So the Neanderthals were “fake” hunters, right?
Reader Nina sent me a link to the page, which has a discussion about a man who takes his 4-year-old son hunting. Grandpa of the kid was pissed about it and wrote to Abby in February, and more readers wrote in on today’s column to have their say. (It’s on the April 22 page, which you have to navigate to after today - no permalinks.) Anyway, I just love Walter M. From Florida’s very thoughtful expression of his knowledge of human history:
Before the industrialized age, people were forced to hunt to put food on their tables. Today, whether they consume the meat or not, the majority of hunters (I use the term very loosely) are not “hunting.” They are camouflaged, hiding in blinds or in tree stands waiting for the prey to wander by. Some even put out bait to lure the animals to their location.
There is no skill in hiding, waiting for an animal to wander by to be shot. These people are animal snipers. A true hunter would stalk prey using a bow and arrow for the kill.
Well all rightee then. According to Walter, all those millions of humans over the last 150,000 years who killed animals with any weapon other than a bow and arrow weren’t “true hunters”. I bet it sure felt like hunting to them, using spears and clubs.
Also according to Walter, it is not “hunting” if you hide from the animals or use bait to lure them. Because clearly, the pure-hearted people of the past didn’t do those things. They stood right out in the open and asked the wildebeest to come forward for slaughter.
And then guns had to come along and ruin everything! NOW people start hiding from the animals they want to kill. NOW human beings grasp the concept of bait, which they apparently somehow managed to avoid figuring out for all these millenia.
Riiiight. If you say so Walter.
By the way, I have no opinion on the rightness or wrongness of taking a 4-year-old hunting. I have never been hunting and have never had a child, thus I am staying out of this one. Although again, if people like Walter want to talk about the distant past and how people lived so righteously and “naturally”, I hope they realize that boy children were taught to hunt practically from birth.
Another letter-writer, “Concerned Mom From Ohio”, spazzed out and wrote:
We can’t trust our political leaders not to injure others while hunting. How do you trust a 4-year-old to abide by the rules and understand the consequences of breaking them? I can’t even get my 4-year-old son to wash his hands after he goes to the bathroom!
Christ on a unicycle. Does she really think the kid is given a gun and told “now don’t shoot nobody, Bubba Lee!” and everyone just hopes for the best?
And, I don’t have any links for it, but I remember seeing on 20/20 or some such that taking kids hunting is actually a technique employed in juvenile correctional rehabilitation or whatever the hell you call it. They take these bad urban kids out in the wilderness and they show them what happens when a living creature is shot with a firearm.
From what I’ve heard, it works like a charm. These kids go from thinking guns are toys or that guns don’t really kill things (which they think because they’ve spent 15 years playing video games) to comprehending that in fact, the consequences are quite ugly, gory, and traumatic.
And last but not least, “Loves Children” from California says:
I was a preschool teacher for several years, and the children who were the biggest bullies and least socialized were always — and I mean ALWAYS — the ones graphically exposed to the killing of animals. These children were aged from 3 to 5, the same age as the grandson in South Carolina.
The gentle, studious, most popular children never spoke of hunting, but the bullies would talk at length about killing, guns and blood. It affected their emotional stability and ideas about death.
Oh really? Bullshit, toots. A few days ago, Dr. Helen to , which references a study done by the Department of Justice. Behold:
– Children who get guns from their parents don’t commit gun crimes (0 percent) while children who get guns illegally are quite likely to do so (21 percent).
– Children who get guns from parents are less likely to commit any kind of street crime (14 percent) than children who have no gun in the house (24 percent) — and are dramatically less likely to do so than children who acquire an illegal gun (74 percent.)
– Children who get guns from parents are less likely to use banned drugs (13 percent) than children who get illegal guns (41 percent.)
– Most strikingly, the study found: “Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use (than boys who own illegal guns) and are even slightly less delinquent than non-owners of guns.”
But of course a preschool teacher’s anecdotal experience is really what matters here so never mind all those official statistics and confusing numbers. They muddy the message! Guns ‘r’ bad, mmkay?
That preschool teacher is full of crap. She has no idea whether the other “studious” kids were hunters or not. What an idiot.
I’ve been exposed to hunting my whole life even though I’ve never shot an animal. Could I? I don’t know. But I love the fact that my grandpa can because I luvs me sum venison! =)
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:32 pmHeh. I stopped reading at
It’s not just an anecdote, it’s an anecdote based on a vanishingly small sample. Geez.
