instead of Uggs, mukluk boots

[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.

[Crankin]

When I lived in Az all of the male teachers eagerly awaited hunting season.
I find the colder the climate, the less people are going to get upset about fur.
Yeah, and thank you Irulan about the deer. We have the same problem. One almost totaled DH's car a few years ago.
To each her own. I eat meat and dairy and almost everything else.

[rebeccaC]

I could throw a BIG rant into this …….but as Crankin wrote..to each her own….just living by example to those around me works for me.

[shootingstar]

It's great that over the past few decades that we have way more choice of man-made materials (some which are petroleum based) for clothing. And I take every advantage like everyone else here.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/can...s%20of%20probe I personally had no clue about the cost of living in the Arctic/far north areas until I visited the area.

Alot of these people are low income and isolated. There are hardly any roads for safe driving/skidooing up in northern Canada.

They are setting up a greenhouse in Iqualuit...but of course, not every local is going to be in the arrangement (whatever it is).

It is true being vegetarian...it a privilege and choice...it really is if a region, has nearby sources of fresh local meat.

I know for certain my mother would have been furious at me, if I suggested as a family we went vegetarian or grow more garden produce. Would I burden someone with a big family of children with yet another requirement to figure it out? We, did grow something--kohl rabi. None of us at the time were gardeners to figure out better veggie growing conditions.

Whenever my partner goes cycling across rural parts of CAnada, I hear directly from him, his visits to the local corner store, etc. and lack of enough choice for fresh veggies, fruits. This is the 21st century. I guess people burn gas and drive 100-200 km. for their fresh groceries (including meat if they wish).

[rebeccaC]

shootingstar…do you know if the Nutrition North Canada program is helping much with the fresh and dried fruits and vegetables in those area’s? Do you know if the greenhouse is being funded by them?

[shootingstar]

shootingstar…do you know if the Nutrition North Canada program is helping much with the fresh and dried fruits and vegetables in those area’s? Do you know if the greenhouse is being funded by them?

I have no idea.

Here is a Canadian lawyer who lives in Iqualuit, capital city (town) for Nunavut on Baffin Island in the far Arctic on food pricing, both fair and gouging: http://sybaritica.me/2012/09/07/nuna...esee-papatsie/

(I like reading blogs of the lawyers who serve in legal aid for the locals in those communities....strong advocacy and passion for the locals and situation up there.)

[OakLeaf]

I guess people burn gas and drive 100-200 km. for their fresh groceries (including meat if they wish).

I'm not sure what the 21st century has to do with it, especially in rural areas. We haven't figured out how to teleport yet, or how to synthesize food from a machine in the wall!

Having lived in a rural area myself in the past ... people drive those distances for dry and canned goods, once a month or so. They grow their own vegetables and put back for the winter. They keep laying hens, and when a hen is past laying age, they have chicken stew. For meat, most people fish and hunt game birds, and typically a few people will raise feeder calves and sell freezer beef to the neighbors, whole or half, when they're butchered.

[shootingstar]

I'm sure there are people here in TE, like a good close friend I have who lives in a rural area..town of 2,000 people.

She is single, lives alone and has to manage a 4 bedroom house (inherited from her parents now dead). She doesn't grow much of a garden. She goes to regular grocery store to get her meat...just like us. Buys some produce from local farmers' stands. Not even a farmers' market. She lives in one of southern Ontario's veggie farming areas, near the U.S. border.

Meanwhile my partner does complain frequently of many small villages/towns that have lousy veggie, fruit choices..more often than not. CAnada IS so friggin' huge, like the U.S. ... yup, massive stockpiling when driving over such distances for food shopping.

[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.)