- Joined
- Sep 6, 2001
- Messages
- 657
I found it! I knew it was in my library somewhere. Here are more excerpts from Death in the Long Grass, by world-reknown sportsman & conservationist, former Game Warden, former professional-hunter, Peter Hathaway Capstick (c) 1977 St. Martin's Press.
Exposing the propaganda
"...In these days of mouth-foaming Disneyism, with ten or more hours a week of thinly veiled, antihunting, network wildlife shows drumming into every twelve-year-old mind tha tman is slaughtering everything in sight in the name of horrid bloodsport, it is fashionable to look upon hunters, especially professionals, as depraved, moronic, insensitive buffoons. That the sport hunter is more responsible for wildlife conservation, through habitate preservation and species management (financed through donations, whopping fees, licenses, and stiff excise taxes on his equipment), than any preservationist group is not widely understood...."
Who pays the way
"...If you doubt this, remember that the government brought out a special stamp a few years ago for $5, the proceeds of the sale going directly into wildlife and environmental conservation. The general public, who hoot and sneer at the hunter, didn't buy enough to fill three S&H stamp books, a tiny fraction of the monies generated by the sportsmen who pay the bird watcher's way..."
The cost to the hunter
"...If you are an ardent hunter hater, you're likely to stay that way. If, however, you are simply a nonhunter and don't have too much opinion...let me try to explain the sportsman's thinking....The nonhunter, if asked the purpose of quail hunting would usually reply that it was to kill quail. Actually, it's not. If the object was dead quail for the table....the cheapest, easiest, most practical method of achieving this woulbe be to buy a box of commercially raised...pan-ready birds for $1.75 apiece. This save one the bother of such matters as keeping and training bird dogs, securing licenses, risking snakebite, laying out for guns and shells....that probably cost the hunter an amortized average of at least $15 per bird per season, and possibly as much as $25..."
The Ethics involved
"...Just as a man may indeed slaughter an elephant from a safe distance, he may also hunt a particular one under a code of rules that is part of the same ethic that forbids passing signals to a partner at bridge....With elephants, however, the difference in playing the game honestly may have other consequences...It can get you dead, which is what make elephant hunting among the most moral of all sports when practiced honestly, with relatively equal risk to life of man and elephant..."
The Spirit of hunting
"...the object of sport hunting big, dangerous game under adverse condition is not to get killed any more than the object of a rock climber is to fall to his death. It is rather the deliberate exposure of one's life to real possibility of death purely for the sake of the experience itself. Sneer if you will, but you only will have half-lived your life if you never feel the icy clutch of danger for its own sake."
Defining ourselves as men
"...Any bloody fool can, without encountering the smallest modicum of risk, murder a bull elephant at 200 yards...This is not elephant hunting, but elephant killing. Yet, to walk for a week, thirsty and footsore over hot, dry, thorn-spiked terrain, disappointed a dozen times...frightened witless by the female of the species or seemingly unshootable bulls, and then to finally track down a big tusker in heavy cover for a confrontation at less than fifteen yards--well, that is elephant hunting. This is man against himself, the last and purest of the challenges that made us men, not animals."
Exposing the propaganda
"...In these days of mouth-foaming Disneyism, with ten or more hours a week of thinly veiled, antihunting, network wildlife shows drumming into every twelve-year-old mind tha tman is slaughtering everything in sight in the name of horrid bloodsport, it is fashionable to look upon hunters, especially professionals, as depraved, moronic, insensitive buffoons. That the sport hunter is more responsible for wildlife conservation, through habitate preservation and species management (financed through donations, whopping fees, licenses, and stiff excise taxes on his equipment), than any preservationist group is not widely understood...."
Who pays the way
"...If you doubt this, remember that the government brought out a special stamp a few years ago for $5, the proceeds of the sale going directly into wildlife and environmental conservation. The general public, who hoot and sneer at the hunter, didn't buy enough to fill three S&H stamp books, a tiny fraction of the monies generated by the sportsmen who pay the bird watcher's way..."
The cost to the hunter
"...If you are an ardent hunter hater, you're likely to stay that way. If, however, you are simply a nonhunter and don't have too much opinion...let me try to explain the sportsman's thinking....The nonhunter, if asked the purpose of quail hunting would usually reply that it was to kill quail. Actually, it's not. If the object was dead quail for the table....the cheapest, easiest, most practical method of achieving this woulbe be to buy a box of commercially raised...pan-ready birds for $1.75 apiece. This save one the bother of such matters as keeping and training bird dogs, securing licenses, risking snakebite, laying out for guns and shells....that probably cost the hunter an amortized average of at least $15 per bird per season, and possibly as much as $25..."
The Ethics involved
"...Just as a man may indeed slaughter an elephant from a safe distance, he may also hunt a particular one under a code of rules that is part of the same ethic that forbids passing signals to a partner at bridge....With elephants, however, the difference in playing the game honestly may have other consequences...It can get you dead, which is what make elephant hunting among the most moral of all sports when practiced honestly, with relatively equal risk to life of man and elephant..."
The Spirit of hunting
"...the object of sport hunting big, dangerous game under adverse condition is not to get killed any more than the object of a rock climber is to fall to his death. It is rather the deliberate exposure of one's life to real possibility of death purely for the sake of the experience itself. Sneer if you will, but you only will have half-lived your life if you never feel the icy clutch of danger for its own sake."
Defining ourselves as men
"...Any bloody fool can, without encountering the smallest modicum of risk, murder a bull elephant at 200 yards...This is not elephant hunting, but elephant killing. Yet, to walk for a week, thirsty and footsore over hot, dry, thorn-spiked terrain, disappointed a dozen times...frightened witless by the female of the species or seemingly unshootable bulls, and then to finally track down a big tusker in heavy cover for a confrontation at less than fifteen yards--well, that is elephant hunting. This is man against himself, the last and purest of the challenges that made us men, not animals."
