The privilege and the problem

I am not a huge adherent of big-city living. However, I will say this of Edmonton: if you are a hunter it could be a lot worse living in a greater metropolitan area of approximately 1.2 million. Right on the periphery of our (creeping) suburbs exists some excellent opportunities to escape and indulge in the imperative of the hunt. Even living quite centrally I can be into publically accessible, good waterfowl wetlands within 35mins, big game in less than twice that. Online mapping tools and apps even deliver to you detailed directions for each of the multitude of public access lands close the city.

Furthermore, in Alberta we are not subject to onerous hunting licence requirements or lengthy exams, we don’t need to enter lottery draws in the hope of getting an opportunity to sit in a specific duck blind on a highly pressured public wetland in the hope that birds will pass that spot, and we don’t pay for access. All that you do is show up, find a safe spot that you think will work, toss out decoys and (try to) shoot birds. It’s that easy; we are that fortunate.

As a show of respect we have those amongst us who express their gratitude like this:

I really should have taken a better photo as the whole area was a mess of hulls, take-out cups, cans, an old chair, bags etc. I took out 2 bags of garbage and should have gone back for more.  As an insult to injury there were also 2 empty boxes of lead shot loads – this being illegal to shoot at migratory birds since 1999 (this blind is over water, so not sure what else they would be shooting at?)

More to the point, this is not a rare sight in Alberta. Runners, dog walkers, bird watchers et. al don’t see the hunters with integrity, they see this. If we don’t pursue excellence in our conduct, knowledge and duty to set an ‘ecological-example’ then hunting, and hunters, will lose.

© Brian Joubert

Video: Hunting and Bubye Valley Conservancy (Zimbabwe)

A very interesting video that deconstructs the logic of incentive, land use priorities and conservation, in a very clear manner. Lions saving rhinos and a whole set of interrelated management symbiosis. It is seldom these stories that we see on social media and ones that should perhaps be occasionally inserted between the strident calls to save wildlife, the calls that appear to infrequently extend beyond cyberspace.

There is room for critical discussion here, of course, but the process is undeniably a useful one.

http://www.hunterproud.com/?p=103

Enjoy

Controversy: Timbavati Rhino Hunting (South Africa)

This is an open letter from Timbavati Game Reserve Chairman Tom Hancock regarding the limited hunting of selected rhino in that reserve. A recent controversy erupted when it was ‘discovered’ (although it has proceeded quite openly for years) that amidst the current and alarming rhino poaching crisis in South Africa, white rhinos were being legally hunted in this flagship reserve along the western boundary of Kruger National Park. Accusations flew and social media exploded with vitriol.

1)      Should an individual’s personal revulsion to rhino hunting translate into ban or cessation? I understand someone’s personal aversion to hunting, or hunters, but do these sentiments equate to sound conservation polices? Ironically, some of the most respected and erudite conservationists say no, antipathy to rhino hunting should not translate into bans because properly conducted it is a tool that has served the species very well.

2)      It is clear that illegal horn traders have fronted as ‘legitimate’ clients with shady outfitters and there is no doubt that this ‘loophole’ is a serious threat to the industry and credible conduct. I agree that this is a serious problem, driving any current benefits towards a zero sum outcome.

The letter makes their case quite simply. Draw your own conclusions:

Myth Busting: Ammunition Impact and Fire Safety.

‘Sporting firearm ammunition is less of a risk to firefighters than many other household products’.

I had seen the short version of this SAAMI training video before (essentially the trailer) but not this highly informative version. Possibly the best antidote to the common myths that ammunition will create a ‘bomb’ if subjected to heat or impact is that in the absence of a chamber and means for a gas-seal, the effectiveness of ammo is massively reduced. Note how even a primer popping out in some of the examples is enough to prevent the bullet from exiting an unsupported, fired cartridge. This is not to say reloaders and shooters should not store ammo, powder and primers  lawfully and with care, but it is useful in understanding the physics of detonation and projectiles. They really did burn up a lot of ammunition!

