White trash hunters. Yea those guys that drink beer and drive pickups(not land cruisers) are bad . Gimme a break.
Well, the cruiser we were in was an old, slightly rusty 1974 FJ40, running the stock six, with three sober men in it (driving at a reasonable speed on an unimproved mountain road, with a decently dangerous drop to one side).
The truck flew around the corner at high speed, and almost hit us. They added to the charm by cursing at us and tossing beer cans out as they fishtailed around the blind turn , and smashed into the 3 foot pit and 4 foot berm that the forest service had put there to block off the road. They were riding in a new, very lifted F350, with custom paint, about 9 inches of lift, about 4 grand in rubber and rims, and worth about 40 times more than the $1200 we bought the FJ for decades ago. The music they were blasting could have woken the dead, but also likely insured no elk remained within a mile or more.
We went back to check and make sure no one was dead. It was a yard sale of drunk hunters. Luckily, the hunters who were in the back leaning their rifles over the cab cleared the berm. If it had been taller they would likely have died.
I should add, that their camp was full of custom trucks, and tricked out FJ's and Jeeps (we called it the V8 club because no one ran the stock motor in their off road rigs). One, a friend of the family, managed to fit a 454 in his FJ cruiser. He went through several sets of drive shafts before a custom set he had built by a drag race company held up. His father (our good friend, ran a 400 in his FJ for years).
His father, even with his 400 small block, never screamed around tearing up the country side. He would put around with us. Staying on designated roads where required.
His son would scream past signs that said "no motorized vehicles beyond this point". Tearing through mountain meadows, muddling through streams, and generally making the place much uglier than when he got there. We never could stomach off roading with him. I would call him white trash based on his actions.
The pick up was not what made the "white trash" trashy (no more than I think our old rattle trap FJ made us white trash).
It was the fact that their camp looks like a tornado plowed through a city dump in their area. They get smashed for three days, trash the place. Scream around in their vehicles hooting and hollering. Play loud music till all hours (3 am some times) act belligerent toward anyone they think is getting in their way, or "hunting in their area".
One year, we had been out long enough to hunt for the first few hours of daylight. It was about 9am, when we were passing by the camp. A drunk man in his skivvies and only one sock came stumbling over with rifle in hand. He shouted that a whole herd of elk just trampled their camp. The camp was wreck. Coolers of beer were overturned everywhere. Ice spilled, Lawn chairs broken, and tent pegs torn up and tents collapsed.
As this drunk man is shouting and sweeping us with his rifle (probably loaded, and not on safe), he is drunkly lamenting that no on in camp was even awake to get off a shot. As he is talking with us, men are crawling out of their tents (an a lot of 5th wheel campers I would love to own).
There were at least 20+ in the camp, and everyone was still asleep, hung over, or still drunk.
We once witnessed a near fight (with this same camp) , because some enterprising hunter had the gall to get up hours before dawn......... then actually get out of his vehicle and hike a distance to an area not accessible to 4x4's and shoot a great bull.
He happened to have to drive by this camp on his way back down the mountain with his trophy. The "gentlemen" in this camp had the feeling that the bull "belonged" to them, because one of them had seen it, and emptied his gun at it the opening day.
All of the gear, and the vehicles in that camp were worth way more than any vehicle I have ever owned (to this day).
Their status as "White Trash" had nothing to do with the fact that they were low income (they were not at all, and much better off than we were, judging by what they drove, wore, and slept in (some very nice trailers towed by very nice trucks).
It also has nothing to do with drinking beer. It was a delicious combination of drinking, stupid, dangerous, rude, destructive, and inconsiderate that earned them that title.
If you are drunk, you should not be carrying loaded rifles around the mountain, nor driving. Shooting or hunting while drunk is dangerous and stupid.
I have had a drunk hunter fire a 30-06 in my direction, and had the bullet pass so close to me I felt the smack of the bullet passing in front of my face (it went right between me and my good friend). We hit the deck, and army crawled away. The shooter was part of our group, and I know he was drunk, because through out the day, I watched him get drunk. He started the hunt by downing two cans of malt liquor (High Gravity Malt Liquor labeled "Earthquake" or "Hurricane" or some such, I believe). He happened to be carrying another 4 of them, which he drank as we walked, and tossed the empties.
He thought it was funny that his shot passed between us. Even funnier when we pointed out the freeway a couple hundred yards past us in the direction he shot. That gentleman was white trash ( I have a lot more stories about him.......he was a deplorable human being). He made more money than I did, we worked at the same place. He was eventually fired for ongoing drunken behavior at work. He was not white trash because of his income, but behavior.
By the time he had caught up with us, we were allready packed up and moving along the trail, wearing poker faces (whistles innocently).
