Blue Rabbit Urine and kids with guns

[urbpan]

I got an email today from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. I had to google the acronym to figure out who they were, and their terse message indicated they wanted one of my photos. No offer to pay, just a request for permission and a for a higher-resolution image. They were asking about my blue rabbit urine photo. I'm not going to explain, you have to click that link and read it.

While googling NYSDEC I discovered an album full of photos of child hunters. By which I mean human children who hunt, as a hobby, not people or monsters that hunt children. There's something haunting about a picture of an eleven year old boy hoisting up a 42 pound coyote he's killed. Actually, probably an adult guardian killed the coyote, since I'm inferring that the age for firearms use in NY State is 14 (based on the deer hunter photos). (If I understand trapping correctly, the trapper sets a line of traps in the afternoon/evening, then checks them the next morning; animals are held in place but not killed by the traps, and the trapper shoots the trapped animal.)

And speaking of legally owning firearms, I got my FID card today. It's amusing to me that I got my driver's license just as I turned 30 and now I've gotten my first gun license as I've turned 40. For now, the card simply allows me to transport firearms as needed for work. I can see learning to use a shotgun and/or a rifle at some point (some point after we've moved from Massachusetts), as I think these are useful skills and useful tools. For the record, I am in favor of hunting for food, but I think it's absurd when people call it a "sport." Not that it doesn't take considerable skill, but it seems disrespectful to the animal to put it in those terms. Killing the animal by wrestling it to death, that would be a sport.

If I can find a higher-res image of my blue rabbit urine photo, they are welcome to publish it.

Comments

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

I agree with the sport hunting assessment. You know the ongoing cliche in science fiction of the time travel big-game hunt in the Cretaceous, with hunters armed to the teeth with exotic firepower to take down apatosaurs and tyrannosaurs? I want to see a story with a guy who goes back and hunts albertosaurs with nothing more high-tech than a katana or a halberd.

[shellasaurusrex.livejournal.com]

i like where you are going with this. i wish they had tried to take down the rex in jurassic park 2 with a halberd.

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

As an aside, I'd always argued that both of Spielberg's contributions would have been much more tolerable if the tyrannosaur's roars had been overdubbed with Dennis Hopper's dialogue from Blue Velvet. The day I got married, we came home for a bit and my wife turned on the television for background noise. That night, Fox was running The Lost World, which she'd never seen before, and I knew our love was meant to be when she caught the mama tyrannosaur drinking out of the swimming pool and yelled in response "Heinecken? Fuck that shit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!"

[roaming.livejournal.com]

My ex, a former multiple rifle owner and Scituate-born country boy who, come the Apocalypse, would be The guy to follow into the wilderness if you want to survive, has taken to challenging sport hunters to make it literally "sporting" by giving up the guns and going "mano a mano" with the critters. (As you say.) Or at least using nothing more than a knife in hand. And canned hunts make him spit in contempt.

He thinks that as long as meat can be raised (humanely) and gotten conveniently/cheaply enough, hunting for it oneself when there are other options is more about ego than economy. I guess he's mostly known the wrong sort of hunter (i.e., his alcoholic Marine drill sergeant dad).

I don't mind if the hunter is experienced enough to get in one clean kill shot so the critter doesn't even know what hit it. It's the drunken ones who can't target properly that worry me. (And, of course, how does a hunter get to be experienced enough to get a clean shot? By practicing before they get that good. :-/)

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

By practicing before they get that good

ideally on paper, and prefereably with repeatable skill...

i'm currently working with a .22 at 50 meter, and i won't be happy until my groups are smaller than an 3 cm, preferably 1 cm :> soon be moving up to 100 meter, so as to make 50 meter easier :)

archery is a bit tougher, but similar goals.

currently no desire/need to actually shoot bambie...

#

[roaming.livejournal.com]

People tell me that if there was no other choice, I'd shoot Bambi to eat. I'm pretty sure I couldn't and would just starve. I hope I never have to find out.

[propaddict.livejournal.com]

You definitely can.

While I didn't get Bambi (couldn't catch him), I definitely wrung Thumper's neck. With my bare hands. I hadn't eating anything in 3 days. He was delicious. You do what you have to; you move on. Simple as that.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

YOU do it. Doesn't mean someone else can. Don't judge others by yourself. Especially since we've never met and you don't know me.

