This does seem particularly stupid of the NRA. I blame the labor unions.
What he said was a bit ignorant, but God I hate that he lost his job over it.
So what are the good arguments for hunting with assault rifles?
What did he say that was ignorant?
2: I don't follow.
It seems to me that the basic problem is that this is a federal issue, and there's no good policy reason for it now. The tradeoffs of tight and loose gun policies are rather different in Montana and LA, so the policies should reflect that.
3: Probably just boils down to the "what is an assault rifle" problem, the answer to which is usually "they look scary".
4: Calling the AR-15 "a terrorist rifle".
9: "claw hammers" s/b "hammered".
9 brings to mind a book I'm currently reading by David Quammen, called "Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind". In the section about India's lions he mentions that in the sanctuary where the lions are located there are nomadic herding-type people called the Maldharis whose most fearsome weapon against the lions is actually a sort of claw hammer (he describes it as a small blunt axe).
12: How sad. Somebody should set up an aid program to buy them real weapons.
Of course, they don't give those gun-enthusiasts tenure...
He basically went off and said there was no place in hunting for certain types of weapons, and called the "terrorist rifles", which is nonsense.
The AR platform does in fact make for a nice varmint rifle. Varmint hunting, things like coyotes, prairie dogs, is usually done with low recoil, flat shooting .22 calibers like .223 Remington, 22-250, .220 Swift, .204 Ruger, etc. from relatively long ranges. You're often shooting multiple animals, and semi auto is convenient. AR makers specifically market AR's with heavy barrels for varmint hunting.
See here and here. (Scroll down on the second link)
Also, the line in the first link about why the hunters allied with the assault rifle folks is revealing. I'd always wondered that.
Hunters (and gun folk in general) are also very paranoid about people trying to gradually use minimal restrictions to which no one could reasonably object to get to the point of taking their guns away. Hence the extreme reaction.
Insanely paranoid or rationally paranoid, I won't say. But the principle of resisting the first inch the hardest is hardly an unusual one.
(Zumbo's apology seemed pretty abject, and I'd have called it a day after that, but I'm not a gun type).
Karl XII of Sweden hunted bears with a sharp stick (a spear if you want to get picky about terminology).
Whenever you get started arguing about the Second Amendment, you get a lot of stuff like #17. The idea is that no one who doesn't know the lingo has the right to any opinion at all.
That, and you if you become TOO annoying they're able take you out from 1000 yards and the cops will never know who did it.
19: But there's a pretty obvious difference between saying that military-looking rifles are silly and unnecessary and saying they should be banned, and Zumbo's comments were pretty obviously making the first point rather than the second. I have no interest in trying to take away anybody's AR whatever, but I reserve the right to point and snicker a little bit.
18: This line?
They do not want American gun owners to make a distinction between assault weapons and traditional hunting guns such as shotguns and rifles. If they did, a rift could emerge between hunters, who tend to have the most money for political contributions to gun rights causes, and assault-weapon owners, who tend to have lots of passion but less cash.
I'm still confused. If they aren't hunters, who are these assault-weapon owners? And why worry about alienating them if they don't have the cash?
Actually, I don't think it was the NRA that got him canned. It was the response from readers and gun owners. Outdoor Life, Remington, and other companies with which Zumbo was affiliated got thousands upon thousands of emails, calls, etc.
Assault-weapon owners are heavily-armed monomaniacs. Are these people that you, personally would voluntarily get on the bad side of?
Whenever you get started arguing about the Second Amendment, you get a lot of stuff like #17. The idea is that no one who doesn't know the lingo has the right to any opinion at all.
I didn't say, or even imply that at all.
I'm still confused. If they aren't hunters, who are these assault-weapon owners?
Some are as Emerson describes. But some genuinely like the platform, and have different tricked out models for target shooting, hunting, etc. You see the same thing with older military rifles like the M1. But only a small fraction of hunters are using them. Good old bolt actions are the norm.
No, you didn't. I should have expressed myself differently.
