Sport hunters suck and peoples behavior towards killing or using animals for sport, entertainment, medical research, fur etc makes me sick . If you need something challenging in your life, do something where no animal will be harmed. Take on big wave surfing, hiking, saving animals etc. Stop killing animals who pose no threat to you or the planet.
I respect your thoughts on this truly, but here's the problem.
Being from here I can say that the local hunting/fishing culture around here is one of the most respectful I've ever encountered in terms of harvesting wildlife as a resource. Yea there are a lot of rich trophy hunters who want a few "choice" cuts and the proof to say they brought down something exotic in their lives, but thankfully that's a minority. I will say that one of the biggest dangers we face up here is illegal marijuana cultivation on both public, private, and tribal lands. These guys are not just poachers, they leave car batteries in creeks, rat poision on the forrest floor, and a multitude of other extremely ecogoclogical disastrous camps. Not to mention cartel camps are usually armed and shoot at what they deem as "trespassers".
I suggest some thoughts on the meat not being wasted and instead being sent to foodbanks via hunters and game control dept
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/12/09/368757401/venison-chili-complements-of-national-park-service-deer-thinning
It may be one of the best alternatives we have to the industrialized agriculture we have here in CA which largely caused our drought in the first place.
I enjoy all those other things you stated, but it'd be hard for me to say that the surfboard making process is anything but destructive to the environment. If you knew, you might not want to support it as much.
Hiking's great too, but the same disruption to wildlife and native plants has become almost hallmark in our failure to carry the legacy of Muir into the future.
Saving animals is your personal perogative, I've saved quite a few injured animals in my time at least long enough to get to rehab center, but I've also put more animals to death than I can count. As a hunter, fisher and a chef. People need to eat, and government subsidized soy and corn isn't going to be in my diet.
I used to date a neuroscientist, whom used a mouse model to study naturally occuring developmental defects. Those scientists care for those animals like nothing I've ever seen, their funding and success in academia depends on it. You can disagree all you want, but without those studies over the last few thousand years, we wouldn't be here.
I think countless generations of hominds might disagree with your thoughts on fur and the successes it provided to our survival.
Not all from CA belive the same thing, I think most of the comments I hear about CA are generally from people who haven't met many locals on through trips. We like knives, guns, bourbon just like the rest of you...we just have better weather
LAs just as bad
