Surprise, Surprise and What's Wrong With Us?

Surprise, surprise, I am still around but I haven’t posted anything in weeks because--well--I didn’t want to write!  That, in itself, is a surprise because for 40+ years I have always had something that I wanted to write about, but for weeks now I haven’t wanted to write about several outdoor related events that made the national news. I know my reluctance is not writer’s block because when I have found myself on a deadline I was able to get the assignment written, but I couldn’t pen a decent blog post. What makes that reluctance to write surprising is that the issues I have been thinking about, often in great detail and even digging into the issues with additional research, are timely, relevant, and important to all of us who enjoy fishing, hunting and shooting. However, every time I tried to write a draft of a post I became so discouraged that I would put down my pen and turn to working in my yard and garden.

Some might argue that I have been in a slump brought on by the spring weather, or some malady.  I think my reluctance to write has been a response to the sheer idiocy that has been exhibited by so many of the outdoor media’s celebrities, and outdoor professionals (guides and outfitters).   Let’s be honest, a significant number of these people have behaved in ways that are appalling at the very least. If you go online and begin counting up the game violations by these people you quickly realize we’ve got a problem and it is best expressed in the immortalized words of Strather Martin and Paul Newman: “what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”  The failure is that too many outdoor celebs and professionals are starting to believe their own press releases and from that they are expecting a “bye” when their actions violate the law.  What is troubling beyond the actual “criminal act” they are charged with is that they have violated the trust between themselves, their fans, and society as a whole. These miscreants have forgotten that the men and women who are the anglers and hunters of our society most often carry out their activity without any other eyes watching over them, and they do so ethically and honestly, exactly the way they expect others to conduct themselves in similar situations. The vast majority of outdoor men and women are aware that society has entrusted them, through the hunting licenses and the premise of a right to hunt, with an honor system that the game laws will be honored. This is the very foundation of the protection of the right to hunt--it is based entirely on the ethical action of the individual. Sometimes there is a collision between what the ethical behavior is and what “needs” to be done, and when that happens we must make a choice that is based on the most favorable outcome. For a person to follow that principle in the field is not a part time choice but one that dictates all of the actions of the individual, but here is the sticking point: the action must be entirely self started and self completed even if others are present to observe the action. If a person will act outside what is ethical or “need,” regardless of the presence or lack of presence of anyone to observe the action, then is it reasonable to assume that person’s actions are not unusual but part of a pattern?  I believe it is, and for evidence of the truth of that belief one needs only to review some of the court documents pertaining to the outdoor celebrity miscreants to see their pattern of game violations.

I am sure that some of you will wonder why I should care so much and my answer to you is that we, all of us who love the outdoors and fishing/hunting, must care because their actions taint all of us in the eyes of nonparticipants.  Then, when the time comes (as it invariably does) for the general public to vote on a hunting related issue, the pro hunting groups must overcome a negative image generated by the miscreants’ actions. When we try to use the argument that more that 95-percent of all anglers and hunters are ethical and do follow the game laws and the principles of good sportsmanship the response is often, “how do we know?”

The fact is that we can only know our own actions and assume the actions of others are equally ethical. We cannot know how often the celeb that makes the news for game violations or other actions violates the law or is unethical. The tragic truth is that the rest of us must bear the burden of “their” guilt and consequently redouble our efforts to maintain our right to hunt. In a time when the politics of hunting is getting more segmented and the anti-hunting/gun elements have an increasingly well funded (although still historically, culturally and ethically inaccurate) argument, we cannot afford to continue supporting the miscreant celebrities of our industry. 

If an outdoor celebrity cannot gather the footage or sound bites they need for their programs within the law and abide by the angling or hunting ethics, but knowingly violate the law to get their bites, then they do not deserve our support, whether it is watching/listening to their broadcasts, or buying their products.  Yet, a sizable portion of the angler and hunter population continues to support them to the point of verbally trouncing anyone who speaks out against the celebrity! Case in point is Ted Nugent. Numerous editors and even the National Rifle Association have all remained silent about Nugent’s behavior and when asked why, we discover it is because Nugent’s fans are ready to rip into anyone who speaks out or writes against Nugent and they are afraid that condemning Nugent’s actions will “rock the boat.” They are unwilling to risk losing readers or members. In short, membership fees and subscribers are more important than the future of the outdoors and Second Amendment!

