Monday, November 21, 2005

Boomsticks: A New Level of Hunting Snobbery.

Did you know that hunting with an atlatl-propelled spear will be legal in PA soon? Aside from providing grist for some truly hilarious comedic material, it also adds a whole new apex predator in the constant petty nattering about whose hunting style is the "most sporting" and "true to the ways of our ancestors".

The atlatl guys will get to look down their noses at the guys who are using yew self-bows and hand-chipped arrowheads as uncommitted slobs who are only interested in bagging a deer easily. The yew self-bow guys think that people using compound bows with graphite-shafted broadheads are wussies. The compound bow users can in turn snub the guys using sidehammer frontstuffers as parvenues, which parvenues will get to mock the guys using inline muzzle loaders, who get to make fun of the folks using single-shot Ruger No.1's and Thompson/Center Encores, who can deride the guys using bolt- and lever-action repeaters, who can in turn...

Remember, kids: Someone is always more "authentic" than you.

Me? I'm gonna run down a deer on foot this year and rip out its jugular with my teeth. Everybody else is a technology-dependent pansy.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Remember, kids: Someone is always more "authentic" than you."

Yep. More than that, this is a substitute for a time machine. If you can't go back to the past, you can pretend for a while.

I noticed that when I was reading books about Arctic travel and high-altitude climbing. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summitted Everest in 1953. After that, you could no longer be the first person on top of Everest unless you had a time machine.

From then on the only way to be first on Everest was to up the ante. You could climb without Sherpas. You could climb without bottled oxygen. You could take a more difficult route. You could solo climb.

You might even raise the stakes even more, like Goran Kropp. He bicycled from Sweden to Nepal, climbed Everest alone and without oxygen, and then bicycled back to Europe. He later sailed from Sweden to Antarctica, para-skied to the South Pole, para-skied back to his boat, and sailed back to Sweden. As with the Everest adventure, he did the entire trip solo.

- Les

Zendo Deb said...

Nothing like a good laugh in the morning! Thanks (form a tecnology dependent slacker).

Anonymous said...

Well remember... there was that one guy who killed one whith his bare hands recently when it broke into his house...

Tam said...

" Teeth? You technology-dependent pansy."


Stop the voting, we have a winner. :)

Anonymous said...

And if you do some actual research, you will find that many primitive cultures only ate large game when they came upon it while scavenging; many of the Shoshoni peoples in my area ate nothing larger than rabbits, which they hit with a throwing stick. Deer and antelope were a rarity. They also subsisted on a lot of locusts and rodents.

Paul said...

As I crouched behind my improvised cover of a giant display can of green beens, I spotted my objective: a 5-pound package of ground chuck, resting in a small open-top refrigerator.

I began my sprint towards my prey, but doubts began springing to my mind. What if I step on a grape and fall? What if the beef is just bait, placed by something higher up on the food chain, who is waiting for my moment in the open? What if the beef has been contaminated prior to my arrival? What if there is blood leaking from the package? What if I get cut by one of those little staples on the end being bent out of shape?

My hunger emboldening me, I brushed my fears aside. After all, of what use is the kill without the thrill of the hunt, and what thrill would there be without an element of risk? I struggled briefly with my beefy game, then subdued him and made my way to the dairy section, where still more dangers awaited...

Goldwater's Ghost said...

I assume the individual deriding your use of teeth will not be utilizing his opposable thumbs, either.

Doing so would make him an evolution-dependant pansy.

Anonymous said...

Both thumbs tied behind my back, baby! Head butts only!

Paul said...

You're lucky to have a forehead! Why, back in my day, we would flap our jowls at the animal until, dazed, it fell over. And we liked it!

(Insert Four Yorkshiremen Clip Here)

OrangeNeck said...

@Tam.

OrangeNeck said...

LOL!!