Besides, it’s all about my feeeeeewings!
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:35 pmGeez, a chance to be first and I have nothing to say other than glad to see that you survived your birthday. Mine’s in June and it will be the first non-combat zone birthday in four years. So I got that goin’ for me. Which is nice…
Ok. thanks for ruining that for me you two.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:37 pmI love your writing and quite frequently agree with you, not all the time, since I self identify as a Christian conservative and you do not, there will be occasional difference. This time I have to disagree with your thought process.
They don’t think it because they spent 15-years playing video games. They think it because they’re dumb-asses who happened to spend 15-years playing video games. Every one knows growing up in this culture that guns are used to hunt, to kill, animals and occasionally your fellow man (hell, even in video game violence these days you shoot your gun and the bad guy dies, usually in impressive gory detail).
It may be quite true that seeing the animal die, in real life, where you may even hear it, can take the lethality and violence of a gun shot wound out of the intellectual and into the visceral. So instead of thinking, “this action will hurt someone” they feel it in their gut, and remember the observed agony.
But honestly, blaming video games for kids not knowing guns kill is quite a stretch. Either the kid knows or he’s a totally bat-shit crazy (in which case the problem is still not the video game).
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:39 pmHere’s the thing. You shoot something during a video game and it may die spurting video blood but there is a real true difference between that and shooting something for real.
A video game deer doesn’t smell. You can’t reach out and touch a video game deer. You’re hands don’t get real, sticky blood on them playing a video game like they do when you dress out a real deer.
I covered a pheasant hunt conducted as training for young hunters (8 and up) and it was done very carefully. While there were several youth hunters in the party only one had a loaded weapon at a time. Everyone else stayed back.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:57 pmHuh. When I was 8 or 9 I went with my Grandparents on a trip to visit my great uncle, who raised cattle. I’m not sure why, but they were going to go slaughter a cow, and I really wanted to go and see all the action. In the end, they didn’t let me watch my great uncle kill the cow (with a shotgun, I believe), but they did let me watch afterward when they skinned and butchered it. I happen to be an animal lover to this day. I have dogs, cats and chickens (for eggs, not to eat) and I do okay socially.
I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to educate your children about where their food comes from, and the cycle of life and all that stuff. Granted, not every child needs to visit a slaughterhouse, but protecting the poor wittle babies from everything “bad” in the world doesn’t do much to prepare them for adulthood either.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:02 pmLots of Indian tribes hunted buffalo by stampeding them off of cliffs and then butchering the carcasses at the bottom. I guess that made them ranchers instead of hunters.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:12 pmIve never hunted myself, and really never have any plans to…but if I have kids who want to Ill learn so I can teach them.
I do plan on teaching them to shoot as soon as they show an interest. Kids will get their hands on things you dont want them to, and I would rather my kids know that guns arent forbidden fruit and that they arent toys.
I would rather them know how to be safe with one, than try and keep them from them until I think they are ‘old enough’ (a fallacy, since weve all see grown men adults people act like moronic little boys with guns).
Then again Ill also teach my kid that if someone physically hurts them its ok to fight back until they stop, and if the school district dosent like it they can go to hell.
Betcha my kids will be more well mannered and polite than many a hippies.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:15 pmNevadaDailySteve,
I wasn’t disputing that the real thing is vastly different from a video game. I was merely disputing that because they played video games they didn’t know that guns killed. You described in nice detail the visceral reaction that may form, as opposed to the intellectual reaction which is simply that “guns can be used to kill.” The visceral reaction may be far, far more potent as a deterrent, but they still bloody-well knew that guns can kill, video game or not.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:15 pmThat ex-preschool teacher is a doofus.
I seem to remember a psychologist (Dr. Phil/Dr. Laura type) say one time that if you lock a boy in a closet at birth and let him out when he is 7 and give him a stick, he’ll immediately play with it as if it were a gun. My 5 year old will turn ANYTHING into a gun; legos, action figures, even a plastic sword (I guess he kill the ninjas fast enough with a sword). My wife and I discourage that type of behavior just because we’re tired of being the targets, but it was inevitable.