Book Recommendation: "Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada" by R. Blake Brown

The value in books like “Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada” by R. Blake Brown lies in their potential contribution to civic and political debates about firearm legislation and the civil discourse on ‘gun-politics’. For this reason I can highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to further arm themselves with a meaningful and coherent foundation in the history and development of Canadian firearm legislation. Obviously Canadians will primarily benefit from this book but many of the associated issues are universal and the legal details are similar to other jurisdictions.

 

Brown (Associate Professor of History at St. Mary’s University, Halifax, N.S.), has neatly collated a treatise of Canadian firearm law history from pre-Confederation through to the contemporary, ongoing debates subsequent to Bill C-68. The book is a research work and as such is not intended to be a source of ‘entertainment’. That said it is not nearly as dryly academic as one would expect from a journal article for example and is peppered throughout with interesting quotes, anecdotes and art from news media, citizens and politicians. He gives thorough treatment to varied issues ranging from state support for rifle skills through to the emergence of sophisticated gun-control and gun-owners lobby groups at work in Canada today. Along the way he deals with issues such as early state sanctioned firearm ownership, concerns over youth and firearms, early disarmament schemes that were xenophobic, racist and classist, Canada’s early forms of registration and the evolution of licensing and modern legislative requirements.

Book Review: "Game Changer- Animal Rights and the Fate of Africa's Wildlife" by Glen Martin.

They tell of the baby elephant that was saved in a specific locale, but they don’t tell of the scores of other elephants in the region that were killed because of crop depredation or land tenure disputes. IFAW’s methods have thus proved effective in saving individual elephants, and for this their strategy is sound. Setting up elephant rescue centres is doable. But the larger mission implied in their work – “saving” Africa’s elephants – remains unfulfilled and may in fact be sabotaged by IFAW’s own work. The lavishing of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the suckling of baby elephants while locals see their maize crops razed and their cattle stomped flat by irrate pachyderms sends the familiar, loud , and dissonant message to rural Africans: too bad about you; this cute little elephant comes first.(Glen Martin, pg 200).

Alongside biology, pecuniary incentives and conservation sociology are ever more important core foundations in wildlife management and in the efforts to conserve Africa’s – and the planets’- wildlife. In Game Changer: Animal Rights and the Fate of Africa’s Wildlife, Glen Martin provides a thought provoking analysis of what he describes as the ‘ascendancy of animal rights based conservation policy’ and how it is driving the decline of many of Africa’s great game populations. The apotheosizing of Africa’s mega fauna as ‘untouchable’ has had perverse outcomes in many areas once rich in wildlife. While the reasons for decline in wildlife can stem from poaching, Malthusian population expansion and agrarian conflict, Martin highlights exactly how and why a hands-off legislative approach further compounds these threats and often provides a disincentive for local-level conservation efforts. If the people that live with and share the landscape with wildlife are divorced from conservation decision making processes, denied compensation for wildlife conflicts, edged out of wildlife-based incomes and generally  shut-off from legal and sustainable use they not only lose conservation incentives but often see wildlife as a menace to other land-based livelihoods. Simply put, the old adage of ‘if it pays it stays’, albeit often bandied about a bit casually, often underpins the most effective conservation policy.

Book Review: "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun" by Paul M. Barrett

 How did an unknown Austrian engineer who had barely ever touched a gun come to develop the most iconic modern handgun, with the largest market share in production today? Author Paul Barrett does an excellent job of tracking Glock’s meteoric rise from a Viennese suburb into a handgun empire that trounced the established monoliths of the American handgun industry, like Smith and Wesson. If you are interested in Glock’s, firearms, the gun industry and the wrangling’s of modern gun politics in America, you will thoroughly enjoy Glock.