What is this drive by these fans to give celebrities more room to maneuver, even when those maneuverings are detrimental to all of us? 

I do not have an answer. This much I do know; if we are going to continue giving them “passes” for their misbehavior eventually we’re going to pay a much higher price. These men (and women) may have paid the court imposed prices for their actions, but that price alone does not repair the damage they have done to the nonparticipant’s perception of the outdoor community.

A final thought on this troublesome issue has to do with the notion that a person can pile up good deeds and be forgiven for any of their trespasses. Without burrowing into the philosophy of  “good” and “good actions” let it be sufficient to say that in the real world, regardless of how many times a celebrity reminds us that he or she has taken dying children, or wounded veterans, on hunting or fishing trips, the fact remains that the celebrity has violated the law, the ethics, and the true philosophy of the outdoor sports--a fact that cannot be repaired or erased by the public spectacle of “good deeds” but only by the offender’s public contrition. They need to let their “good deeds” stand alone and not use sick children and wounded veterans as a public bag balm to hide the effects of their actions. glg

Friendships Forged by Hunting

            I’ve been lazy.  Okay, so I haven’t been “really” lazy, but I’ve been doing things that have a higher priority than my writing projects.  First, and most importantly, my friend Chas (The Southern Rockies Nature Blog, http://natureblog.com/) arrived on October 2 for four days of duck and grouse hunting.  We would have hunted the four days but I had to go to the VA hospital for my post cardiac therapy on one day and Chas graciously went along.  By the time I was through and we were back in Finley the day was shot.  Other than that one trip to Fargo we were able to hunt every day. 

            The great thing is that this year Chas got to take home a few ducks.  Not enough to fill a freezer but enough so he could know that he shot at, and hit some ducks.

            Chas and I first hunted together in the autumn of 1979 and it was a dove hunt that morphed into an elaborate dinner that has become a part of the lore of my personal history with Soldier of Fortune Magazine.  How that happened isn’t the point of this post, what is the point is that from that first dove hunt on to last week’s hunting Chas and I have hunted together at least one long weekend nearly every autumn, and will continue to do so as long as we can.  Of course, there have been a few hiccups along the way and several seasons were lost to work, but there have been more wonderful memories than disappointments, and a few of those memories are the fodder for some of the stories in my next collection of short stories--with names changed--of course.

            Whenever Chas and I have hunted together there has never been a competition between us.  We’ve never compared the number of birds in our game bags or tried to measure tail feathers.  We don’t even compare the number of shots each one of us takes for each bird killed!  Those details are not important to us. 

            I also derive a secondary benefit from our hunts--I bounce ideas off Chas.  I’ve always been pleased that someone of his intellect is open to exploring my zany off-the-wall ideas.  He is never derogatory or dismissive of what I propose and often the nudge he provides is enough to push my idea onto firmer ground where I can develop it more fully.  That’s the power of a true friendship, but more importantly, in this case, it is indicative of the sort of bonds that are often formed between people who fish and hunt together.  Over the decades since Chas and I first hunted doves in Colorado I’ve developed many, many other friendships, but I can honestly say that only one other friendship has the same strength as the one I have with Chas, that is with Robert K. Brown, whom I met just a few weeks before meeting Chas.  Like Chas, Brown and I met outside the realm of the hunt but the strong bonds of friendship were sealed while we were hunting. 

            Most of my other strong friendships (though none to the level of Chas and Brown); were developed because of fishing or hunting.  I believe that it is because fishing and hunting are two basic human activities that were once essential to survival that we form such strong and long lasting friendships with other anglers and hunters.  Every experience in the outdoors, shared with a friend, weaves fibers of trust that are not unlike the long fibers of steel that become the massive cables holding up bridges.  But what happens when competition is added to the experience?  Does competition become a corrosive that erodes the fibers, ultimately weakening them until they pull apart and the structure collapses under its own weight?  Even Hemingway, who thrived on competition, recognized its dangers and it became one of the foundational elements of Green Hills of Africa, his hunting masterpiece.