This woman going on about how the bullies talked about guns and the studious kids didn’t is probably code for “the boys talked about guns and the girls played with dolls” but she couldn’t bring herself to type such a “sexist” thing.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:30 pmCorrelation is not causation. People who teach their children to use responsibly legal firearms are likely to be the kinds of people who teach their children to use and do other thigs responsibly. Children who acquire illegal guns are likely already getting into all kinds of trouble. I am in favor of responsible adults teaching children the responsible use of guns. I don’t know about “giving” a gun to kids - I guess it is ok to tell the kid that the .22 in Dad’s guncase is “his” in that he is responsible for cleaning it, etc.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 pmMy ESO works in a pre-school, and, though some of her coworkers are reasonably intelligent, well-adjusted people, the ones that have been “pre-school teachers for years” are absolutely batshiat insane. Keep in mind here that this is a pool of people that voluntarily associate with a bunch of 3-5 year olds day in and day out. Seriously - deal with a 3-year-old sometime. Try to teach them something. Then, ask yourself what kind of person would choose to hang around dozens of them for years at a time. Uh… pass?! Heck, the kid books alone would slowly rot your mind…
“Do you like my hat?”
“I do not like your hat!”
Repeat until completely gonzo.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 pmWe take our 9 year old to the range with us. Its pretty common to see other kids there. Many of these kids have been hunting as long as they have been walking. They are also the most polite, responsible, well-mannered kids I’ve ever been around. Personally, I’m going with my own anecdotal experience. And that study is fantastic.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:45 pmThere is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a 4-year-old bird hunting. With the proper amount of sugar in them they make great flushers. However, be advised that they generally are not very good retrievers.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 pmOatworm,
Ah, yes, . A classic of American literature.
P.S. OT, but does anyone lese think that unless you are physically disabled, you should have your dog taken away if you ?
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 pmHere in Israel, teachers that don’t carry guns endanger the lives of their students. Teachers that do carry guns save students lives.
See
DoubleTapper
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:57 pmMy favorite part of this is the fact that the original letter writer wrote the following paragraph without the slightest sense of irony.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:58 pmRachel,
Like you, I call bullshit on most of the commenters you quoted. I can also say that after 22 years as a cop, I agree whole-heartedly through anecdotal experience with the study you quoted regarding kids who are given guns by their parents vs kids who get them illegally.
Gee, my parents (who never owned a gun personally) gave me several guns as I was growing up, because I had an interest in them and they had friends and family who were willing to mentor me with them. I don’t think I turned out so bad.
Same goes for my own kids, they are both wonderful responsible adults, and I introduced each one to shooting when they reached about 5 years of age.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:04 pmNevadaDailySteve beat me to it. Kids who actually go hunting and fishing learn the visceral realities of killing as compared to the abstract version seen on cable and in video games.
I’ve trained up many kids to hunting. Critters often take a while to die–I make them watch. I always make them clean their own kills. Critters don’t smell good at all when get into their insides. Blood and guts is messy, sticky, stinky, and warm.
It makes quite a reality impression on a young mind. As far as I know none of those kids have EVER been in trouble with the law later on in life, and I keep track.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:16 pmNevadaDailySteve beat me to it. Kids who actually go hunting and fishing learn the visceral realities of killing as compared to the abstract version seen on cable and in video games.
I’ve trained up many kids to hunting. Critters often take a while to die–I make them watch. I always make them clean their own kills. Critters don’t smell good at all when get into their insides. Blood and guts is messy, sticky, stinky, and warm.
It makes quite a reality impression on a young mind. As far as I know none of those kids have EVER been in trouble with the law later on in life, and I keep track.
Oh yeah, Walter M is an idiot who has no clue what he’s talking about.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 pmChris_RC - I think you misunderstood me. Video games are desensitizers. They put great psychological distance between actions and consequences (I pull this trigger and the image on my monitor changes, as opposed to I pull this trigger and a living thing explodes in blood that I can feel and smell). I should probably have said “shooting video games” in the post, because those are what I’m talking about, not Super Mario brothers or a lot of other video games. I’m talking about games like Grand Theft Auto, where you play a thug and go around on streets killing hookers and shooting at cops.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:27 pmI know there are sensible, sane Mothers out there but, whenever I see an avatar with the word “Mom” in it, I know an idiotic comment is sure to follow. Sadly, for many Mothers there seems to be an abdication of intelligence in favor of neurotic “awfulizing”. See Rachel’s post on the emasculating Blogger Mom for further evidence.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:34 pmRachel, it may have been a symantics issue. Desensitized to the relevance of killing is perhaps a plausible argument.
