instead of Uggs, mukluk boots

[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.

[Pax]

If I had more money, I would lust after...a beautiful pair of mukluks.

I've always wondered how suede-like leather would hold up in slushy snow. Some of those designs are so lovely. The snow in our region does tend to be drier..but not all the time. But there's a pair that full leather grain. And they are lined for warmth. I would wear a dress coat to work with that too... (Really, I'm past walking with stylish higher boot heel in the winter among rocky ice and snow.)
And I didn't need to look to an off-shore company, for unique winter boots....
http://store.manitobah.ca/collections/mukluks

My mom and I had matching mukluks when I was a kid. My grandparents lived in Alaska and sent them to us, SOOOOO warm!

[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?

[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.)

[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.

[OakLeaf]

When someone sights ONE black bear in most of the USA, it's a major event. Something like 120,000 white-tailed deer are harvested each year in each STATE. I'd be surprised if black bears hunt deer - are you sure of that? They're not much bigger than deer ...

Grizzlies, like wolves and large cats, not only are rare in modern times, but inhabit only a very small range.

[Irulan]

Some people hunt every season - upland game, duck, deer, elk, moose - each has its own season. For the hunters I know, and I know a lot of them, it's an ongoing activity, not something reserved for those two weeks out of the year that the not-real hunters go apesh*t about hunting.

In the west at least, bears are not a significant predator of deer, although they are known to take fawns.Cougars, coyotes and wolves are the main predators. I understand this may be different in the central/north central N America, as compared to the western states/provinces.

And no, I"m not a hunter. Many of my clients and people in my social circle and larger community are.

[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.