            Today, competitive fishing and hunting dominates much of outdoor television’s programming.  No matter how much “we” moan and complain about the programming, millions of Americans watch the programs, some of them as religiously as Americans once tuned in to Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It To Beaver.   I am curious as to how many viewers leave their favorite fishing or hunting program determined to catch as many fish (or one as big) as the host, or have convinced themselves they can kill a whitetail buck or other big game animal that will surpass the trophy their much admired host kills every Saturday morning, and are then discouraged to learn it isn’t as easy as they thought?  Does this discouragement turn the neophyte trying to glean helpful knowledge into a non-participant?  

The most recent entry into the competitive world is “Fantasy Hunting,” an online game in which participants select a team of hunters to score points on the game killed and win prizes.  If one were to ask “What’s next?” my answer is simple: “I have no idea.”  Somehow we’ve now gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. (Field and Stream, Fantasy Hunting)

Without the warm campfires, muddy bogs, the smell of wet dogs and the coppery smell of the cooling blood as we dress our game, to remind us how precious each life was that we took on the hunt or from the water, there cannot be truth in hunting or fishing.  Without truth there is no fishing or hunting--only consumption. 

Think about it. glg

More On Media Quality-Responsibility

In NorCal Cazadora’s reply to my last post she covers some important points from the USFWS 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife–Associated Recreation report's statistical data as it relates to the education level of hunters. I think we’re in agreement on the need for a higher standard in outdoor media, and when I look at the numbers she quoted (and the others in the report) I believe it is a clear case of the numbers proving the point of my argument—the quality of the material being published and/or broadcast is directly influencing the future of fishing and hunting. I believe that the less appeal published and broadcast material has to the better educated segments of the population the less likely members of that segment are to be exposed to the positives of hunting. As we lose elements of this segment of our population we lose support from incrementally larger segments of the non-hunting population simply by the influence of one over the other.

An interesting example of how our media functions is in a report published jointly by Responsive Management and The NSSF, The Future of Hunting and the Shooting Sports. The report contains fascinating corollaries between percentages of hunter retention, new hunters and non-hunting support of hunting. The report takes the USFWS report’s numbers and plugs them in with other studies to present a broad picture of what we need to do to preserve hunting (and shooting). In one section it does point out that 94% of active hunters watched a TV program on hunting and 22% were prompted to go hunting after watching the program. As for print media, 78% of active hunters read about hunting and 15% were inspired to go hunting after reading about it. To me, this reinforces my argument about the need for quality in outdoor media. Our work is reaching a very significant portion of the hunting public and therefore we have an obligation to maintain a level of excellence.

NorCal does make one assertion that I would debate—I don’t believe we can make a blanket statement that hunters overwhelmingly come from professions that don’t focus on or require high-level verbal skills. Now, things might have changed (and probably have) in the fifteen years since I last ran a hunting camp, but my experience was that hunting had a fairly equal mix of professions so I don’t think we can sort them out in that way. The exception being (as the numbers point out) waterfowl hunting, which has always drawn heavily from the erudite population and I am convinced this has more to do with the requirement to think about the hunt than some other mystical qualification. (It is unfortunate that waterfowl hunting has taken such a serious black eye in recent days.) I also believe that the professions she listed as examples do require high-level verbal skills. In today’s environment the most successful entrepreneurs, engineers, etc., are those men and women whose command of language (spoken and written) enables them to clearly communicate their ideas, whether across the internet, or the board room. Recently, I read a report (which I have since lost, but I’m sure the data is on the internet) that managers were less tolerant of text-speak than ever before and expect their employees to write cognizant, well organized and thoughtful reports whether in email or on paper. The reason for this demand is quite simple—our litigious society. As society becomes more complex the demands of language are going to increase, not decrease and the question has become one of the tool by which we will receive that language. I do agree with her closing statement that there is a widespread tendency to judge people by how articulate they are, therefore, I do believe that the statement proves the proposition.

