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Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 1

anhaga

For a number of reasons, this hardly seems like a good idea:

'Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet . . . The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which cameras posted in the wild are used to snap photos of animals.

"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light bulb went off in my head," he said. . . He said an attendant would retrieve shot animals for the shooters, who could have the heads preserved by a taxidermist. They could also have the meat processed and shipped home, or donated to animal orphanages.'

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/11/16/life.hunting.reut/index.html

I confess, I have to wonder about people who see a picture of an animal an wish for a gun.smiley - erm And, realizing that there are such people to wonder about and that there are other sorts of people worthy of wonder, I can't help wondering how long it will be before that "attendant" ends up being a target.smiley - erm How many kids will wander onto the site, I wonder, and start blasting away thinking it's another online game?


Perhaps the most obvious question, considering the present international situation, is, how long until this little nodes get stationed around Iraqi cities? The occupation forces could reduce their casualties immensely, free labour from around the world (or at least Texas) could do the grunt work of killing "Satan in Fallujah", and there would be no more embarassing footage on the evening news of Marines killing unarmed men (viewers could do it themselves).

Maybe local labor could even be hired to fill the role of attendant. To whom should the meat be donated?


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 2

azahar

Kinda bizarre, anhaga.

Why anyone would see an animal as 'something to kill' is totally beyond my understanding.

Just recently saw again a film by my favourite director, Jim Jarmusch, called Ghost Dog. In the film the main character, wonderfully played by Forrest Whitaker, (a hired assassin who follows the way of the Samurai) comes across a couple of yobs who have just 'bagged a black bear'. He smiled and said, - 'hey, didn't know it was bear hunting season'. They said, 'yup, not many of these big guys around anymore so you gotta kill 'em when you get the chance'. And then they also said that there also weren't many n*ggers around those parts either. And when this 'Zen assassin' turned to get back into his car the two yobs cocked their rifles at him and then got blown to smithereens.

Quite love that scene.


az


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 3

anhaga

I like Jarmusch too. Haven't seen Ghost Dog yet. I like Forrest Whitaker, too. His eyes.


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 4

azahar

Oh, you must see Ghost Dog! Wonderful film on so many levels. And Forrest Whitaker 'lumbers' like nobody else. Also, fab soundtrack.


az


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 5

anhaga

Yes, I must.smiley - smiley


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 6

Mudhooks: ,,, busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest...

Yeah... and stressed executives can hone their shooting skills....: http://public.fotki.com/Mudhooks/my_stuff/artistic_stuff/my_cartoons/adventures_in_books-30.html


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 7

DA ; Simply Vicky: Don't get pithy with me!

What a bizarre idea! I admit I've alwats thought of hunting for "trophies" as a pretty odd idea anyway...
My father used to go hunting, when I were a lass, but his principle was that he would never hunt anything he wasn't going to eat. He and his mates would shoot a deer, share it amongst them and bring his share home. The same with his (infrequent) fishing expeditions.
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You realise you are gonna catch Hell for saying that, Daniel Defoe notwithstanding? smiley - aliensmile (closest I can get to an irony smiley...)



Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 8

anhaga

I suspect I should take out a patent on the idea so the U.S. military will have to pay me royalties when they start deploying the internet ready tanks.smiley - erm


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 9

anhaga

This story kind of goes with the one above: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/11/16/endangered.species.ap/index.html


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 10

DA ; Simply Vicky: Don't get pithy with me!

Yes, I see what you mean, anhaga.. Shocking!


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 11

Mudhooks: ,,, busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest...

The "logic" boggles the mind...


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 12

Gnomon - time to move on

It is not only Texans who like to shoot things. Millions of tiny birds migrate each autumn from Europe to Africa, where they spend the winter. Since they don't like to cross open water, the go by the route which covers the least amount of sea: some go from southern Spain across to Morocco, others fly down the leg of Italy and across at the tip. As they reach southern Spain and southern Italy, they encounter a barrage of men with guns who shoot them out of the skies. These guys consider it a good day's shooting when they bring down a few hundred birds. They don't eat them - these birds are too small to have any meat on them.


