritate is her tone of 'thoughtful' impartial expertise. I was going to say pretense but I think she believes it herself.
What grates me about McArdle is the same thing that grates me about Friedman, Brooks, et al. There's a finite amount of megaphones in the world, and you gave one to her? You really couldn't find anyone better?
What grates me about McArdle is that I have to do her grating.
152: Three crimes at once. That's pretty good.
Yeah. Mom now tries to meet them only when driving the backhoe.
120: Well, perhaps you could have met him earlier, but then you'd have some ridiculous meet-cute about falling off your horse into his arms (or something), instead of being like the rest of us and saying, "We met online."
People hunt foxes in the U.S.?
Yes. Even in MA. On the North Shore (I think it's in Manchester), there's an exclusive club called the Myopia Hunt Club. They actually follow a fox scent rather than an actual fox. They also have a Polo field.
Some of the founders came from another club founded by nearsighted people. Thus the name.
I had a meet cute once. I dated someone with the same first name as me, and how we met was we were interning at the same arts organization in the middle of nowhere and someone asked, "[Actual first name], do you have access to email?" and he looked up and said "yes!" and I simultaneously looked up and said "no!' and we both laughed and then he ruined eight years of my life. So probably one meet cute was, like an egg for French chefs, enough.
163: I definitely would not want to be anywhere near someplace called the "Myopia Hunt Club" during hunting season.
Well, for fox hunting, there aren't any guns and presumably the horses can see okay. So it shouldn't be a safety issue. The Myopia Shooting Club would scare me.
The Myopia Shooting Club would scare me.
The shooting bench structures -- posts, roofs, etc. -- at the range near my friend's home in Texas are terrifyingly Swiss-cheesed with the stigmata of accidental discharges.
166: Well there is the "ridden down" scenario such as 99.last.
The Presbyopic Parkinson Patient Tattoo Parlor would be another thing to raise alarms.
167: There's a park in a valley near us with a nice little trail along a stream. Way up the hill was a skeet range and you could often hear them booming away. One time we were on the trail beyond the end of the park proper and noticed that there seemed to be an intermittent gentle pitter-patter of rain on the leaves. It took us longer than it should have to realize that the wind that day was carrying the spent shot our way.
170: A local sheriff mentioned to the Flip-Pater that a particular dingle outside of town was popular with local shooters, "who are usually drunk when they get there and drunker when they leave."
The shooters in this case are at The Field Club, one of the posher clubs in the area.
137: Meanwhile, McMegan on a tear some reactionary moron wrote some nonsense on the internet.
135: "...mindful attention ..."
That's the part that does it for me. Venison is tasty but seeing a large flock of wild turkeys pass by very close to me 'cause I'd managed to be still enough and quiet enough was something much better.
Sometimes one is just cold, cramped, and bored; magic doesn't arrive on a schedule. When it does, though, it's something one never forgets.
The killing is the least part of it IMX. I don't have any problem doing it, a modern rifle and ammo makes that absurdly easy for the shooter and I would bet the deer suffers less than any cow being herded into a slaughterhouse. It's just that I don't need the venison to feed my family thus getting to pull the trigger isn't what makes a hunt a success.
Once I went quail hunting with a man who knew how to work with bird dogs. That was a thing to see, harmony of man and some of the animals. Also, he used a 28 gauge and never missed.
It's about alameida-hour, and this is a likely alameida-subject... no tales? En route, perhaps?
A painting at the VMFA has a quote from a painter who said "I discovered many a man who will pay be fifty guinees for painting a horse, who thinks ten guinees too much for painting his wife."
177: Generally more surface area to cover.
