If America’s increasingly aging sportsmen don’t make more of an effort to recruit members of the younger generation, in the years to come, hunters and anglers will become a smaller minority increasingly outnumbered and out-voted by anti-field sports advocates and gun control supporters. Britain’s ban on hunting with hounds is a sample of what we can look forward to here.
Sales of Vermont hunting and fishing licenses have dropped more than 20 percent over the last 20 years, leaving the Fish and Wildlife Department pleading with lawmakers for extra funding.
Other states report similar drop-offs:
—Arkansas hunting license sales dropped from about 345,000 in 1999 to about 319,000 in 2003.
—Pennsylvania sold about 946,000 hunting licenses in 2006, down from just over a million in 1999, and a peak of 1.3 million in 1981.
—Oregon had 100,000 fewer licensed anglers last year than in 1987, and 70,000 fewer licensed hunters.
—West Virginia sold 154,763 resident hunting permits in 2006, a 17 percent decrease from 1997.
The nature of the problem can be seen in the ignorance, bigoted animosity toward field sports, and implicitly Disneyfied perspective of Drew Curtis’s 3/29 link to the story on Fark.com:
Interest in hunting and fishing dropping among Americans, who are finding other things to do than inflict pain and death on nature’s beautiful, innocent creatures.
The news had begun to circulate yesterday that George Maurer, proprietor of Sweetwater Bamboo Flyrods, had died suddenly of a heart attack.
Maurer had been the most renowned rod maker to work in Pennsylvania since the 19th century era of John Krieder and Samuel Phillippe. He built parabolic rods inspired by the tapers of Paul Young, and standard tapers based on the works of Jim Payne and Goodwin Granger.
Maurer was a friend of the angling writers Harry Middleton and John Gierach and built rods named after some of their books. I’ve never owned one myself, but I’ve often heard the model he called the “Old Philosopher,” a 7′ 5″ for 5 wt., singled out for exceptional praise.
Maurer’s shop in recent years was located at a wide place in the road along the rural highway paralleling the Big Pine Creek in North Central Pennsylvania, where cities are far away, and newspapers are few. It will be a while before a full obituary appears.
The wife and I attended today the Old Dominion Hounds’ Joint Meet with the Casanova Hunt (to which numerous other Northern Virginia Hunts –including our own Blue Ridge Hunt– were invited).
The joint meet was a fund raiser undertaken to support efforts to oppose Dominion Power’s plan to build 16-story 500-kv electrical transmission towers through scenic and historic Frederick, Warren, Rappahannock, Culpeper, Fauquier, Prince William and Loudoun counties.
And for what? To bring more electrical power to the District of Columbia to illuminate federal offices whose functionaries are busily employed drafting new regulations and spending more tax dollars.
If the evil federal government wants more power, let ’em build nuclear power plants in the District, or do without and borrow some cardigan sweaters from Jimmy Carter.
Not in my backyard, and not in my neighboring fox hunt’s backyard, say I.
We did not get our fair share of abuse, actually. But we did see some fine riding and some lovely scenery. The Blue Ridge really is blue down there in Fauquier County. And the natives are as charming and hospitable as in the rest of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The event was near the village of Bokonbayevo, some 186 miles east of the capital Bishkek, August 24, 2007. More then 20 hunters with dogs and eagles took part. The slideshow illustrates exhibitions of hunting with Taigans and Golden Eagles using domesticated wolves as the quarry. The Salburun (hunting) festival has been held annually since 1997.
The Wall Street Journal observes a classic case of government policy-making in action. Based on rumors of someone starting a business in Texas which would allow hunters to shoot game remotely over the Internet, advocacy organizations and government have leapt into action.
The Humane Society of the United States last year mailed more than 50,000 people an urgent message, underlined and in bold type: “Such horrific cruelty must stop and stop now!”
The cruelty in question was Internet hunting, which the animal-rights group described as the “sick and depraved” sport of shooting live game with a gun controlled remotely over the Web. Responding to the Humane Society’s call, 33 states have outlawed Internet hunting since 2005, and a bill to ban it nationally has been introduced in Congress.
Read the Humane Society’s letter, plus see the society’s Internet hunting page on its Web site.But nobody actually hunts animals over the Internet. Although the concept — first broached publicly by a Texas entrepreneur in 2004 — is technically feasible, it hasn’t caught on. How so many states have nonetheless come to ban the practice is a testament to public alarm over Internet threats and the gilded life of legislation that nobody opposes.