I began reading this book with a basic knowledge of Glock’s history but Barrett provides a detailed account of the company’s character and inner workings, based on his research with industry insiders and Glock employees. One could say that Gaston Glock was a man who found himself in the right place at the right time, both in Austria and the US. The initially unassuming Austrian decided to compete for a government contract to supply pistols to the Austrian military. Lacking the infrastructural or a priori design path-dependency held by other companies, a factor later believed to have been a benefit as opposed to a constraint, he set about designing a unique handgun. His timing in the USA was also fortuitous – the late 80’s saw many police departments wanting to upgrade their duty side arms from predominantly 6 shot revolvers to higher capacity pistols. A number of high profile police shootouts that left the authorities feeling under-gunned precipitated this review of duty gun capabilities (many of these events also became slightly embellished).  Many in the US at that stage still saw ‘wonder 9’s’ as Euro-trash; the all-American 1911 .45 being the only pistol worthy of consideration. This alongside with the Glock’s unusual features and polymer frame meant that the pistol was initially met with scepticism. However it wasn’t just good timing that worked in Glock’s favour, the fact is that the pistol was, and remains, and very ergonomic, ultra-reliable and user-friendly handgun. It didn’t take the police long to see the light, in part because of the Glock’s capabilities and in part because of the company's innovations outside of pistol design.

'Fly Fish Stoke'

When it comes to making quality, aesthetically pleasing outdoor videos I have to hand it to the fly-fishing community, they really turn out some stimulating video...

Patagonia's Fly Fish Stoke

Rinella on water

Always striking how hunting is often seen as an egregious activity while many people who care about wildlife often allow things like golf courses to be established, relatively unchecked. 'Developments' run roughshod over wildlands with impunity, being sold as vital social goods. Ok let me not rant any further, this one just got me thinking...

Steve Rinella on water in the west

Stabbing TR in the back?

"Sportsmen" stab Theodore Roosevelt in the back

 

Some interesting issues coming to light in the US:

1)      Is the North American model of public wildlife access ‘socialist’? Yes, because highly gentrified wildlife for the elite is a great road to walk! NOT. Ideology trumps process and preferred outcomes all the time with rabid ideologues.

2)      Game disappearing from the western states? I am no expert but could that have to do with urban sprawl? The proliferation of ‘ranchettes’ on heavily subdivided family farms? Habitat degradation? Agricultural competition?

These strident privatization voices emitting from those with a political and economic incentive are concerning indeed…

© Brian Joubert

The zealotry for bone.

I saw this video posted online some time ago and it got me thinking about the issues of highly selective trophy-based management, as well as the ethics and politics surrounding it. Manipulating wildlife through selection is not new. The act of leaving a certain buck to breed trophy offspring is a common practice and certainly on the ‘lesser-end’ of manipulation; the animal also remains functionally wild. At the more objectionable end is the use of livestock breeding practices to farm fantastically bigger horns and antlers. I personally don’t mind the former but I think we lose something innate to hunting (and to being an honest hunter), when we embark on the latter, when we seek domestic trophies purely for the inch value. This is not the conservation of endangered species through intensive management and domestic captivity; it’s the acquiescence and surrender to the Record Book Religion.

Book Review: "The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance" by Tovar Cerulli

http://www.tovarcerulli.com/

Excerpt from the book: “…I saw beauty in my food. In salad greens, I saw the tiny, delicate leaves that first sprout from earth and seed. In strawberries, I saw the rain falling on Joey’s fields a couple miles down the road, and tasted the sun that warmed and fattened the fruit.

But in those same crop fields, I also saw missing forests and prairies. In tofu, I saw the rifles and shotguns used to plug deer in soybean fields. In grains, I saw the birds, mice, and rabbits sliced by combines. In cabbage, I saw caterpillars killed by insecticides, organic or not. I salad greens, I saw a whitetail cut open and dragged around the perimeter of a farm field, the scent of blood warning other deer not to eat the organic arugula and radicchio destined for upscale restaurants and grocery stores in San Francisco. In Joey’s kale and berries, I saw smoke-bombed [woodchuck] burrows.

