instead of Uggs, mukluk boots

[OakLeaf]

I think it's less the shearling and more "fur from cute, non-domestic animals"

And the convenient forgetting of what happens to animals when you buy petroleum-derived clothing.

[Owlie]

And the convenient forgetting of what happens to animals when you buy petroleum-derived clothing.

Well, yes.

On the other hand, it's much harder to throw fur in the washing machine...

For shoes, leather all the way. There's a reason it's still being used. The fur...well, I dunno. If it's byproduct, and someone's eating the rabbit, I'm okay with it. Same with any hide or fur, really.

[shootingstar]

Hey, Oak good point but where I live..in a province that is so frickin' tied/in bed with to the oil production (which include tar sands), I probably wouldn't overfocus on that line of argument in my part of country....Alberta is also Canada's biggest beef producer. Lots of beef/large steak eaters in our area of country.

Not that I consider myself part of the pack..when I lived in Ontario for several decades of life plus B.C. where fish and seafood are plentiful.

There are limits for me..I was a bit horrified that sport fishing includes catching and throwing the fish back into water. Really? The fish is already hurt..and probably won't survive well thereafter.

When my present boss blithely told us and loud enough for other employees to hear, that her hubby taught her daughter how to shoot deer. They go on hunting trips --father-daughter. I really didn't want to hear that..she (boss) is born, grown up and lived in Alberta all her life. They do um...eat the deer.

But I honestly don't agree with urban folks hunting deer --as a sport. Better way up northern Canada, where it's so frickin' expensive to get fresh food. I hope people understand how flippin' expensive it is to have fresh veggies and fruits, shipped in the far Arctic. So people do have to hunt animals there.

Off topic: I have NEVER thrown shoes into the washing machine. I think the thought never entered my mother's head. I'm trying to envision washing running shoes for her 6 children in washing machine. Just after aload of sheets and cloth diapers? (Seriously?) We put the shoes in a bucket of water. But then we rarely washed shoes. We never walked around inside house with outdoor shoes. (And I ask guests to take off their shoes in our home.)

[lph]

Just curious - why do you have a problem with someone hunting for sport if they actually eat the meat? If you eat meat yourself (and I do, too, don't get me wrong) you "hunt" too, you just don't actually hold the gun. And especially if you eat regular chicken or pork, the total suffering involved is significantly higher in store-bought meat - in my opinion.

I don't hunt myself, but I try to buy game whenever I can, sometimes in stores, sometimes from colleagues who hunt deer and moose.

[shootingstar]

I seriously wonder how much people from big cities hunt...meanwhile with their gun collections.... (which shockingly was revealed after we had a river flood. The amount of guns kept for safety by the police when people were evacuated from a town south of our city. Not far from us.)

Lph, the issue of gun ownership and hunting is abit tied to my tendencies for gun control. If it's difficult and expensive to get the food, then hunting, fishing can be viable.

[lph]

I get the gun control bit. Gun ownership here is mainly hunting rifles and strictly controlled, hand guns are very rare. There's a strong traditional component to hunting here, to the extent that some rural counties will postpone all administrative meetings in September until after moose hunting season :-) And quite a few urbanites who have grown up in rural places will go home to hunt in the fall.

[ride4fun]

I hunt and I ride a bike, in fact we just bought Fat Bike's to help get us into hunting areas and pack out any game we get.
Sorry ,no wait I am not sorry I hunt for my food I am sorry other people get so worked up over someone else style of living or eating. LOL
Hunting and hunters do a lot for conservation.
I find the subject of hunting and fishing much like the debate of the best bike to ride. If you like it , it's legal and it works for you do it.
I would have a very hard time giving up my biking or my hunting and to be able to combine the two is great, I think we need to be carful about finger pointing over such things.

[Irulan]

.I was a bit horrified that sport fishing includes catching and throwing the fish back into water. Really? The fish is already hurt..and probably won't survive well thereafter.

An astute fisherman knows how to catch and release properly. You use a barbless hook, that is easily removed and then there a technique to place them back into the water with a minimum of shock. True sportsmen/women don't waste animals. Some people might be surprised to know how much conservation work and habitat/ecosystem work is done by hunters.
Sure there are unsportsmanlike like sportsmen/women out there - every subset of humanity has the good and bad guys. I wonder how many of you "oh don't kill the poor things" people actually know hunters who feed their families with the game they kill? Or know hunters than contribute time and money to conservation and habitat protection? Have ever seen how much work it is to hunt? Seen a bow hunter in action (amazing patience and skill - this is a real art) In the case of the mukluks, most native peoples have a hunting tradition that goes back thousands of years. Are you going to deny them their heritage? In the meantime, feral deer are overrunning my neighborhood. They are starving due to overpopulation.They get hit by cars all the time, eat everything in the front yard, obstruct traffic by standing in the road - and I live in the city. I only wish my bow hunting neighbor could take a few of them out.