Add one snarky sentence to that post, though, and it would have been just like dozens of others I've seen. Suddenly the argument shifts to what year the M-16 was first used, or frangible bullets, or the difference between automatic and semi-automatic, and it just gets more technical from there. Since what's really at stake for the other side is always just NO REGULATIONS OR RESTRICTIONS ON GUN OWNERSHIP AT ALL EVER!!!!1!!1!, I find these arguments very tedious.
27 The 1's are the strongest part of your argument.
The idea is that no one who doesn't know the lingo has the right to any opinion at all.
That's not quite it, but really, what we need are more liberal gun enthusiasts who know the lingo to advocate for responsible gun laws, because it is often enough to derail the conversation. Nothing against wide-eyed city folk, but there's just no mental common ground between an urbanite who hears 'assault rifle' and imagines stormtroopers and rails against it on that ground and the sportsman who rolls his eyes and thinks he only uses it to kill coyotes.
Plus some of the regulations are just weird. 15 rounds is okay, but 20? Now it's a banned weapon. I am hardly an expert on guns, but I imagine it's sort of like biologists feel when fundamentalists gang up on evolution: lots of eyerolling, lots of frustration that the terms of the discourse are being set by people who don't know anything about it. Add to that a very powerful lobby and it's pretty much a recipe for shitty discourse.
Personally, I'd be a lot more worried about handguns than anything... long.
This reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a pal who's a very vocal and very strident vegetarian. Supremely judgmental if you ever ate meat in her presence, which made her - normally a gem to be around - incredibly annoying. As she's a friend, we could have this conversation without much yelling but here's the gist - I told her that if she could tone down her rhetoric regarding animal rights/veganism/vegetarianism, etc., and be less in your face about it, she would - I argued - convince more people to eat LESS meat over all. She was never going to convince a meat eater to give it up, as there was something about her tone that made you want to eat more meat and perhaps, just to show her up, obtain a tablecloth and table settings made entirely out of animal parts (ivory napkin holders, anyone?) before sitting down to enjoy your meaty dinner. But if she were to tone down the fire-and-brimstone (a/k/a Peter Singer) stuff, she might just get more people to eat less meat which was in the long run probably more beneficial to her furry (and delicious) friends.
That's sort of how I feel about the NRA folks - they're SO unyielding in their GUNS = AMERICA stance that I feel that much less inclined to listen to their arguments.
Sounds like Zumbo was exactly the sort of soft sell marketer they needed in that he got those who managed to go through the day w/o thinking too much about guns to do just that, and in the context of a normal life. And not say, the wacko in his bunker with his four wives and 80 assault rifles. (With apologies to jackmormon.)
I would like a steak now.
BTW, WTF is up with this weather in SF?
None of us here is "long", Miss Cala, though Apo always says that he is. He actually has a very cute little bonsai thingie which is quite memorable in its own way.
Nothing in the religion about guns, Moira. No apologies necessary.
So I basically have three reactions to this.
1. It would be funny to come across LB reading Field and Stream and Outdoor Life on the subway.
2. What is the NRA's position on RPG-launchers? That seems to be the very best arm to carry to protect the right to revolution.
3. It's spelled "varmint"? Huh.
I AM a 2nd amendment absolutist, and I'm still just as put off as LB about this. Even though I generally agree with the NRA, and feel rather fortunate that I have a lobby as effective as the NRA on my side of an issue (for once) this kind of shit is exactly why I'd never think of joining.
I'm also a vegetarian, and Moira is right on in 31. Preachy veggies don't do their cause any favors, and flipping your fucking portobello with the same spatula as the hamburgers is really, really, not a big deal, so shut up already.
13: True, although as far as I know, Judt hasn't and likely won't pay quite the same price as Zumbo.
BTW, WTF is up with this weather in SF?
Ask it, sister. Thanks, ice pellets* hitting me in the head while I swim.