I read the line “thinking are toys or don’t really kill things (because they play video game” (paraphrased this time), and walked away with the impression you were saying “because of video games, these kids think that guns don’t kill things.” From the clarification I’m guessing you meant more along the lines of “because of video games, these kids don’t care that guns kill things, they have been desensitized to death.” That may well be. At any rate, I’m glad you cleared it up.
I may have been ready to mis-read. One hears various instances of “chosen media pass time caused youth to do something despicable,” that I kind of saw your statement in that category (Metal music causes suicide, video games cause murder at columbine, etcetera).
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:37 pmTrust me, Chris_RC, Rachl Lukis is not guilty of that last paragraph in your comment. No.
While I think four years old is too young, I do not know the family nor the child in question. Just FOR ME, four is too young. I think eight is about right. Spend serious amounts of time with the firearms instruction and then a quick trip to the range is in order.
The quickest, easiest way to desensitize the videogame playin’ kid (and I agree with you on that one) is to take them (after some SERIOUS rules instruction) to the range.
Do NOT place hearing protection on the child.
Have them shoot (even a small caliber like a .22) into a milk jug full of water. Tinted water. Yanno, like RED tint?
Watch the shock and awe.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:06 pmMargi Says:
As a kid, out of curiosity, I filled a two liter bottle in a bathtub (and sealed it under water, no air left) when I shot it with a .22 long rifle (may father’s rifle, in his presence, under his supervision), the lid blew off and water shot out, but there wasn’t a bullet hole. If you leave air in the bottle, it will be punctured and the red will leak out (assuming the kid can hit it). Perhaps a Milk Jug with it’s press-fit cap and weaker plastic (instead of a two-liter bottle, with screw on cap and stronger plastic) will take the hole anyway.
If you use a two liter bottle filled with red died fluid (and no air) you may get a gush of red, that might serve as a better illustration. Another thing to try would be shooting a watermelon (you might need a slightly higher caliber weapon for this to be effective).
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:23 pmThis title is so full of shit that I’m getting dry heaves from the smell of it.
What are you, the Male Bonding Police?
I fail to see how you would be so stupid as to think the father would let his 4-year-old son handle a firearm.
So, what, the guy just took his son out into the wilderness and left him there?
WTF are you talking about?
My God. It’s like a black hole of historical ignorance.
Setting aside the fact that many hunters do precisely that, why, exactly, is bow hunting the only “true” form of hunting?
By your logic I could say that the only “true” hunters are the ones who hunt with throwing sticks and rocks.
I can’t help but wonder what “real life skills” this guy is talking about.
Learning how to calculate his carbon credits?
Learning how to make a series of delicious and nutritious vegetarian meals?
Sheesh. All the nuts roll downhill to Florida.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:29 pmOF COURSE the legal gun owning kids and hunter types aren’t the ones shooting up everything.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 pmThey’re proven to be more well adjusted and HAPPIER in general! All of us gun toters are!
So says the !
Teachers like this give the rest of us a bad name. I’ll bet you a million dollars that this story is total bunk.
Also, notice the careful choice of words.
Hunting is “graphic killing of animals”. What, pray tell, does this woman (and I’m almost positive it is a woman) think hunting is actually like?
Again, note her careful choice of words.
The gentle, studious, “most popular” children “never spoke of hunting”. (these must have been the good liberal children)
The problem children talk about killing, guns, and blood. (these must have been the evil conservative children)
She is deliberately trying to portray hunting as a violent bloodbath.
By her logic, taking a 4-year-old kid fishing would REALLY warp his little mind, what with all the flaying, disemboweling, and impaling (of worms on hooks) that goes on.
I defy her to find one single case of a child who was “traumatized” by going hunting.
California. I should have known.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 pmWhen I was much younger my dad had a lot of guns (primarily shotguns and rifles) in the house. They were all kept unlocked in the entryway closet behind the buckets of flour and sugar. Easy enough to get to. I also knew precisely where the ammunition was. Same for my sisters. Thing is, not one of us ever played with those guns. My dad showed them to us, explained what they could do, and then told us in no uncertain terms that if we touched them without him there he’d kill us. When I showed an interest in shooting he took me out and let me shoot pop cans with a .22 pistol. I’ve known for a very long time exactly what a gun can do and that it deserves respect.