Even in the vegetables from our garden –broccoli and green beans, lettuce and snap peas – I saw the wild grasses we uprooted, the earthworms we chopped with our shovels, the beetles I crushed between thumb and forefinger, the woodchucks I shot, and the dairy cows whose manure and carcasses fed the soil. In my own life and in the lives around me – heron and trout, hawk and hare, coyote and deer – I saw that the entire living breathing, eating world was more beautiful and more terrible than I had imagined. Like Richard, I saw that sentient beings fed on sentient beings”. Pgs246/7.

The above passage, for me, is an appropriate précis of the overarching lesson conveyed in Tovar Cerulli’s well written and though provoking book – The Mindful Carnivore. Through the personal narrative of his conversion from vegan to hunter, Cerulli paints a coherent picture of the ethical and biological rationale for this seemingly about-face decision.  What appears to be a transition between incompatible beliefs is shown to be the outcome of the same path to environmental enlightenment.

The Debutante Hunters - Sundance Film Festival

 Click the link below. A great clip about women hunters in South Carolina with some honest expression and real love for the hunt in its entirety (sorry, I couldn't embed the clip).

The heartfelt admission that 'it's like home' makes me think that those lessons and that ethic will be properly passed to her children...

http://screen.yahoo.com/sundance-2012-debutante-hunters-short-27874990.html

Zombie Max nonsense...

Seriously Hornady? A heretofore respectable and innovative company decides to dress up ammo like a dollar store Halloween product. The marketing video screams “These shooting enthusiasts are juvenile members of the 101 internet keyboard commando who fantasize about shredding zombies!” It’s a serious disservice to responsible weapon ownership and an insult to those serious about their shooting sports.

Zombies? Shooting humanoid targets? Revelling is splattering gore? Is this message to the non-shooting public providing any PR gains?

Disappointing to say the least. It sure as hell doesn’t represent me or my interests AT ALL, nor those of many others I know.

© Brian Joubert

Cheap and accurate?

I have been hearing via assorted tall tales and general bull in the shooting universe that Savage’s new-ish budget iron, the Axis (nee Edge), can turn some pretty fine accuracy. I have handled a few but not shot any, until today. The reports of trigger pulls that could budge a hippo are true, as is the general ‘plasticiness’ of the piece. However for $299 ($329 gets you the package with a set of generic weaver style mounts and a Bushnell ‘Sharpshooter’ 3-9x40 scope) this must be, without a doubt, the best value going. Then again, the other budget Savage offerings like the Stevens 200 and 111/11 FCXP3 also have a reputation for cost defying accuracy).

A horse named Ovis: a sheep story

Ovis (C. Craig)

Well his name isn't really Ovis, it’s actually Taco, but for the six days he carried my butt up and down steep rocky trails we didn’t know that – he was borrowed from someone else you see. ‘New Horse’ was his more used alias but ‘Ovis’ seemed fitting for a horse that carried me on my first attempt at hunting Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis).

My interest in pursuing these icons of mountain game has remained on simmer for the last few years and I should admit this with some self-criticism. This is because the constraints on sheep hunting in Alberta are essentially self-created. Barring a few areas with licences on a draw-only basis, most sheep can be pursued by residents of the province with an over-the-counter tag. That’s right, you buy a tag, lace up your boots and pursue Big Horn rams! Of course these licenses are for ‘Trophy Rams’ only, limiting the hunter to rams with a very strictly controlled minimum horn length (tips must pass an imaginary line that extends from the front of the horn base past the front of the eye). Legal rams are therefore not exactly a Sunday morning doddle to bag but hey, only ones ambition, skills and physical condition separate you from pursuing one of the apogees of the hunters’ realm. Why didn’t I try this earlier?

Tree Saddle - a better tree stand?

Having never used a tree stand before, I began considering one after taking the leap into archery this year. Whitetail are the most prevalent quarry in the areas that I hunt and those in the know advised that hunting elevated would be the best tactic if I hoped to tag an archery deer.