With no Internet hunters to defend the sport, the Humane Society’s lobbying campaign has been hugely successful — a welcome change for an organization that has struggled to curtail actual boots-on-the-ground hunting. Michael Markarian, who has led the group’s effort, calls it “one of the fastest paces of reform for any animal issue that we can remember seeing.”
Vicki L. Walker, a state senator in Oregon, says she wasn’t aware of Internet hunting until a representative from the society told her about it and asked her to sponsor a ban. “It offended my sensibilities,” she says. The bill passed unanimously this year.
Melanie George Marshall, a Delaware state representative who sponsored an Internet-hunting ban that passed in June, considers her legislation a matter of homeland security. “I don’t want to give ideas to people,” she says, “but these kinds of operations would have the potential to make terrorism easier.”
Even the National Rifle Association endorses the ban. “It’s pretty easy to outlaw something that doesn’t exist,” says Rod Harder, a lobbyist for the NRA in Oregon who supported an Internet-hunting ban that took effect in June. “We were happy to do it.”
John C. Astle, a Maryland state senator, angered animal-rights groups in 2004 when he successfully pushed to allow hunting black bears in the state. Safari Club International, a hunting group, named him the nation’s State Legislator of the Year in 2005. But last year, working with the Humane Society, he sponsored an Internet-hunting ban that sailed through the legislature.
“If you’re a dedicated hunter, you believe in the concept of fair chase,” says Mr. Astle, who once shot a 13-foot crocodile in Africa’s Zambezi river. Internet hunting, he says, “flies in the face of fair chase.”
Still, Mr. Astle worried that the bill’s wording “might extend the ban to legitimate types of hunting, as I’m sure those animal-huggers would like to do.”
Internet hunting was first put forth as an idea in November 2004, when John Lockwood, an insurance estimator for an auto-body shop in San Antonio, launched live-shot.com. For $150 an hour and a monthly fee, users could peer through the lens of a Webcam and aim a .30-caliber rifle at animals on a hunting farm in central Texas. Mr. Lockwood said he wanted to help the disabled experience the thrill of hunting.
Pulling the trigger was a matter of clicking the mouse — rather, it would have been, had a public outcry and concern from state regulators not forced Mr. Lockwood to abandon his plans. At the time, just one person, a friend of Mr. Lockwood’s, had tested the service. He killed a wild hog.
“I thought that would be the end of it,” recalls Mr. Lockwood, whose site now features ads for hunting gear, cars and life insurance.
Hardly. The Humane Society, calling Internet hunting a “sickening reality,” urged state legislatures to outlaw the practice. Virginia became the first to do so in 2005, and others followed in quick succession. California also banned Internet fishing. Nobody is doing that, either. An Illinois bill outlawing Internet hunting is awaiting the governor’s signature. That will bring the total to 34 states. In three of them, regulators imposed the bans.
Ms. Marshall, the Delaware state representative, realizes that nobody is actually killing animals on the Internet, but thinks now is the time to act. “What if someone started one of these sites in the six months that we’re not in session?” says Ms. Marshall. “We were able to proactively legislate for society.”
That sentiment bothers a fellow representative, Gerald W. Hocker. Of 3,563 state legislators nationwide who have voted on Internet-hunting bans, Mr. Hocker is one of only 38 to oppose them. He co-sponsored an earlier version of Rep. Marshall’s bill in 2005 but took his name off it after doing some research.
“Internet hunting would be wrong,” he says. “But there’s a lot that would be wrong, if it were happening.”
Nevertheless, the Humane Society depicts Internet hunting as an imminent threat. “Sick ideas have a habit of spreading,” the group told members last year in a letter requesting donations “to fight this madness.”
Mr. Markarian, president of the Humane Society’s lobbying arm, concedes that Internet hunting is “certainly not the biggest problem currently facing animals.” But, he adds, “It wouldn’t take much for someone to start an Internet-hunting site offshore or in one of the states that hasn’t banned it.”
I can recall, in a similar vein, San Francisco rushing to ban Segway scooters before they were even widely available.
Reintroduced via batches of chicks imported from Russia, the largest Eurasian game bird the Great Bustard, Otis tarda, is being reported to have nested in Britain for the first time, as the London Times puts it, “since Queen Victoria was a child (1832).”