And thanks for the creepy image of your bare hands on "Thumpers" neck. Like those people who join vegetarian communities just to post images of slaughtered bloody animals to squick people and get their knickers in a twist. Did you deliberately mean to be mean by posting that way? Is it fun for you? Get a kick out of it?

If so, I find that motivation more disgusting than the actual act.

I buy meat from a CSA. I know they kill the animals so it ends up on my plate. But *at least* they have good lives before, and a quick painless end. One may argue that death is death, and it doesn't matter whether the killer respects and thanks his prey (like Native Indian culture does) or gloats at its demise. But "when the fall is all there is, it matters."

[propaddict.livejournal.com]

Yikes!

Let's not read too much into this or take it as a personal affront. I merely meant to offer perspective, from the BTDT perspective. In response to your other charge: that is not my sole viewpoint on this topic, as I've observed similar in dozens of others in survival situations.

And I still stand by my original assessment. Despite attempts at unlearning/over-intellectualizing/demonizing our basic survival instincts, they're still there. And when you need them, they will help you overcome your aversions and prolong your life.

When you're out of that life-threatening situation, you return to your regular semblance of civility. That's it. No disgust, no value judgments, no righteous indignation required.

I'd be happy to continue this discussion via PM, but I'll stop the comment-jack here.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I don't mind you guys having this discussion here at all. They are exactly the kinds of ideas that fascinate me. But if you want to continue in a less public place that's fine. Propaddict, I wonder if your rabbit-eating story might need some context (I know the context, and I can see it being a little jarring to someone who doesn't know the story. Actually, the context itself is pretty jarring.) But anyway... do as you will.

There are lots of different ways to appreciate nature! Some are more visceral than others.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

sorry urbpan, if I came off a bit hostile. As I commented to propaddict, things look more blunt without tone of voice. Had I been able to say "did you mean to be mean?", my tone would have come off more "this is a question, let's have a discussion" than a smack back.

Glad you like discussion. Though I've had many of these, and I admit I find myself unconvinced. I'm pretty sure I can't undo my NYC girl upbringing anymore than, say, anyone from the south or midwest who grew up on a farm seeing animals as food rather than cuddly, anthropomorphized Disney characters, and probably has a lot more testosterone than I ever could, can see things from my perspective. :-) I usually know better than to even try to have the conversation. Every now and then it just runs right out into traffic before I can muzzle the little critter. :-)

[roaming.livejournal.com]

Okay. Good to know. BTW, things look more blunt in typing without tone of voice. I'm not miffed or angry, and not feeling hostile if that's how it came off. Actually asking. Maybe I need to use more smiling emoticons. :-)

I don't demonize our basic survival instincts. (And I can't know for sure what I'd do if I had to use them: just knowing me I'm betting I'd be among the first to not survive. Which would be fine with me, I don't want to live in that world.) I also don't glorify them, or use them as an excuse to "go native" and kill things because "waall, it was good enough for muh daddy, and muh daddy's daddy: it's Family Truhdisuhn."* But being a NYC born-and-bred city girl, I know that -- absent The Apocalypse and The Sky Falling -- the rules of the concrete jungle are different. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to know how to survive if one has to. Then again, how often does one "have" to? Unless one likes to go camping on snowbound mountaintops, or have oneself dropped with only a pocketknife and a paperclip into the middle of a Canadian wilderness. :-)

*(yeh, I admit to having my fair share of East Coast Urban snobbery. Or standards, depending on who's doing the judging. :-) Slavery used to be a tradition. Genital mutilation is a tradition. Stoning wives that are raped is a tradition. I'm sick of the excuse of "that's how we've always done it, so it's still a viable response to our environment." (Or the other Biblical excuse of "God gave Man 'dominion': as an agnostic slouching towards atheism, that leaves me unconvinced.) I heartily disagree with the tradition rationale. Clearly. :-) And no, not saying YOU are using that excuse. It's just the one I usually get when this kind of conversation comes up.)

[propaddict.livejournal.com]

Aside from it be Maine wilderness and not Canadian: you got me pegged. :)

And I agree re: tradition. It's no excuse. I view it as a baseline, like, "If nothing else, we know this works." I despise the view that tradition is an inexorable "we've always done it this way so that must be how to do it."

[roaming.livejournal.com]

heh. At least we know what our geographical personality types are: we don't need to consult the Meyers-Briggs handbook! ;-P

I try (and sometimes fail) to not be extreme. I'm not a vegan. I don't throw red paint on people who wear fur nor break into labs to free all the bunnies. (Though I admit to admiring the people with the guts to the latter, while being embarrassed by the former.) I think it's "okay" to raise and kill animals for food -- just not to torture them while we're doing it.

