Nov
28
What’s the difference?
November 28, 2008 | 4 Comments
Listening to the local sports (!) talk show and I just heard the familiar refrain: hunting with guns is not really hunting. Oh no. Only hunting that involves bow and arrow really counts as hunting. Somehow it’s more fair for the animals.
Why?
I didn’t realize that when one hunted with bow and arrow that the hunted animal also gets to carry shield and sword. The animal is no more or less defenseless if the hunter has a shotgun on his arm or a bow. The hunter has to stalk the animal in almost the same way, and the hunter is at no more advantage in either situation. I would imagine that the bow is a trickier shot to make, but a skilled bowman is going to strike down the animal as well as the skilled marksman. The animal’s dead either way.
Now, I’ll grant that there are differences between guns, and hunting rifles are more “fair” than, say, machine guns, but I don’t know too many self-professed hunters wandering out their with machine guns. I have never been hunting myself, but I recognize that it takes patience and skill no matter what your weapon of choice happens to be.
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The argument that REALLY gets me is “Hunting isn’t really a sport”, which turns up on local talk radio here in the PA/NJ area every fall. I keep waiting for somebody -anybody – to point out that hunting is the original definition of “sport”, and that all the game-sports came after. I can’t do it myself because I don’t own a cell phone and don’t listen to talk radio except when I’m driving.
Reading your post I was reminded of the old joke about the guy who liked to fish. However, he used dynamite to fish. Game warden heard about this and came out to confirm. He’s out on the boat and starts to accuse the guy of fishing illegally. The “fisherman” hands the game warden a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse and says “you gonna talk or fish.”
I’ve gone rabbit and duck hunting. I expect to do some deer hunting next fall.
A friend of mine was a bow hunter for a few years but had a bad experience a while back when he badly injured a buck but couldn’t keep up with it. He figures the deer couldn’t have survived the night and doesn’t go bow hunting any more.
A bow is a very different weapon than a rifle or a shotgun. I understand that hunting with it requires a different skill set too.