Well, I hunt waterfowl and I fish and frankly, I do not submit these activities for anyone's approval nor do I care about anyone's active condemnation or criticism of hunting/fishing....particularly from non-vegan, grocery store, meat and fish eaters. Yeah.
Sorry, I know that's opening with an in your face statement, but as far as I can tell none of my hunting and fishing buddies ever self-righteously get in animal rights protection people's faces while the opposite seems to happen to us with some regularity.
Now, with that said...its my personal decision to not kill anything I do not eat. Just don't do it and trophy hunting is not one of my interests at all. E.g., I will hunt puddle ducks, but not divers or sea ducks (which are uneatable IMO).
I enjoy the experience of hunting, I believe that the challenge in water fowl hunting is less the shot than the preparation and decoying/calling in of your birds. This takes understanding the prey, its behavior and life cycle, and its environment, often in quite a bit of detail.
I enjoy having the understanding of where animal food comes from and personally find it hypocritical to eat package meat but be unwilling to confront the reality that an animal was killed to provide it.
I also belong to a number of gun clubs as I'm a avid clay target shooter (well, less avid as I get older...sigh LOL). My home club is an Issac Walton League...if not familiar with this national organization, it is dedicated to conservation and preserving the outdoors for future generations of sportsmen/women.
I do fish, we do keep and eat for table fare appropriate fish while returning fish which are not as appropriate. e.g., fishing in Tampa Bay's mangrove islands you generally catch Snook, Red Drum (red fish), and Mangrove snappers. We keep the Reds and Snappers but release the Snook as they are a very slow reproducing fish that is part of the backbone of the sport fishing industry in that area.
We (I) NEVER poach, exceed bag limits, use illegal shells, keep undersized or illegally obtained game, and we will all walk miles and spend hours in search of a crippled but not killed clean bird (and have done so many times). We don't sky bust, we only shoot birds when in the decoys and within reasonable range. Personally, I'm happy with the ethics that I and my hunting buddies follow.
Oh, for those who empathize with "Bambi", I often wonder how those people's views would change the first time a deer came through the front windshield of the car being driven by their 16 Y.O. child? My last visit to a Volkswagen dealer's body shop, the manager told me that 50% of the cars in his very busy shop were deer strikes. I live in the Washington, DC suburbs (near suburbs). There are no predators, its a very anti-hunting area, and deer are an at infestation levels. I have seen someone hit and cripple a deer and drive on. I got out and put it out of its misery (which wasn't pleasant but was
someone's responsibility and needed to be done). This is what happens when emotions overrule good game management.
@macbill - dem' boys up for the Darwin award, perhaps? Certainly seems like the gene pool would be cleaner without these geniuses.
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