So, I'm not a hunter, but in my mind you could rank the experiences

[Inland]

as follows:

1) reciprocal, where the hunted has a chance of killing the hunter. Boar hunting.

2) difficult, where the hunted has a good chance of outwitting the hunter and skill is needed to bag the catch. Fishing.

3) necessary, when overpopulation of a species requires culling. Deer.


Cheney driving up to pen raised quail and blasting them is as much like hunting as working on the killing floor of a slaughterhouse. It gives me the creeps.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

1. Me too--it is truly sick.

I used to hunt some. All the drunk, stoned, trigger-happy assholes (some of whom dont even bother to clean and eat the game), ruined it for me long ago.

What reality is he in that he can call himself a sportsman???

[C_U_L8R]

2. It's almost the equivalent of..

dynamite fishing.

There's no real "sport" to it...
and not much skill required either (apparently).
That's why its the preferred sport of
fat old men with stupidly expensive gunz.
Did you see that gun???
What a tacky overdecorated POS (just like it's owner)

[punpirate]

3. I was passing on my own experiences to someone...

... in relation to Cheney's indiscretions and wrote this: I think back to my adolescence. When I was a teenager, my father forced me to go hunting with him on Saturday mornings (I would have been much happier spending Saturdays bowling, at the time). I didn't really enjoy hunting. At the time, although I didn't realize it, the vision in my left eye was deteriorating rapidly. I was growing much more near-sighted and being left-eyed and left-handed, that meant that I usually lost the target as I brought the shotgun up to sight. But, I'd had my gun safety course and I was expected to go along.

But, one December Saturday morning when I was fifteen, my father, my younger brother and I were hunting pheasant. I had wandered ahead of my father and brother, and out of the corner of my eye, to my left, I saw something move about twenty yards away. I rapidly swung to my left, tracked the target for not much more than an instant and fired. I barely knew what it was until I'd hit it. I'd swiveled around about 150 degrees and hit a rabbit, and missed hitting my brother by about ten or fifteen feet. I was horrified. My father was yelling at me to kill the rabbit. I'd hit it in the left flank, and he kept yelling at me to kill it, that it was suffering. Finally, he reached down and grabbed it and wrung its neck.

He didn't understand my confusion. I'd violated almost every rule of hunting. I'd gotten ahead of my party, I'd fired at a target traveling behind me without knowing where everyone else was, I'd shot at something I didn't intend to eat and I didn't make sure it a clean kill. And, I'd come close to killing my brother. The hole in the rabbit's side was about two inches around. If I'd hit my brother, he would have had a two-inch hole in him.

I never went hunting again. I realized later that day that the gun had led me, not the other way around, that it had power over me, not me over it.

I think now that's why I know what sort of person Cheney is. From the way he hunts, and the power he imagines he has.

[Tracer]

4. My first, and last, experience with guns.

I was 8 years old and in the throes of pretending to be a cowboy(girl).

A large family group had gathered for Thanksgiving at my uncle's New Hampshire inn. One day, I saw a rifle propped up against the fireplace and picked it up. Stupidly, I aimed it at one of my younger cousins. The adults around quickly took it out of my hands and strongly reprimanded me for pointing a gun at anyone.

My uncles secretly planned to teach me a lesson.

The next day, they all decided to go out to the field and do target practice. I was jumping up and down to go too and they let me.

After they shot up a few cans, they handed me a gun (which I now know to be a .12 guage shotgun) and went into great detail on how to use it. Being the extra, super duper cowgirl that I was, I confidently hoisted the shotgun --- aimed --- and pulled the trigger... BLAM!!!!!

The next thing I knew, I was on my back in the frozen dirt with an excruciating pain in my shoulder and stars in my eyes.

I looked up at my uncles, who were laughing their head off.

The pain and humiliation were enough for me. I never wanted to pick up a gun again.

[Inland]

5. Your uncles are probably lucky.

It's the sort of joke that's either going to turn you off guns or make you want to use one effectively.