After considering a climber, hang-on or ladder stand and weighing them against the usefulness of a ground blind, I was introduced to the idea of a tree saddle by a fellow on a local outdoor forum. The Trophyline Tree Saddle is essentially a suspended sling seat built into a fall protection harness. The unit incorporates a lineman’s belt for safer climbing and a second independent webbing strap that acts as an adjustable anchor once wrapped around the tree. One climbs the tree using any of the step systems you would use for a regular stand. There is no safety harness as your ‘stand’ is essentially a safety harness with a sling seat. The seat on my ‘Ambush’ model is made from heavy duty mesh.

Outdoor-sports: A green audit.

Most of us involved in outdoor sports take an interest in environmental or green issues. That paddlers, climbers, surfers, skiers, hikers et al are environmentally conscious, seems to be accepted as axiomatic.
 Despite these stated environmental concerns there is often a juxtaposition in our revealed behaviour, myself included.

Now far from intending to bore you with the platitudes of my naval gazing, I think that my anecdotal ‘green audit’ has some value. Firstly, we normally all agree that initiating newcomers into outdoor lifestyles is pressingly important in our ever increasingly nature-disconnected lifestyles. Furthermore, the assumption is that if people develop an interest in the outdoors the spinoff will naturally be a concern for conservation and the environment. For the most part I strongly agree with this postulate but am sceptical of any claims to an unquestionable, minimized environmental footprint from this consciousness.

Secondly I want to briefly contrast the footprints of my two main outdoor passions one considered ‘non-consumptive’ – kayaking, and the other -
 hunting, considered ‘consumptive’ of the environment (and nothing short of an environmental crime by some who espouse green-living ideals).

I will touch on three areas of comparison and perhaps it will motivate you to reflect, if you already haven’t, on these issues . An important caveat: I am not out to sully the sports or lifestyle of anyone or any activity. This is simply an open and critical admission based on my reality and observations. Both kayaking and hunting have been central to my life and ideology for a long time. The lessons they have taught me are invaluable and the places and people they have introduced me to have often been life changing.

What tripped YOUR trigger?

I have often wondered if other hunters ever experienced revelatory moments that were a distinct catalyst in their decision to take up hunting. This is especially true of those who came to this decision largely per chance or after an largely isolated epiphany, one that arose without any clear influences. After some discussion with a new friend, author Tovar Cerulli, I spent time thinking about my own hunting and outdoor influences. Tovar has some excellent and well researched insights into ‘adult onset hunters’, many of these types of new hunters come to the activity without the benefit of a community to influence their choice. This parallels my experience, albeit in my youth.


I have always been passionate about being outside. I was drawn to angling at age 6 which I believe was the result of being entranced with all the bits in a tackle box I rooted out in my late grandfather’s garage. My family were certainly pro – outdoors but no-one in my immediate family was an angler, shooter or hunter. Both parents and my older brother were also very supportive of my often annoying compulsion to spend seemingly uncomfortable hours in or alongside water bodies with a rod in hand.

Dear Anas undulata, thanks for tripping my trigger!

The birth of my desire to shoot remains a fuzzy mystery to me. I was exposed to it a few times and always relished the opportunity to shoot and accept the responsibility to do so safely. By the onset of my teens I was fairly interested in it but by no means passionate, until the revelation happened…

My gang of normally-muddy buddies and I used to fish for carp in a small stream that ran through our local suburb. Late one afternoon while waiting

Archery form?

OK archers and bowhunters, have at me.

I got this idea from the SoCal Bowhunter blog a while back and thought it was a good idea to stimulate comments from the outdoor blogosphere.

Take a look at these admittedly poor quality iPhone photos and video and critique my form. We hear so many opinions on archery form I would be interested to hear you thoughts.

I was thinking my shoulders could be flatter and taking advice from a Chuck Adams column, my leading foot could be more open, pointing a little more towards the target?

Fire Away!

 © Brian Joubert