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 13

rev. paperboy (god is an iron)

As someone who has hunted and fished in the past and hopes to do so again someday (not much chance or reason to do either in the wilds of tokyo), all I can say is that the whole idea of killing something by remote control like that is absolutely appaling.
The few times I have hunted, it has been for rabbit or partridge for the dinner table while staying in the near north part of Ontario (north of Superior) I've never hunted deer, though friends have and I've eaten wild venison (tasty!)and moose (tastier still, but a bit greasy). I've also done lots of fishing and I can say with all confidence that the fish you catch yourself tastes twice as good as the one you bought at the store. The only time I've killed something I didn't eat was the time I went groundhog hunting at my grandfather's dairy farm. Farmers need to chase the groundhogs out of their pastures because the cows step in their burrows and break their legs. Granddad always figured it was kinder to shoot them than bury them alive, so he hunted them when they got to be a nuisance.

But plugging something from the comfort of your study by remote control and having an 'attendent' clean up the mess? That's up there with dynamite fishing and hunting deer with helicopter gunships. Hideous!

As far as the military using remote control killers - well, the predator unmanned drones do carry missiles. And they've been used in a number of assasinations as well as for artillery spotting and recon work in Iraq.

And speaking of savagery, does anyone think we would have heard word one about the Marine shooting an unarmed wounded Iraqi if it hadn't been caught on camera? Does anyone think it was an isolated incident?


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 14

anhaga

I've done groundhogs too. Gophers they're usually called out here. Richardson's Ground Squirrels, actually. Apparently they're popular in Japan as pets. There's at least one company that travels around with a huge vacuum truck and sucks them alive out of the ground and ships them overnight to Japanese pet shops. At work (golf course, of all things) I always resisted pressure to kill the little beggars. It was an aesthetic thing, not any real reason to kill them. Shooting wasn't allowed in the municipality, so we were left with the options of poison (unpleasant in every way and constant danger of collateral damage), snaring and thumping (very tedious), or a number of variations on flooding the burrows. I did try setting aside no mow areas. At one point a badger took up residence but I'm afraid it was a victim of collateral damage.smiley - sadface The red-tailed hawks got really fat in those tall grass areas. After about five years we had to mow one of the areas and it was absolutely full of burrows that no one had ever noticed. I think, in the long run, setting aside those areas was the least expensive and most effective method. A method that came close was to flood the burrows with water while my nephew's siberian husky stood guard. It was quick, but extremely messy.

As for the question about the marine's shot in the NBC shot: I'd have to say no and no.


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 15

rev. paperboy (god is an iron)

Ridding a golfcourse of groundhogs? sound vaugely familiar....have you considered guerrilla tactics? plastique?

http://trailers.warnerbros.com/img/touts/caddyshack.jpg

http://www.carlspackler.com/verbatim.html


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 16

azahar

Thing is, practically nobody actually *needs* to hunt for their food anymore, do they? So even those who do so as humanely as possible and end up eating what they kill are still, on some level, doing it as 'sport'. I'm not personally against this, just pointing out that it isn't actually a *need*.

In isolated communities it is true that if that deer or moose isn't bagged then the family won't eat that winter. But I don't think this makes up the majority of people who hunt (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Drifting a bit, I think that if most people had to kill and process their own meat supply most of the Western World would be vegetarian. I know I would.


az


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 17

azahar

<>

My reply is the same.


az


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 18

rev. paperboy (god is an iron)

the idea that more people would be vegetarian if they had to kill their own meat is probably true. One of the problems I often have with the bunny-hugging segement of the anti-hunting crowd is that I think it is far more ethical to kill your own food than to have someone else do your dirty work for you. Anyone who objects to hunting on the grounds that it is cruel and unnecessary has never visited a slaughterhouse or cattle feedlot.
That said, a lot of hunters are redneck bonehead who get very defensive when challenged and anyone who hunts so they can put something's head on the wall as a macho decoration needs to have their head examined.


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 19

badger party tony party green party

Well Im against some forms of hunting and have worked in a slaughterhouse.

Im against unescessarily cruel types of hunting and any hunting merely or primarily for the purposes of sport or fun.

Im a realist I know animals have to die and while people choose to eat them then there will have to be killing but I do object to things like in the link. Killing for a reason is tolerable but putting another creature through pain and ending its life for fun is just twisted really and deserves to be banned as its just a waste.

one love smiley - rainbow


Speaking of merciless savages . . .

Post 20

azahar

hi rev.

Well, I'm certainly not a 'bunny-hugger' and I'm very honest with myself about my own hypocritical behaviour (eating meat even though I know I could never kill anything myself). I saw a documentary on factory farming a few years ago that totally turned my stomach and broke my heart, so, ethically speaking, I really shouldn't be eating meat at all. smiley - sadface

<>

Or else lopped off and hung on a wall . . .

(kidding! well, sort of . . .)


az


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