In today’s world we hear a lot of things that make us shake our heads. It sometimes seems the new way of thinking has nothing to do with reality.
This last week a couple of topics came to my attention that are good illustrations of just how far out of touch much of society is today.
The first was the move by the feds to put wolves back on the endangered species list. There’s no biological reason to do this. Wolf numbers are up across the north country, to the point where they’re starting to cause problems in some areas.
The animals were reclassified because the animal rights groups made enough noise to intimidate the decision makers.
The second example concerns the popular internet social networking website Facebook.
Facebook has decided to pull some hunting pictures off member’s pages. Again, the anti hunting animal rights groups are to blame.
These stories, and many more like them, are frustrating me to the point of being downright mad and I talked about it this week on my Outdoor Magazine radio show.
I agree with you Mike, the re-listing of the wolves makes no ecological or biological sense. As for the pictures on Facebook, my message to the anti’s or tree huggers is that if yo dont like to look at the pics dont get on MY page!
Keep up the good work!!!!
I had the same thought as Pete above but thought…it is only facebook until I heard your interview with the woman from Sportsman Channel. She did not sound too convincing about the ” Kill shots”. Sort of the same thought-Dont go on a CABLE CHannel about Hunting and Fishing if you do not want to see it. I have fond memories of watching ” The American Sportsman” with my Dad growing up. Bing Crosby and Curt Gowdy pheasant hunting and other shows. Not a chance of seeing that now and now the Cable channels are afraid of showing it????
Michelle Scheurmann of Sportsman Channel didn’t sound real convincing about kill shots. I also hope they never force us to stop showing those pieces of video. As a hunter, it’s those shots that help to convey a feeling of realism in a show.
I think of times when I was a boy in Holland, walking along a gravel road with my .22, hunting squirrels in the huge maple trees and a traveler stopped me only to ask if I’d had any luck. We were so innocent then. That era is all gone I can accept that. What is harder to accept is the change from a more tolerant society to such a adversarial one. It seems everyone belongs to an idealogical group that prides itself on hating all the other groups. There seems to be so much anger that it even involves what we do for legal recreation.
I love hunting; if you don’t like to hunt-don’t. I love to fish; if you don’t like it- don’t do it. I won’t take away your right to be a non-hunter if you don’t take away my legal right to hunt. But if you please, let’s stop demonizing each other and live in this great country that used to have room for all of us with all our legal yet differing preferences. I won’t crusade against golf, if you stay out of my legal right to enjoy life my way. Let’s not follow the rest of the world down paths of restriction but instead work towards mutual respect and consideration for interests other than our own.
Very insightful and eloquent thoughts Westley.
Thanks for sharing.