*slight exaggeration
34: Meh. I'm not preachy at all in person about being a veggie---I might get into snarkfits online---and I've been known to buy friends' bloody steaks if that's what they want and I'm treating them--but yes, please do not flip my burger with the same spatula. I try to bring my own. If my food is grossing me out, I'm not going to enjoy it, it's that simple.
31: Indeed. 36: You swim outside? I daydream about being crazy/good enough to jump in the bay, but who knows.
One of the biggest mistakes that revolutions make is disarming the proletariat. One of the biggest mistakes that US citizens make is believing that the NRA represents the gun-owning proletariat.
You swim outside?
Yeah, I actually kinda hate swimming inside.
40: but it's a heated pool right?
One of my big regrets about not swimming in college is never trying out this place when it reopened--supposed to be very beautiful.
34 - The flipside is that merely mentioning that you are a vegetarian can be enough to trigger the ivory-napkin-holder-and-side-of-beef reaction in some people. Seriously, let me eat my veggie burger in peace.
37: Hear, hear, on the whole spatula question raised by 34. I even started eating fish again last year, but I still prefer that you not get spiritual flesh death cooties on my veggie stuff.
I realize this is totally incoherent and I will probably be sleeping in the Carls Jr drivethru by August, but before I slid to fish I was pretty strict about keeping things separated.
40: but it's a heated pool right?
What, and melt the icebergs?
20: Whenever you get started arguing about the Second Amendment, you get a lot of stuff like #17. The idea is that no one who doesn't know the lingo has the right to any opinion at all.
So how do you feel about the term "partial birth abortion"?
I don't really get the big deal. The NRA doesn't like anyone who doesn't toe the line. The NRA took out one of their own. Who cares? Intrafamily fight. Happens all the time, even on our side. And when it does, people on their side and some on our side point and say, "They want ideological purity; they're mad!"
Where I come from, they're called 'critters.' Partially birthed or no.
And yeah, varmint::vermin as vittles::victuals.
Tim, I wish we'd been able to take Lieberman out in three days.
Thanks to this post I now have "Armalite Rifle" stuck on infinite loop in my head.
been noted elsewhere, but the nra doesn't really seem to care about outreach anymore. they're working for gun manufacturers these days. which is too bad. i still hold out faint hope for a mythical (but totally logical) alliance of sierra clubbers and the ducks unlimited crowd.
Tim, I wish we'd been able to take Lieberman out in three days.
Ha. Originally, I'd included a qualifier about liberal groups along the lines of "or did, at least when they had some power."
Yosemite Sam always seemed to pronounce it "varmen."
And yeah, varmint::vermin as vittles::victuals.
So it's pronounced "warmint"?
Note that the god of hunting is invoked by Z in his apology:
The NUGE has invited me to hunt with him using AR-15's, and I'm eager to go, and learn.
Thought that Ted N. only hunted with bows. Who knew?
55: In Great Expectations, perhaps.
varmint::vermin as vittles::victuals::varmen::ramen
Thought that Ted N. only hunted with bows.
24: John, we're not monomaniacs. I got rid of a really ugly "assault rifle" when I moved to LA 'cause it was too much trouble to deal with the paperwork and there's no convenient place to shoot it nearby anyway. I traded it in on a harmless 'scoped bolt-action in .223. Now, if there's another riot, I can't scare anyone.
minneapolitan has the kind of message discipline that the Democrats can only dream of.
1) We didd manage great damage to Tim Hardaway, like, well instantly.
2) I am a 2nd Amendment absolutist, the point of which is to provide a credible opposition to the US Military, even when supported by 90% of the population. That oppressed 10%, for instance Jews or Mormons, should be able to make it very expensive for the majority to become oppressive. We can start at nukes with delivery systems, if Bill Gates can afford one, and work down from there.
3) I think the Democrats should be able to exert this pressure on abortion. We certainly should have at least one issue whih is suicidal for a politician to fuck with, and should develop the discipline to enforce it.
62
Social security. Look at Vilsack.
64: Yep. That's a pretty good one.
42, 43: agreed.