And while I agree that video games may contribute to desensitization, I can’t agree that that leads to kids thinking it’s OK to shoot somebody else. I’ve been playing video games since I was six years old. When Castle Wolfenstein came out my dad let me play that to my heart’s content. Same thing with Doom and Duke Nukem. Many of my friends have played the same games since they were young and aren’t violent.
In my very humble opinion, it’s never good to leave kids to their own devices. Parents who plop their kids in front of the TV, game console, or computer and then don’t explain things to the kids are asking for major problems. I really think it’s much more of a parenting issue. If you aren’t going to take the time to sit down and explain right and wrong in what you’re kid is watching or playing, don’t let them play that stuff.
I do believe that there are some things kids should definitely not be exposed to at certain ages, but I really think parents need to take back the responsibility of raising their kids, which includes monitoring the shows they watch and the games they play. Basically, the problem is with parents who don’t talk to their kids, not the video games, movies, music, comic books, etc.
(Sorry this was so long. Gaming is a huge passion of mine and I particularly adore the Grand Theft Auto series. What with Hillary parroting Jack Thompson and his very negative views of video games I have a hard time just sitting by and letting it pass.)
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:56 pmI don’t much care for this ‘Abby’, even though she printed a letter of mine a few weeks ago disagreeing with her advice to another reader. IMO her mother was far more sage (as well as humorous.) I read her column in my daily newspaper out of habit, but it seems to me she gives a lot of knee-jerk liberal answers. I don’t think Dear Abby or any of her letter writers has much experience with hunting.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 pmI went into the woods over the weekend for spring turkey and came up empty handed as did my entire hunting party of six. If you’re not familiar with the bird, you probably don’t know that he comes equipped with 8x binocular vision as standard equipment. Ambush and camo? It doesn’t even equal the odds.
Anyway . . . out of frustration, I suggested we start a forest fire like our ancient ancestors used to do and stampede everything in the woods over a cliff. Kill everything from ‘coons to elk and then take our pick of the carnage. Seemed like a good plan to me, but the Forest Service doesn’t offer that kind of hunting permit. Geez, and I thought the left was all about “authenticity.” Note to leftists: Native Americans were not ecologists. They hunted many species of North American megafauna to extinction. I paid $67 for a hunting license and wasn’t able to get a tag for mammoth. What a rip.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:28 pmI for one have an opinion on the rightness or wrongness of taking a 4-year-old hunting. I’m at a loss as to why someone would take such a little kid on such an activity. My assumption is that this is the up-before-dawn all-day kind. He would have to be bored out of his mind, and then he would get cranky when his nap times rolled around. “Here, kid, curl up in this blaze orange vest and snooze.”
There’s nothing wrong with hunting. The kid will eventually learn how to properly handle guns or bows–when he’s big enough to hold one. He’ll also learn discipline and perseverance–when he’s more mature. But, jeez, a 4-year-old?
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:59 pmNot necessarily. Fathers take their kids camping all the time, even at 4 years old, and arguably camping would be even more boring to a young child.
Also, not all hunting is like that. Dog hunting, for instance, often takes place during the day and can be quite exciting if you really get into it.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 pmMy youngest two kids have been “hunting” since they were old enough to stay warm in a backpack while I carried them with me.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:57 pmBoth had to be forced to wait to take hunter’s safety at nine. Both know what the consequence of pointing a gun at an object is. Both are responsible for the cleaning and maintenance of their own guns, as well as working to raise the money to buy their own licenses and tags (these cost a lot, by the way).
Both think the “meat” bought at grocery stores is crap, and that forcing animals to live in stockyard conditions and then bolting them in the head on an assembly line to provide sustenance is inhumane.
We don’t see providing our own meat as any different than when we go and pick wild fruit and grow vegetables on or own property.
And yes, this is 2008, and we live in America.
So, liberal friends, are we naughty for living off the land (hunting, cultivating and gathering), or is teaching our children to provide natural sustenance for ourselves as a family to lessen the impact on the environment nice?
Really, I AM confused here … can’t have it both ways, people.