Be all that as it may, I fully stand behind my previous post and my argument. If we take the USFWS report at face value and do not apply other studies of hunter/shooter/angler behaviors to understanding the meaning of the numbers and what they represent then we are doing a disservice to the men and women who are the angling/hunting/shooting public. If we assume, based on the report, that the majority of hunters and anglers are less educated and by extrapolation therefore less interested in the future of the environment, and the outdoor sports, and consequently dumb down our work, or insist that our contributors do, then we are adding force to what must become a self-fulfilling prophesy—that American hunting is being pushed out of the model created by Theodore Roosevelt (and others) and into the European model.

What do you think?
glg

My Response to My Outdoor Media Question

I’ve had so many great comments on my questions about the responsibility in media I think it is time for me to comment.

I think it is a safe assumption that a significant percentage of the audience for outdoor programming is NOT the hunting intelligentsia, but on the same thought line I believe it is very dangerous to make the assumption that the viewing audience is somehow intellectually challenged or lacks the benefits of higher education. For nearly 40 years I have watched, studied and researched our body of literature, and watched this trend of our better writers (broadcasting included) struggle with the insistence that the majority of hunters, shooters, anglers, et al. lack the formal education, or are somehow hampered with the lack of intellectual capacity to understand complex issues affecting the outdoors, or are incapable of grasping the nuance of fine literature.

When we analyze the writings of many of the anti-hunting authors a recurring theme is that the hunting/fishing/shooting community is populated by men and women generally lacking a high school diploma. These writers encourage their readers to believe that hunters/anglers/shooters lack the ability to exhibit compassion for wildlife and cannot grasp the ethical analysis of hunting/angling and the environment. When these writers attack hunting and hunters, angling and anglers, for proof of their assertions, they frequently reference our own media! They focus on broadcast programming’s excessively poor language, outrageous high-five behavior and fishing shows that depict casual indifference to fish being returned to the water—none of which are factual representations of the outdoor community—but they persist in our media because we allow them to.

I think an excellent exercise is to actually conduct a comparison between the housing/education/income statistics (discounting the present economic distress) and the audience statistics of Sportsman Network. There is a very interesting corollary between the data and it suggests that if we examine the characteristics of home ownership and then plug those characteristics into the characteristics of the Sportsman Network’s audience we’ll arrive at a result that proves that the greater percentage of men and women participating in hunting/fishing/shooting are better educated, and by extension better read, and have a much better grasp of the issues (political and scientific) surrounding the environment than the general population.

My question is why, when we consider all of the available information, do publishers, programmers, producers, media buyers, personalities, and even our industry and media leadership, insist on playing to the lowest perceived audience denominator and not to an actual, common denominator that would put forward a better image of anglers and hunters? Is it money? Is it fear of a vocal minority within the audience? Or, is it insecurity within themselves and their own hierarchy? I believe it is a combination of these factors.

Our industry, most certainly our media, must come to grips with the fact that this is not the middle of the last century when the chasm between the pro and con was so wide the actions of the antis were largely perceived as the mumblings of a disgruntled minority. The Silver Springs monkeys, Peter Singer, Edward Abby, Cleveland Amory and a handful of other activists were instrumental in refocusing national attention on our relationship to animals, and ultimately on hunting. By 1990, and into this decade, as tools of the media began to radically change at an increasingly faster pace, it is interesting to note that the outdoor media’s adoption of these tools has been slower than the anti-movement and at the same time, as a defensive measure akin to circling the wagons, the leadership of the varied arms of the outdoor industry (manufacturing, sales, management and media) with support from many of the individuals within those arms, began to insist on a Golden Age, or perhaps more commonly expressed as “the Good ‘ole Days” of the outdoors as having been the ideal before the interference of environmentalist and animal rights activists, often blurring the line between the actual role of the hunting community in establishing awareness of the need for environmentalism and the emergence of the extremists. If we want a date for this claimed interference perhaps the earliest would be 1949 and the publication of Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (A Sand County Almanac; with essays on conservation from Round River), but a later date that is often popularly cited as the opening of the environmentalist movement is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Silent Spring), published in 1962. But, if we take the long look at our nation’s history of hunting and fishing we are forced to admit that the claimed “Golden Age” never existed except for a short time in post-colonial America. Neither the populations of the species nor the availability to the hunt by the general population existed in a combined condition that provided the conditions asserted in the Golden Age mythology. This is not to say that hunting, and excellent hunting, did not exist because it did, but it was not universally available throughout the population.