37,44: if you think beef particles on your gardenburger are worth hauling around your own spatula, then I have a lecture for you that you totally don't want to hear about all the other gross shit you inadvertently ingest on a regular basis. The most important decision you make as a vegetarian is how you spend your money; whether you fill your gut regularly with animal protein is a distant second, and making your friends do tricks so you can avoid some burger droplets on your tvp and thereby remain pure is just jockeying for moral status. Don't come to MY cookouts.
That came out a little angrier than I meant it .
People are vegetarians for a variety of reasons, though, and not filling their guts with animal protein is indeed the primary consideration for some.
Yeah, for some it's closer to keeping kosher than just a regular ol' dietary preference.
making your friends do tricks so you can avoid some burger droplets on your tvp
Hand me the spatula so I can lick all the meat juice off before you flip the veggies.
re: 68
Yeah, it's a quasi-religious observance rather than a simple ethical choice. For a lot of people.
The meat-cootie thing makes no sense on any other level other than that quasi-religious 'unclean! unclean!' lvel.
13, 34: if Judt's day job was writing humorous essays on modern Jewish life for Forward, or whatever, he'd have been in a more analogous position.
2) I am a 2nd Amendment absolutist, the point of which is to provide a credible opposition to the US Military, even when supported by 90% of the population. That oppressed 10%, for instance Jews or Mormons, should be able to make it very expensive for the majority to become oppressive. We can start at nukes with delivery systems, if Bill Gates can afford one, and work down from there.
Ah. "We'll all stay/Serene and calm/When Alabama gets the bomb!"
52: i still hold out faint hope for a mythical (but totally logical) alliance of sierra clubbers and the ducks unlimited crowd.
Well, yeah -- that's exactly what I came out of my stint of OL reading with. While I'm not a hunter, they seem as presented in OL to be perfectly reasonable people you could work with, no problem, and they have a strong personal motivation for preserving wilderness. And then stuff like this happens and I despair.
23: Actually, I don't think it was the NRA that got him canned. It was the response from readers and gun owners. Outdoor Life, Remington, and other companies with which Zumbo was affiliated got thousands upon thousands of emails, calls, etc.
You think that kind of reaction to a blog post was spontaneous? I don't have solid information to the contrary, but it's my assumption that you don't get a letterwriting/calling/so forth campaign going without someone coordinating it, which I am also assuming without strong evidence was the NRA in this case.
73: The NRA has one of the poorest designs of any site I've seen but I didn't see anything about Zumbo while looking around this morning. Could have missed it tho'.
They certainly understood slippery slope-ism when I belonged, doesn't look like it's changed much.
It seems to me that instead of buying guns, we should just quietly plant durable radio-activated landmines all over the place and activate them when the revolution comes.
70 -- this morning I bought groceries at Whole Foods on my way to work and noticed a sign by their bread counter, to the effect that they are glad to slice your bread for you but must warn that the same machine is used to slice the breads fashioned from organic and not-organic ingredients. Totally made me think of this thread, specifically 37.
76 -- the stupid! it burns! the googles do nothing!
maybe googles is better in context?
I didn't realized there was a micro-contaminant issue. It reminds me of the signs all over L.A. saying "A molecule of something we think might cause some problem to someone at some rate above zero has been found in this building". Warning people might have been a Nice Idea, those are totally useless for making a decision to enter or not.
74: I linked their press release in the post -- it's the link from the word "NRA".
70: a quasi-religious observance
yeah, that's really it, isn't it? No wonder I find the attitude so annoying.
75 - be a real pisser when they all go off because someone hits his garage-door opener, though.
Tom, I don't like your negative attitude. We're here to think about happy things.
I think cerebrocrat is trying to politely make clear that he hates the Jews.
I haven't read every comment on this thread, nor have I read Zumbo's op ed, nor am I familiar with the tenor of his writing generally. Nonetheless, it seems incredible to me that he would not know that AR-15s are commonly used as gswift describes.