I hope that the little boy in that picture was being taught respect and compassion for the coyote along with killing skills. I want him be very proficient at making a clean and fast kill if he's going to do so. What I hear about more is exterminating them as "pests" and "vermin": words that carry the message of arrogant disrespect for living things. That's my "religion": that all life has something in common -- call it a "soul" for lack of any better description -- that makes us connected in a way that we probably can't put words to, but that doesn't matter, it's real. (okay, okay, yeh, I've just seen Avatar twice and loved it. Guilty! :-) ) I think Life owes other Life something. And vive la difference!

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

it's "hunting" when it's for food/survival...

it's "sport" when you get a trophy...

i can't believe the asshats that go out and shoot stuff, and don't EAT what they kill. man. that's all kinds of wrong.

oh, i recall some years ago, a < 20 yo more or less killed a deer (finished it off) with his bare hands since it had the temerity to dent his father's borrowed truck. some animal rights group went after him for animal cruelty and/or hunting without a license. hah.

#

[octogirlie.livejournal.com]

I can't believe the asshats that go out and shoot stuff, and don't EAT what they kill. man. that's all kinds of wrong.

Agreed.

[shellasaurusrex.livejournal.com]

congrats.
i feel like i use your journal like the discovery channel.
i love it :)

[brush-rat.livejournal.com]

Boomdeeada!

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

FYI, In New York, you must be 12 to obtain a hunting license for small game, 14 for large game.

There does not seem to be a lower age limit on trapping, so long as they have successfully completed the trappers education course.

While I do not hunt, I do fish. I take pleasure in either throwing back or eating what I catch.

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Yay for Blue Rabbit Urine, Yah-boo-sucks to the hunters. Especially the hunting children. I have the same reaction to pictures of hunters with their "trophies" as I do to morons posing with the fish they've slaughtered in my local paper- I want to strip them of their guns and knives and fishing rods, dump them in the forest (or ocean)and see how well they do with just their teeth and nails. Something tells me the coyote would be taking the *kid* home as a trophy...

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

I've gotten my first gun license as I've turned 40

Gun license? Did you move out of the U.S.?

[propaddict.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I has me a Concealed Carry Permit, from a state with reciprocity agreements with 30+ other states.

Hawaii is not one of those.

In fact, I had to drag all my guns to the local sheriff to have them inspected and registered. They wanted to charge me $9 a pop to register each one, too. Guns I've owned for years; not even anything in the "Evil Black Rifle" category.

They also took my fingerprints again. Apparently the set on file with the FBI already (from my concealed carry permit) was insufficient. . .

On top of it all, they charged me for parking.

Truthfully, I'm feeling a bit "infringed". . .

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

FID card. Obama didn't confiscate all the weapons....yet.

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

So I Googled "FID" and got nothing. I tried "FID card" and got this: http://www.reverepolice.org/Departments/Firearms_Division/Firearms_Identification_Card_(F.I.D.).htm

"A Firearms Identifiaction (F.I.D.) Card is issued by the State of Massachusetts and permits it's bearer to:

* Legally purchase and carry mace and/or pepper spray on your person
* Legally purcahce and store weapons in your home (if combined with a Permit to Purchse said firearm)*"

Is this a hoax? It's legal for anyone citizen over 18 (21 for handguns) to buy a weapon and keep it in their home, as long as they're not specifically prohibited, like ex-cons or the mentally ill. Rules vary state by state about carrying it concealed, and the feds regulate machine guns and such, but you don't need a license just to keep buy a gun and keep it in your home. That's nuts.

How do they enforce this? I mean, if somebody has a gun in their home that they bought out of state or inherited from a relative or built themselves or something, how do the police know? Do they go door to door searching the homes of anyone who doesn't have a "Freedom from Unreasonable Searches" license?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

They mainly enforce it by charging you with a crime if they find that you own a gun but not a gun license. I'm pretty sure that the guns that the inner city gangsters in Massachusetts use are purchased legally in Vermont and New Hampshire (where licensing is more lax).

The cops don't look for guns, but if they find one, they'll arrest you and figure out if you own it legally later.

I can tell you would be appalled by the interview process I went through to get this card.

[deathling.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!