A female bustard has laid two eggs somewhere on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The precise location is not being publicly released in order to foil the hordes of mad-keen British ornithologists (bird watchers) and the now nearly as endangered as the bustards themselves oologists (collectors of birds’ eggs).
The primary wing feathers of the great Bustard play an important role in the dressing of traditional featherwing Salmon Flies, being featured as ingredients in the wing of many of the most famous patterns.
Jock Scott
The large patterned black-and-orange mottled strip of feather, third from the top in the wing, beneath the Golden Pheasant crest feather and brown mallard, is from the great Bustard.
Richard Newton, Jr., Major W. Austin Wadsworth, MFH, Riding Devilkin, 1915
John J. Head writes, in the Summer 2007 edition of the Social Register, an appreciation of the painting used to illustrate an article noticing the centenary of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of North America.
Often called the ‘Dean of American Foxhunting,’ Major William Austin Wadsworth –heir to a large land-holding in the Genessee Valley of western New York State and an 1870 graduate of Harvard with a degree in chemistry who pursued post-graduate work at the University of Berlin– was deemed by his peers, in 1907, to be suitable presidential material for the newly formed Masters of Foxhounds Association of America.
The American artist Richard Newtown, Jr. captured on canvas the qualities that so appealed to Wadsworth’s fellow masters, insofar as any painting can embody traits of character and breeding, in his 1915 oil portrait. … Amidst soft autumnal colors, under a steel-gray sky, we observe this keen judge of dogs and horses as he surveys the pack of foxhounds he has carefully and scientifically bred to hunt his ancestral territory of 60,000 acres in Geneseo, NY. Members of the Genesee Valley Hunt, which was founded on the centennial of the Revolution, wear unique attire. In a display of pastriotism, traditional scarlet coats are eschewed in favor of dark blue melton coats, buff collars and buff breeches, the colors worn by the Continental Army.
I didn’t report on the giant pig story, because I didn’t believe it when I first encountered it. This one looks like it could well be authentic.
Bud Bolen of Jacksonville, Florida says he received the above photo from a friend (presumably the lady herself), and posted it on Archery Talk.
Bolen identifies the bow used to slay the elephant as a PSE X-Force.
He quotes her saying:
I was pulling 85 [38.64 kg.] on the bow before I left. When I got over there, I lowered it to 83 [37.73 kg.]. It was getting 103 ft lbs of kinetic energy at 83. The bow was awesome. I think it fit me well.
I had been hunting hard for 8 days before I got a chance to draw back. I had to hold the bow for a minute before I could take a shot. I shot the elephant at 12 yards with one arrow. It was shot near dark. We went back the next day and found him. I was in the middle of 37 elephants when I took my shot. This was my first bow kill and first woman to take an elie with a bow. The safari will be on Versus at the end of Sep or beginning of Oct. It is suppose to be the premiere show of the season. I will let you know the date when I find out.
The Outfitter was Tshabezi Safaris – Dudley Rogers. If anyone would like to book a safari with him, I can set it up.
The main camp was in Gokwe north.
As for the equipment, PSE set up the bow including stabalizer (sic), rest and site. I used a Little Goose release. The broadheads were also set up by PSE. They [the arrow shafts] were Black Mombas [sic] 550 grains. The broadheads were German Kinetics at 180 grains. The total grains equaled 730.
Mike Christianson was my bow mentor. Dr. Hugo Gibson was my chiropractor. I had to have him along because the heavy bow was pulling and pushing my shoulders out.
I trained for 14 months to be able to pull the big bows.
A British artist has eaten chunks of a Corgi dog, the breed favored by Queen Elizabeth II, live on radio to protest against the royal family’s treatment of animals.
Mark McGowan, 37, said he ate “about three bites” of the dog meat, cooked with apples, onions and seasoning, to highlight what he called Prince Philip’s mistreatment of a fox during a hunt by the Queen’s husband in January.
“It was pretty disgusting,” McGowan said of the meal, which he ate while appearing on a London radio station on Tuesday. Yoko Ono, another guest on the show, also tried the meat. …
Corgis are the favored dogs of the queen, who has owned more than 30 of them during her reign.
McGowan’s Corgi had evidently died of natural causes. One likes to hope of some particularly loathesome and communicable disease able to survive cooking.
Let’s hope that Prince Phillip will soon hunt another bold fox, and that the nincompoop McGowan will consequently get to consume some more dead dog.