Now, off the top of my Eastern, urban head I can say Westerners have long favored long arms in what the military traditionally called the carbine class. That's shorter and handier than the full-size military rifle that corresponds to it, of which it was often a cut-down version, with typically a less powerful round, in the ratio of about 3 grains to the rifle's 5. The cavalry used carbines, the infantry the full rifle. The shorter, lighter, handier carbine was much more suited to use from horseback, or to carry in a truck, or just to have around you. lightness, handiness, rapid fire. The famous Winchester was in this class.
The "assault rife" represents the "carbinization" of the infantry's standard individual weapon. The idea goes back to WWI, and the first completely modern examples appeared during WWII. Until the 1950's, the US Army resisted the trend, specifying a full-power "Nato round," essentially a metricised 30 '06, for the M14. I was trained on, fired and carried those suckers; they were big, heavy, and kicked hard. I'm sure I fired an AR-15 in 1968, they've been around a long time. Every American vet under the age of 60 knows the M16, the full-automatic military version. The difference is huge.
Zumbo, it seems to me, must know all this, and then some. So his terminology and position must have been rhetorical. No other explanation makes sense; "ignorance" can't possibly be the reason.
Therefore, what I'll bet we're seeing is the injured tone of a group that sees itself as an oppressed, misunderstood minority. People in that frame of mind can't be joshed, or reminded of origins, or teased. They'll correct you technically with dead seriousness, as Emerson observes.
If I'm right about that, than Zumbo's error is to have misjudged his readership, and their attitude towards the outside, by presuming he could write that way and, because he had cred, not be instantly ostracised. Always sad to see.
I think that's dead on. "Ignorance" obviously wasn't the issue -- by writing the post at all Zumbo made it clear that he knew people do use assault rifles for varmint hunting, he just used intemperate language to describe his esthetic distaste for the practice. In this context, you use one wrong word to describe something once, and your career is over, instantly.
You think that kind of reaction to a blog post was spontaneous? I don't have solid information to the contrary, but it's my assumption that you don't get a letterwriting/calling/so forth campaign going without someone coordinating it, which I am also assuming without strong evidence was the NRA in this case.
You'd be surprised how quickly these guys jump on this stuff. I read a few gun discussion forums, and on the one where there's a fair number AR shooters, the reaction was severe. Hundreds comments on the relevant thread. And this was on a handgun forum, not an AR forum. The AR boards must have been a bloodbath.
79: From the PR release, it looks like the NRA was following along, not leading. All in all, the reaction seems like overkill. OTOH, I dropped my membership back in the '70s when they ran some editorial bashing people with beards and shaggy hair so I'm not rational about picking allies and enemies either.
The thing I've seen that appalled me was the use of bench-rest rifles, GPS, infrared sensors, etc. in elk hunting. Elk could be shot 1000 yards away. Hunters talk about skill, macho, oneness with nature, the zen of hunting, etc., but a lot of them seem to be very willing to use hi-tech to make it easy.
technical details above are remembered and inexact, but what I read was along those lines.
What's appalling about that? Kinda pointless, sure, but it's no crueler than killing a cow in a slaughterhouse, and once it's not cruel, it reduces to a hobby I'm not interested in (long distance target practice at unpredicably moving targets?).
#88
A lot of hunters view that with disdain. Everything I value about the experience is gone with those methods. I might as well be shooting an animal with a laser from space, or fly fishing in a swimming pool. My inclinations are toward hunting with a handgun or a lever action in a pistol caliber and the challenge of getting close enough to get a clean shot.
I might as well be shooting an animal with a laser from space,
See, this sounds like fun.
Way too far away. Now an RPG and a cow, that's good times.
The ease level that's acceptable is rather arbitrary, isn't it? The arguments exactly parallel those in photography about auto-focus systems, image stabilization, built-in exposure meters, mixing your own chemicals, the curse of digital manipulation, and coating your own film.
If ultimate difficultly is the goal, then one should be naked, and make the kill with one's hands and teeth.
If dead meat is the goal, then one should hunt at the frozen foods section.
