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.

[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]

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.

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[shellasaurusrex.livejournal.com]

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

[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.?

[deathling.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!