Stop Whining and Enjoy the Hunt

Uncle Ted’s Survival Readiness #2
May 24, 2013
Tuesday Tip: Lures/baits for ling (cobia)
May 27, 2013

A hunting buddy of mine doesn’t bowhunt, he likes his old 30-30 for his backstrap dreams. Another friend prefers his great grandpa’s buckhorn-sighted Kentucky flintlock squirrel rifle for aim small miss small deer during the muzzleloading season.

A bunch of my US Marine Corp sniper brothers live to kill elk at over 1000 yards each fall with their Barrett 50s. They’re something else.

A classic bowyer artisan I know wouldn’t think of drawing a compound bow instead of his handmade yew wood English longbow and hunting with his hand cut natural turkey feather fletched cedar arrows.

A whole bunch of die-hard deer hunters join me each year with their handguns to have pistolero fun and get backstraps and share campfires.

I’ve been hunting deer for more than 60 years, and I’ve seen it all, done it all, enjoyed it all, and shared it all. And it is all good.

Being the omnivorous consumer of the written word on hunting, I try to read every publication that has anything to do with hunting in every imaginable way, shape, form, and methodology.

I often come across letters to the editors in some of these publications by certain weirdo’s that piss and moan about others’ choices of hunting styles and methods, and it never ceases to amaze and confuse me that such doofuses actually exist.

Now I know there are all kinds of humans out there, and clearly the lunatic fringe has expanded to an alarming degree as seen by some of the rotten people that they have elected into government positions, starting with the most corrupt, power-abusing president, vice-president, attorney general, and secretary of state in recorded history, but I have always thought or at least hoped that my hunting brethren were more intelligent, educated, and smarter than those weirdo’s.

But alas, it is not to be.

Of the hundreds and hundreds of hunters I share campfires with each fall for many years, I am very happy to report that I have never encountered such a narrow minded individual. I must be lucky to attract the best of the best, and I am ever thankful for that.

We have surplus game. We need to kill that surplus game to eat each annual season of harvest in order to make room for next spring’s new populations. How in God’s good name could it possibly matter to any thinking person how our fellow hunters go about killing their legal allotment of surplus game?

I don’t get it, and I don’t want to get it. On all reasonable, logical, and intellectual levels, it is not to be gotten.

If it is legal, by all means, have at it and enjoy your hunt. Nobody with a brain and a heart really gives a flying whit what you use or how you go about it, as long as it is legal and you do so safely and ethically. Would you please shut up and kill something already.

Those of us who know better should make it a point in our lives and at our hunting camps to gently yet firmly explain to any such squawker that all that silly nonsensical complaining is really unnecessary and counterproductive, and quite honestly, a royal pain in the ass.

We should all reach out and engage those that find fault with others’ choices to simmer down, think of fellow hunters as part of our special loving hunting family of BloodBrothers, and salute and support everyone’s individual choice.

Friendly encouragement to try different styles and equipment choices can bring increased joy and expanded opportunities to our friends, but if they chose to stick with their preferred hunting choices, so be it. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

I’m actually convinced that the vast majority of such whining letters are written by animal right’s freaks falsely claiming to be hunters just to make us look stupid.

It would be my strong suggestion that the editors of outdoor publications simply stop publishing those hateful, negative voices because they probably aren’t the hunters they claim to be anyway. That’s what I believe.

We should all maximize the good while fixing and upgrading the bad and the ugly for an overall better hunting imagery in the public’s eye. Pettiness and negativity are good for nothing, and eliminating such nonsense can only make our hunting image and world stronger.

Kill your game the way you enjoy it the most and are most proficient at. We can’t grill it till we kill it, and the grill doesn’t care one bit how that shank got to the fire. Hunt more, have fun, and everybody shut up and kill something, please.

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