Another interesting, and often ignored truth, is in the alleged numbers of species that were exterminated or nearly so, in westward migration. Outside of a few well publicized species (buffalo, pronghorn, passenger pigeon, etc.), if you have read the journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition and not the “cleaned up” versions found in most libraries, the stunning truth is the expedition very nearly starved to death for lack of game! At one point Clark (I believe, perhaps Lewis) shot a doe deer and before he could reach the animal his starving men fell on it, and in their frenzied desperation for food ripped the carcass to pieces and devoured it raw! Yet, as recently as an outdoor writers’ conference in Columbus, Missouri an exhibit of the L&C expedition completely glossed over the expedition’s trials.

Except for a few familiar species most wildlife was scarce. Some anti-hunting literature argues that the colonial and post-colonial writers’ gushing about the presence of wildlife is proof that hunting has destroyed wildlife populations. These writers ignore the fact that these colonial writers were promoting interest in colonizing by poor Europeans, or in the post-colonial period to entice the stalled westward migration to begin moving. Another important argument, and one that is seldom heard, is that the presence of even a small population of game would be beyond the experience of most of the colonists, and in their enthusiasm would exaggerate the amount of game—a condition that still exists among those of us who are outdoor writers! Another rarely citied argument is that as civilization pushed into the wilderness the wildlife pushed deeper into the forest. The most common argument by the anti-hunting community maintains that America’s wildlife was completely plundered by market hunting and prior to that the landscape was teeming with wildlife. This is an assertion that is not unique to North America. Africa, Europe, Asia, they were presented as having vast number of ALL species. It is simply not true. There were vast herds of specific species (American bison, African wildebeest, etc.) and it is true that these herds suffered from the ravages of market hunting, but it was largely a pre-refrigeration phenomenon that corresponded to the transformation of social structure to urban areas to support industrialization. As refrigerated rail cars opened the possibilities of moving domestic meats to distant markets, whether in Africa or North America, the need for market hunting largely collapsed, although vestiges of it remained as species specific, although even this ended, first in North America and later in Africa.

The mythos of the Golden Age or good ‘ole Days is that there was a period in early to mid 20th century America in which game was universally abundant, a hand-shake sealed all bargains, neighbor trusted neighbor, land was generally open to hunting, the public eagerly supported hunting and nearly everyone hunted, and was a gun owner. All of these are false. Today, in fact, we live in a period of the greatest amount of hunting opportunity this nation has enjoyed since the brief post-colonial period. There are trouble spots and most of us know where they are, but if you are at least older than 55, and hunted in the 1950s and sixties, chances are you remember a time when finding a place to hunt was problematic, but today there are PLOTS, CRP and other lands open that were previously closed. The amount of game is staggering. Old timers here tell me that in the alleged “good ole’ days” they never saw a deer, grouse or partridge and now all are abundant. The Golden Age was a state of mind. Between 1835, which is the birth of what is today’s outdoor writing, and July 2, 1961, American outdoor writing reached its zenith and was a major part of the literary canon, but by the end of the Vietnam War that position had collapsed under the weight of changes in the social landscape, and rather than face these changes and deal with them our entire industry circled the wagons, giving the writers of the anti-hunting, anti-gun and animal rights movements the room they needed to assault public opinion.

My point is that every time a writer decides NOT to write a think piece on environmental issues, or puts an outdoor short story in a file drawer believing no outdoor magazine will publish it, or decides to simplify a text because the editors maintain the readers can’t understand it, or they don’t want to read something “that” complex, or a TV personality mixes metaphors, confuses verb tenses, talks like he/she flunked seventh grade English—three times, and does a sophomoric high five dance around a newly killed animal, the future of fishing and hunting are each cast that much further in doubt. There is no substitute for good writing and there is no justification for poor programming. Ironically, when we go back in the history of outdoor literature we discover that only a handful of decades ago excellence was the standard, mediocrity was not abided, and outdoor literature appeared in literature text books.

Interesting, isn’t it?

glg

Competitive Hunting--BARF!

