Proof -- Dateline: Moab, Utah Taken at Site
He'd hunted big game for years all over the United States. Hunting was a way of life to him. But, in all those years, he'd never shot a buffalo. He'd put his name in for the lottery that gave out yearly licenses to shoot buffalo, but year after year the winning number had eluded him. As he failed, again and again, his need to add a buffalo, an American bison, to his life bag grew to obsessive proportions. Finally, he could stand it no longer. He determined that he would buy a couple of young buffalo, raise them, and then shoot them. It seemed like a plan.
When the buffalo purchase was completed the question arose about where these buffalo were to be raised. He wasn't a rich man and the cost to two baby buffalo maxed out his credit cards. The only viable option was to raise them on his front lawn in Moab, Utah. Accordingly, the buffalo were delivered and put out to pasture, or "out to lawn" as the case may be.
Besides grass the lawn also contained, courtesy of his kids, a couple of soccer balls. Shortly after the buffalo became his lawn ornaments, he was out walking among them when one of them discovered a soccer ball and butted it over to him with its nose. Without thinking he kicked it back towards the other buffalo, who passed it to the first buffalo who butted it back to him. An hour or so of passing and kicking the soccer ball between man and buffalo ensued.
When he went out on his lawn the next morning, they were waiting for him. One seemed to be playing midlawn while the other hung back by the water trough which had become some sort of goal. The forward buffalo butted the ball towards him. Without thinking he returned the kick over the head of the forward. No good. With a speed belying its bulk, the defensive buffalo moved quickly and butted it through his legs to the porch. When it bounced off the barbecue, they seemed to do a brief victory prance. The game was afoot.
Day after day, week after week, the strange lawn ritual with the soccer ball went on and on. In truth, he had long since pulled far ahead of the buffalo in goals, but what do buffalo know about keeping score?
In time, however, the hunting season came around. He looked out of his house on the first morning and saw the buffalo waiting for him, the soccer ball in front of the forward, the defensive buffalo pacing slowly back and forth by the water trough. It came to him then that he could never shoot them. It would spoil the season -- and the soccer season, in the deserts of Utah, is never really over.
On a hot afternoon soon after, he looked out his window and discovered, much to his delight and his neighbors' shock, that the two buffalo on his lawn were indeed male and female.
Now it is two years later and he has four buffalo on his lawn. He doesn't hunt anything anymore. Says he's lost the taste for it. His old hunting buddies come by every so often and razz him about the buffalo.
"You started with two and couldn't shoot them," one said. "Now you got four, and next year you're gonna have five. What are you going to do then?"
He went to his garage and came back with a basketball.
Posted by Vanderleun at February 18, 2017 2:35 PM
I see nothing wrong with that at all.
I went through my own conversion long ago.
Yes, it is my own personal cognitive dissonance and I deal with it the best I can for I see no solution.
I eat meat but I'm unwilling to kill it.
I imagine when the larder becomes definitely bare and no way to fill it I may change my mind, but that's exactly what it'll take.
Posted by: ghostsniper at February 18, 2017 1:49 PMI agree. I hate the killing. I had to kill a chicken once that had been bitten by a dog and was shivering in shock. She laid her head down on the block for me. My GOD. I think that is the only thing beside fish.
Posted by: pbird at February 18, 2017 3:23 PMWhen I was in HS I had one of the finest duck dogs in the territories a Springer Spaniel, not only would he retrieve but would flush ducks from the rushes. One day he flushed some ducks and we got some clean shots off. What he brought back was some of the most beautiful creatures on God's planet. I was never sure what kind of ducks they were but it left me wondering why or how I could kill something so wonderful. Me & Prince never duck hunted again.
Posted by: tonynoboloney at February 18, 2017 9:41 PMI've hunted and fished all of my life and while I enjoy the experience immensely, I've never received a single note of pleasure from the killing aspect of it all.
But I still participate in the blood sports and my family and I gratefully eat our venison and fish, with a constant but unspoken awareness of what was required to take it and process it.
I wonder if that awareness and sentiment exists among the non-hunting/fishing crowd when they sit to a steak, chop or roast, lobster dinner or a bucket of fried chicken?
Posted by: Jack at February 19, 2017 7:55 AMNo, Jack, it does not, and I'm speaking from experience. I don't normally think about the animal when I eat meat of any kind. I was in Kroger recently and while standing by the meat dept I was amazed at the amounts they had available and at that moment I did think about all of the animals that were raised to be killed. I had purchased a couple of salmon planks.
When the average person looks at their McSquish-burger they don't associate it with an animal. They just suck it down and grab another.
Posted by: ghostsniper at February 19, 2017 9:28 AMI was raised hunting ducks and pheasants. My Mom cooked 'em up and we ate hearty after a good hunt. But I couldn't shoot one today. I think there's a big difference between animals raised for meat, and animals in the wild. I see it like this:
If we didn't eat meat, companies wouldn't raise chickens and beef cattle. So those creatures would never even exist, if they hadn't been created to serve our needs. We brought them into existence out of necessity. If we didn't, we'd still be hunting wild animals to put food on the table.
Which is preferable: being raised for food, or never existing at all?
I vote for existence—with the caveat that we owe it to those creatures to treat them well while they're alive, and to end it quickly and humanely when the time comes.
And who is to say they don't get some enjoyment and pleasure out of the only existence they've ever known? Who's to say they don't have fun once in a while? Scientists have reported that lab mice squeal with pleasure around other mice they like; it's their equivalent of laughing. Maybe chickens have fun clucking at each other, too. And maybe buffalo have fun playing soccer...
Of course, YMMV.
Posted by: Smokey at February 19, 2017 8:00 PMGo eat a wild animal.
I dare ya.
See if you can stand it.
I can't.
Unless it's heavily masked, like in chili or something.
I used to call it a *gamey* flavor but I've come to realize the flavor comes from being so lean, very little fat.
If you cook a bison burger on the grill like you would a beef burger it will be dry and flavorless because of the lack of fat. So to retain the flavor you have to cook it very rare which then changes the overall flavor which I do not like.
Same idea with a wild pheasant compared to factory raised chickens with giant Monsanto breasts.
The pheasants breasts are built for flying and are more muscular and less flavorful, though the flavor is genuine.
The Monsanto breasts are inflicted with hormones all sorts of poisons to create bulk and more profit, with zero nutritional value.
If you eat better quality, more expensive food, you'll find that you require less, nutritionally.
Your mouth will still be hungry but your body will be sated, so you will have to train your mouth to shut itself, as it were.
Market saturation causes your mouth to be in a constant state of hunger though your body is not.
So even if you eat minimal quality food that is sufficient for maintaining your body's requirement exposure to marketing will cause a constant struggle within you and you will lose, gain weight, etc.
Discover the 2 types of hunger within yourself and learn how to control them rather than them controlling you.
Your life lesson for the day.
That should have been taught to you in 3rd grade health class but instead you were taught how to roll a rubber on a cucumber for your gay-tranny 8 yo communist part time luvver because your parent would rather be a friend than a parent.
Onward.
{shwew, all that typin' made my mouth hungry, so while it owns me, I'll go lay waste to a whole package of cookies and chase them down the pipe with a 93oz soda water} righttttttt.........
Posted by: ghostsniper at February 20, 2017 7:24 AM
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