[Irulan]

ride4fun,
When I first moved to the rocky mtns from California waaaay back in my errant youth, I was a naive young hippy. We moved to Wyoming, where my landlord there was rancher and elk hunter. I learned from him just how much conservation work hunters do, and what good stewards of the land most hunters are - and it blew my mind, in a good way. I had no idea.

[Owlie]

Just curious - why do you have a problem with someone hunting for sport if they actually eat the meat? If you eat meat yourself (and I do, too, don't get me wrong) you "hunt" too, you just don't actually hold the gun. And especially if you eat regular chicken or pork, the total suffering involved is significantly higher in store-bought meat - in my opinion.

I don't hunt myself, but I try to buy game whenever I can, sometimes in stores, sometimes from colleagues who hunt deer and moose.

I guess what I disagree with is the macho posturing part of hunting, but that's a very small subset and I think is played up by the media. If you kill it and eat it and happen to decide to have its head taxidermied, I have no problem with it. (Keeps the deer population down--my only concern would be chronic wasting disease!)

[OakLeaf]

What Owlie and Irulan said. Don't forget that since we wiped out all the other large predators in most of North America, humans are the only predators of deer.

Not that the game laws in most of the US encourage responsible culling of the herd. And not that they *don't* encourage macho posturing. I think that unfortunately, among gun hunters at least, that's way more common than Owlie suggests. If the gun season weren't so short, IMO there wouldn't be such a hoorah of people - yeah, mostly men - taking off work to "get their deer," having not aimed a firearm for the other 50 weeks of the year ...


(And as far as food shopping in rural areas ... I'm very surprised that a town of 2,000 is too small to have a full-service grocery store within 100 km. I was thinking about towns with populations of 100 to 500.)

[shootingstar]

Oak --you forgot the bears in North America --deer predators. There's enough of them in various parts of North America.

It's great a lot more people are vegetarians --meaning for years. That's real commitment which like cycling ...just becomes part of daily life.
I've scaled down a lot from having meat nearly every dinner to several times a month ...now like this for past 15 years or so. It was more just eating less meat for health reasons and just saving costs.

[TrekDianna]

What Owlie and Irulan said. Don't forget that since we wiped out all the other large predators in most of North America, humans are the only predators of deer.

Oh, not here. We have a cougar who kills deer on our property about once a week and I see cougar killed deer on my running/hiking trails just as often.

[lph]

I guess what I disagree with is the macho posturing part of hunting, but that's a very small subset and I think is played up by the media. If you kill it and eat it and happen to decide to have its head taxidermied, I have no problem with it. (Keeps the deer population down--my only concern would be chronic wasting disease!)

Ok, I just wanted to tell this - last winter a friend and I went halves on a third of a moose (these are BIG creatures) that a co-worker had shot. I wish I could post a photo, but this hunting co-worker is 24, petite, a little shy, cute as a button, has long glossy dark hair down to her waist, wears make-up, stylish clothes and boots with heels every day, and has guys falling over her wherever she goes. She's also a bureaucrat like me. She loves to hunt moose and is very skilled at it. I rather doubt she has the taxidermied head of anything anywhere.

I don't the like macho look-I-can-kill-things mindset either, but for many people it's really not about that at all :-)

[Crankin]

Great visual image, lph.
I know this will probably piss some people off, but my neighborhood decided to try to find a way to solve the increasing deer problem we have. There are about 30 homes on our hill, and all are far off the street, in the woods. Most people do not have yards in the traditional sense, i.e. little lawns. People do have gardens, shrubs, etc. The deer come down one side of the hill, where we have plants, cross our driveway, and down the other side of the hill, onto the street. On the way, they eat all of our hostas and other plants. We use deer scram (a mix of chili pepper, dried coyote blood) to keep them away. Anyway, the neighborhood decided to hire bow hunters, to come and cull the herd. Each individual landowner has to give permission. I didn't see the presentation they made, but DH did and we signed the permission. Based on the strong opinions of several of the people who live here, I was surprised by this, but it really has been an issue. As I said, DH's car had thousands of dollars of damage a few years ago, and was in the body shop for 2 months from a deer. I have narrowly missed being hit while on my bike, a very scary experience.