I just watched an episode of Drury Outdoors’ “Dream Season, Redemption” and I came away from the television with exactly the same sense of revulsion that I came away with the first time I tried to watch a Drury Outdoors segment. The company executives may have convinced themselves that they have “revolutionized” outdoor programming but I believe the only thing they are doing is chain handing anti-hunting ammunition to the anti-community.

I want to give you a good understanding of why I reacted so strongly to this program.

First, here are some of my hunting values that relate to this issue:
1. I support ethical trophy hunting. Long ago wildlife biologists convinced me that trophy hunting is a form of predation that removes older bucks and bulls thus allowing their progeny to strengthen the gene pool.
2. I support scoring trophy deer and I support the B&C, Safari Club and other trophy scoring programs. They provide a system of ranking the animal against other animals—not against hunters. Scoring can be for a “found” trophy or one taken by a hunter.
3. I enjoy looking at mounts of trophy deer (and other animals) and both my home and office are adorned with the mounts of big game that I have taken here and in Africa.

But, I can’t buy into the idea of teams of hunters heading into the country for the purpose of shooting deer or other big animals for “points” in a television program. Hunting is not about “points” between competing teams of hunters. The competition, if there is going to be one, is between the hunter and his quarry. Can the hunter overcome the terrain and all the other elements that nature can muster to stop the hunter? I believe this is why the trophy becomes something of importance—the hunter has overcome nature’s obstacles to kill that animal (not harvest, that’s what the biologists do--manage the harvest).

There have been animals I have hunted and the animal won—a lion, a kudu and a magnificent mule deer, all beat me and I am just as proud of those hunts as those when I was successful. As for those store run local big buck contests, I’ve seen and heard of more complaining than compliments and often jealousy among winners and losers in these contests has broken up friendships. Sometimes, when the prize is substantial (which is always a relative term) there have been allegations of cheating that has led to fights, threats and even criminal charges. Contests rarely work and often it is a case of “is the book worth the candle?” when considering a big buck contest.

When I switched off the television this evening I had to think about what I’d watched. The massive deer taken by Bonnie McFerrin, which is supposed to be the largest deer ever killed by a woman hunter in Texas, was fantastic. When I first switched the set on it was right in the middle of her hunt sequence and the deer was crossing in front of her stand. The shot of her hitting the deer with an arrow was excellent photography. In fact, everything about the sequence was well done and I was pleased for her—until I found out that the “score” was for a competitive hunt and at that point I became disgusted. What had been a magnificent trophy became a scorecard, no different than the NFL scoreboard on Sunday afternoon.

My revulsion to competition in hunting is not new. It is rooted in the work of one of our most important authors—Ernest Hemingway. He was an incredibly competitive hunter who was constantly comparing the size of the trophies he killed with those of others on the hunts. He was apparently equally competitive whether shooting pigeons in Cuba, pheasants in Idaho or lions in Africa. But he did recognize one fact about his competitive nature—it was destructive. When he wrote Green Hills of Africa Hemingway’s obsession with being competitive becomes a poison in the camp that taints his hunting and it is a foundational part of the book. An excellent examination of this is the critical study: Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa As Evolutionary Narrative: Helix and Scimitar by Bredahl and Drake. The authors break the novel down so the destructive nature of the competition on the hunt is clearly understood whether you are an academic or just the average reader interested in learning more about Hemingway’s writing.

I first read Hemingway’s “Green Hills” when I was in what is now Middle School. My father bought me a copy and surprisingly I managed to recognize some of the tension brought about by the competition. Still, I was passionate about the book and it led me to Ruark and many other writers, but the sense of the competition having cast a pall over the hunt stayed with me and I do remember talking with my favorite English teacher (she is also responsible for my becoming a writer) about the book. As I came to understand more of the internal issues of that book (and Hemingway) it generated a guiding principle for me about hunting that has stayed with me—when competition is introduced to the hunt, no matter how good natured the competition may first be—it will create a poison.

Some people in the broadcasting side of our industry may have convinced themselves that competitive hunting programs are good for hunting but I do not agree. Competitive hunting will lead to nothing but problems and poison in the outdoor industry. Those individuals at Drury and The Outdoor Channel may have the First Amendment on their side but they don’t have the welfare of the future of hunting on their minds—all they seem to hear is the clink of silver.

Does anyone agree with me?

glg