This link, from Making Light seems relevant.
re: 93
Re: photography, it depends a lot why you are doing it.
If you are doing it to sell photos then all the helpful gizmos are great. If you are doing it as a hobby, I'd argue you get a lot less out of it by relying on all the gizmos.
Just as with hunting. I'd imagine if your job was to kill elk you'd welcome all the elk-killin' gadgets. On the other hand, if you are killing elk as a recreational hunter, you're back with gswift's 90.
I think elk hunting that way is stupid no matter which way you look at it. It's not an economical way to get meat, and it's not really sporting either. It's just showing off gadgets, but people still do the Mighty Hunter strut afterwards. (For the rare people who actually depend on game meat for food, I would expect them to do it the most convenient way possible.)
I've had a moderate amount of game meat, and sometimes it's got a nice distinctive flavor, sometimes it's got an off flavor, but ususally it's just generic meat (not worth paying extra for). Fresh-caught fish is a completely dfferent story.
I have much less objection to hi-tek photography, because for me the photo is the goal, not the photography process.
I'm scared of the mask in the link in 95. If someone knocked on my door wearing that mask, I think I'd faint. Or have an accident.
If ultimate difficultly is the goal, then one should be naked, and make the kill with one's hands and teeth.
But it's not just about the difficulty. For me, hunting and fishing is an interaction with nature, and that interaction is what makes it an enjoyable and valuable experience. It's why I fish McDonald Creek in Glacier, or the Firehole River in Yellowstone, and not at a fish farm. Hunting is the same way for me. Stalking up on an animal, paying attention to cover and wind, and waiting for that right moment is an experience that is completely lacking were I to just drive along until I spotted an animal a half mile out, and park merely to pull the bench rest and rifle out to take the shot.
I have much less objection to hi-tek photography, because for me the photo is the goal, not the photography process.
As a 'consumer' of photos that's definitely true and lots of my favourite recent photography has been done in a high-tech way.
But there's something to be had -- as an experience -- from taking the photos in an old-fashioned way. I'm not a luddite, what works in one context doesn't in another and there are times when I use an all-singing autofocus/autoexposure camera and times when I don't.
an interaction with nature, and that interaction is what makes it an enjoyable and valuable experience
Oh look, gswift is gay too.
"it's not just about the difficulty" Exactly so. It's always mix of motives; mine was more the urge to be out in the woods at dawn, far away from the usual routine and people, freezing my ass off. If I also got something to eat from the effort that was a bonus.
Totally, that is SO GAY to love hunting.
I hunt big bucks with my giant spear.
94: I do. And if they ever make meat-flavored Ben & Jerry's, I'm just going to set up camp in the supermarket.
But, gswift, do you really find that the Yellowstone catch-and-release streams are an interaction with nature? I fished Slough Creek and thereabouts in 1989, and the experience was totally spoiled for me by learning that the cutr=throats in the creek are caught on average seven times a year each.
It was a long hike in, with a decaying elk carcase at one point, and we spotted a bear on the far side of the valley, so in that sense it was an interaction with nature. But it still felt like the world's most beautifully landscaped fish farm.
The link in 95 is great. I sent it to my brother, who will probably need to build a metal shop in his basement and get started working on his cannon. No deer on this rock, but there is a bit of a wild pig problem in the neighborhood.
106: On the fish farms the trout have to be trained not to rush up to human shadows if they're normally fed by people on the shore. Without operant conditioning, they'd be jumping into your hands.
I'm pretty much a meat fisherman. The catch and release thing just seems like pointlessly harrassing the fish.
There are lots of tasty mystique-feee meat fish out there, such as carp.
re: 112
Oh yes. Traditional eastern european christmas fare. It's what Czechs eat on Christmas eve. In all kinds of carpy forms -- soup, cutlets, etc.
In words stolen from an outdoor humorist who used to appear in Field & Stream, IIRC, "smoked carp is just as good as smoked salmon if you ain't got any smoked salmon." (My dad, who actually tried eating a carp, reports that this is not strictly true.)
