Category: Hunting

In Arizona, they are trying to ban hunting for kids under 18:

“Teaching children to see others as nothing more than living targets has deadly consequences that can extend into the human population. We urge you to support legislation to ban children under the age of 18 from hunting.”

PETA is the GOA of the animal rights movement.  Under the new Obama Administration, it’ll be group like HSUS, which use much more clever marketing and fundraising schemes, and who set realistic and achievable goals, that we’ll really have to worry about.  Nontheless, PETA is instructive as to how radical animal rights people think.

From the Washington Times.

Hunters are three times more likely to die from a heart attack while hunting than from any other injury.

Looks like hunting sales are holding steady.  Actually, I would expect hunting to do fine in a weak economy.  It’s meat you don’t have to pay supermarket prices for, and with gas prices dropping, it won’t cost as much to go afield.  Plus, with Obama endorsed by the rabidly anti-hunting Humane Society of the US, who knows how much longer it’s going to be a widespread past time.

TD is getting his rifle zeroed for deer season.  He’s shooting a 9.3x62mm CZ 550.  Those big bullets will cook the meat for you!  Just ask Patricia Eddington.

The bill that would ban pigeon shooting is up for a vote in the PA house tomorrow.  Now is the time to call and express your opposition.  As someone who doesn’t do pigeon shooting, I still respect people’s right to do it.  And let’s face it, pigeons are rats with wings.  They can shoot as many of them as they want as far as I’m concerned.  The bill in question is HB1543.

Lets take this bill and shove it right back down HSUS’s throats.

UPDATE: What’s up tomorrow is a vote on amendments to this bill which will ban pigeon shooting.  The amendments are sponsored by representative Daylin Leach.

From Today’s Outdoor Wire.  First, it looks like Texas is going to be conducting a study of the effects of lead vs. non-lead shot on Dove populations.  It should be nice to have some real scientific data on this, considering the push to use non-lead ammunition because of the benefits to wildlife.  Next is an issue that was talked about at the NRA committee meeting.  Move to the bottom and you’ll find the featured article about the US Department of Fish and Wildlife winning a lawsuit brought by environmental groups to prevent the creation of water resources for wildlife in wildlife refuges.  Yeah, you read that right.  The dirty hippies were suing the federal government over making sure there was sufficient water for wildlife to drink in wildlife refuges:

The ruling is a significant win for federal and state wildlife management authorities in their ongoing efforts to improve habitat conditions that help support healthy wildlife populations on the refuge. The Arizona Game and Fish Department was granted intervener status by the court and is a partner with the FWS in restoring the desert bighorn sheep herd found on the Kofa.

[…]
Wilderness Watch and several other groups had filed a lawsuit in June 2007 in an attempt to prevent the continued operation of the wildlife water tanks. The groups argued that the FWS had followed an existing refuge management plan rather than the Wilderness Act in allowing the construction work. But the court ruled that the FWS considered both the plan and the act, and was correct in issuing a “categorical exclusion” as permitted by NEPA.

Teddy Roosevelt has to be turning over in his grave about these groups aiming to protect wilderness by ensuring that no animals can survive there.

The Governor’s Advisory Council is looking for opinions from Pennsylvania sportsmen on how to improve the hunting experience in our state.  My suggestion would be Sunday hunting, and lowering of fees for out of state residents.

Pennsylvania dropped its ban on Sunday fishing in 1937, and other blue laws, such as those limiting the sale of liquor and beer, have been greatly relaxed. With the exception of car sales, hunting remains the only activity that’s restricted on Sunday in Pennsylvania.

Seems silly to me.  If it helps slow the decline in hunting, it seems like a no brainer.  Hunting is big money for Pennsylvania, which is why even Ed Rendell is worried about it’s decline.  Look how much trouble states like New Jersey have with wildlife management, since it’s almost entirely destroyed its hunting and shooting culture?  It would be a pity if that happened here.

Last month, we brought up the topic of pigeon shoots, which is a sport which is still practiced in Pennsylvania.  Though I would not take part in a pigeon shoot myself (I have enough trouble hitting clay birds, let alone real ones), I have no problem with the sport.  You see, pigeons are vermin.  In urban and suburban environments, they are trapped and killed, or poisoned, because they are filthy and spread disease.  Poisoning is less humane than shooting them.

This weekend Jeff Soyer wrote a post that was unfavorable toward pigeon shoots.  Bitter immediately took exception to it, pointing out that the sport might be politically incorrect, the tactic that HSUS is using pigeon shoots and dove hunting for is exactly the same tactic anti-gunners have used to go after assault weapons.  As Countertop pointed out in the comments, the proposed ban on pigeon shoots would also have the unintended (intended on the part of HSUS) consequence of banning dog training.

I will be honest here, I think HSUS will succeed in destroying hunting in North America. Why?  Because hunters show a complete willingness to throw other hunters off the lifeboat when the animal rights nut-jobs come knocking, because they personally don’t participate in their sport and don’t think highly of it.  I will agree that pigeon shoots aren’t the best public face of our sport, and I kind of wish the people who organize these things would stop.  But I’m not going to join HSUS in calling for it to be outlawed.  Apply all the shame and social pressure you want, but I’m not going to stand with HSUS on destroying any type of hunting or shooting.  They have an agenda, and a tactic.  Their tactic is to divide and conquer.  It’s the same tactic the Brady Campaign and VPC used with shooters when they went after assault rifles.  It didn’t work with shooters.  I don’t see any indication why it’s not going to work with hunters.  You’re going to lose your sport guys, and you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

They came first for the pigeon shooters, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a pigeon shooter.

Then they came for the dove hunters, and I didn’t speak up, because I don’t hunt dove.

Then they came for the bear hunters, and I said not a word, for I do not hunt bear.

Then they came for the deer hunters.  I am a deer hunter, but when they came, there weren’t enough hunters left to speak up.

Join or die.

This editorial from the Allentown Morning Call demands that pigeon shoots be outlawed in Pennsylvania:

There is opposition to these bills from some who fear that any restriction on one’s use of guns — or bow and arrow — might lead to greater restrictions of the Second Amendment. And so, the bills languish in committees. We have no quarrel with those who wish to hunt game animals in the wild. But a pigeon shoot is not hunting.

Well, except that later in the article, it’s pretty obvious that you’ve been talking to the Humane Society of the United States:

The state’s best-known pigeon shoot was in Hegins Township, Schuylkill County, where the Fred Coleman Memorial Pigeon Shoot began in 1933 as a means of giving prizes and raising money to feed hungry citizens and to support local charities. The spectacle died a natural death there, but according to the Humane Society, 22 others were held here last year. Though most are not widely publicized they are just as objectionable.

And yes, they do have an agenda to ban hunting in the United States.  Now, I should make my biases clear here: I hate pigeons.  I think they are basically rats with wings, and I don’t have much sympathy for them.  That said, I personally would not particularly want to attend a pigeon shoot, unless it was on the SEPTA platform at 30th Street Station in Philly.  As to whether it should be illegal, well, if the HSUS is the one pushing it, I’ll oppose.  They have an agenda, and Pennsylvania sportsmen, even the vast majority who do not shoot trap with live birds instead of clay birds, should be skeptical of their motives and goals.  HSUS has followed the path of the anti-gun movement and taken a divide and conquer strategy to outlaw hunting piecemeal.  They are no friends of hunters.  They were instrumental in getting a ban on dove hunting passed in Michigan.  An overall ban, not just on using them in trap shooting.  Even if you wanted to hunt doves in Michigan because dove is tasty, now you can’t, thanks to HSUS.