In words stolen from an outdoor humorist who used to appear in Field & Stream, IIRC, "smoked carp is just as good as smoked salmon if you ain't got any smoked salmon." (My dad, who actually tried eating a carp, reports that this is not strictly true.)
My nephew fishes carp, and they sell locally-smoked carp in stores here. When it's good, it's good, though small local operators, even though they're cool, lack quality control.
In China I believe that carp is the primary food fish.
Without operant conditioning, they'd be jumping into your hands.
I try to tell myself that about women too.
I realize this is totally incoherent and I will probably be sleeping in the Carls Jr drivethru by August
I'll have a pillow ready for you in the Fallen Vegetarian lane.
I went from strictly vegetarian to eating beef marrow in, like, two months. When some of us fall, we fall hard. (That's not me, but replace pork with beef and it might as well be.)
113,114,115
But they're so gross.
(I had a summer job, where there were carp in a run-off pond. Every now and then we'd have to go scoop out the dead, rotting ones. One morning I was all hungover and just puked all over the place, trying to deal with one particularly nasty carp.)
Old dead, rotting carp aren't the ones you eat.
You've probably eaten carp in a Chinese respaurant without knowing it.
I knew those baby corn weren't actually miniature ears of corn.
Old dead, rotting carp aren't the ones you eat.
Speak for yourself, John -- don't presume to speak for heebie-geebie.
In Prague at Christmas there are big tanks of live carp on the street corners. You buy one, take it home, and keep it in the bath until it's ready to kill/eat. They look fairly presentable as fish go. They aren't exactly monkfish in the looks department.
Icelanders, Vietnamese, and Eskimos do eat carefully fermented old dead fish, but H-G's carp were not properly decomposed.
But, gswift, do you really find that the Yellowstone catch-and-release streams are an interaction with nature? I fished Slough Creek and thereabouts in 1989, and the experience was totally spoiled for me by learning that the cutr=throats in the creek are caught on average seven times a year each.
But isn't everything like this? A million people before me have seen old Faithful and the geysers at West Thumb, but I still enjoy going to them.
Catch and release doesn't really bother, me. It's necessary to maintain decent fish populations in popular areas. If the the only difference is that when I unhook the fish it goes back into the stream rather than into my creel, then count me in. Likewise, if I track something I'm not particularly inclined to shoot, like a moose, and take a picture instead, it's just as enjoyable. Maybe more, because I can walk away without having to gut anything.
There's a children's book about Passover that I vaguely remember from my childhood called The Carp in the Bathtub, about a family wherein the grandfather (or someone) brings home a carp for gefilte fish and the kid gets attached to it.
128: I think about two years ago, I had to order the ingredients for a ground fish recipe—yekkas don't call anything by the same name if there's the slightest difference and they can avoid speaking yiddish—and the six pounds came to nearly a hundred bucks, ground. Since kosher is not an issue, I'm sure Asian sources for most of it could have saved us a bundle, which we'll do if we can get it together this year. How many weeks do we have to go?
First seder is around April 1 or 2, no?
Making gefilte fish is on my list of things to try, some day. Maybe this is the year.
First seder is April 2. My great-grandmother used to make gefilte fish from scratch, fish in the bathtub and all. I've seen that book, but I don't think carp is the usual fish; the store-bought stuff is generally whitefish and pike.
Catch and release doesn't really bother, me. It's necessary to maintain decent fish populations in popular areas. If the the only difference is that when I unhook the fish it goes back into the stream rather than into my creel, then count me in.
Here, I start having some cruelty problems. Killing an animal doesn't bother me so much -- even if it's not a perfectly painless death, it's probably not particularly worse than a natural death at the hands of some other predator would have been. Dragging a fish out of the water by a hook through its jaw, repeatedly? Bothers me -- to not mind it, I'd have to assume that the fish isn't experiencing it in any meaningful sense at all, which I can't quite make myself do. It seems like pulling the wings off flies.