The gentle, studious, most popular children never spoke of hunting, but the bullies would talk at length about killing, guns and blood. It affected their emotional stability and ideas about death
Christ on a toasted muffin! Come deer season EVERY kid in my 6th grade class was talking about guns and hunting, not all hunted but it WAS the topic of conversation for the month of October. I’ll grant this was some time ago but I doubt very much has changed. Of the many children I introduced to hunting and guns over the last 40 years, ALL have grown up to be responsible adults, or are on their way to that end. All are a credit to our community.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pmMan, what bullshite. I and my four brothers all started hunting with Dad when we turned five. We got to carry our first shotgun at age seven, still accompanied by Dad and at age eight were turned loose, as it were. At age twelve we went on our first deer hunt, sans rifle; at age thirteen we carried our first rifle, still accompanied by Dad and at age fourteen we were on our own.
None of us boys have ever been in trouble with the law, we’ve never shot anyone or shot at anyone. We don’t do drugs, etc. But from a liberal’s point of view we are far worse than that, we are all, even my non-hunting sister, conservatives.
Wait a minute! I just realized that according to this pinhead’s definition I am a real hunter. In the southern half of the Panhandle of Texas, if one is hunting after sunrise, one must stalk the prey, the average distance being between 100 and 150 yards when one pulls the trigger. Since most of my deer over the years have been shot well after sunrise, I AM A REAL HUNTER!! The rest of you clowns are fakes. No wait, I’m using a rifle, not a bow and arrow. Okay, I take that back, we’re all fakes.
Now, assuming the landscape — rolling hills, moderately deep canyons, etc. — was the same as when the Comanches roamed this area, I must assume that getting within bow-and-arrow range of a deer in this moderately open country would have been just as tough as it is today. I can easily envision a Comanche, on horseback, leaving his mount a mile or so away, sneaking up to a path used by deer going to and from the feeding grounds and the bedding grounds, and, from the guise of camoflage, shoot the hapless deer with his sticks and stones. Hmm, said Comanche warrior wasn’t a real hunter either.
And that same Comanche warrior hunted buffalo from the back of his horse. Damn, that still doesn’t make him a hunter, does it? Dammit, and all my life I’ve been led to believe the Plains Indians were some of the best hunters on the planet. Oh well, one learns something new every day.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:30 pmFunny thing, my wife taught pre-k (four year olds) for 17 years. I asked her about this and she calls bullshit! She said that she had several children that were introduced to hunting that early and none of them had any problems.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 pmmightsamurai, I was making an assumption. Your point is well taken–I just didn’t want to flog the subject with the many hunting variations and chose the scenario I figured would be extreme for a very little kid.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:43 pmI started following my granddad on hunting trips at age four. And I was a girl. Still am a girl, albeit an old one. Bib was an avid hunter/gunsmith out of Arkansas where, as a youngster, hunted so his large family had meat on the table. His was not the hillbilly Clampett Clan - two of his brothers were medical doctors - but times were tough in Arkansas circa 1914. If you wanted supper, most days you grabbed your gun and went out and shot it. After coming to California he was frequently asked to track/trap for the state, primarily to benefit ranchers when mountain lion, bobcat and bear were decimating prime beef cattle or horse stock. Ninety-nine percent of the time the animal in question was trapped and relocated to higher ground, not shot for sport. He instilled in me a healthy respect for the power of firearms, and he had an arsenal; when I turned five he taught me to load, unload and shoot a .22 pistol. I must’ve gone through a boatload of bullets aiming at bottles and paper targets stuck on fence posts. By age six I was a damn good shot. Never killed a thing. Since none of us were wild about venison, he said there was no reason to shoot a deer. “You only shoot what you can eat,” he’d say. In the 60 years since, I’ve never maimed a living creature, and neither have any of the kids of the men who hunted with us. So much for an early introduction to hunting with guns as being injurious to a kid’s fragile psyche.That “teacher” is either a figment of somebody’s imagination, a horses patoot, or another plumb-perfect example of the useless lefty psychocrap they teach in college these days. Oh…Bib also taught me to drive his old floor-shift truck at age seven…just in case something ever happened when we were in the wilds, I could go for help. Put a lot of miles on that truck before I got tall enough to finally take the the blocks off the pedals.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pmBad Life Skills Learned while Hunting.
Patience is a virtue that often leads to success.
Self-discipline also contributes to success.
Trust is earned, and when given, it must not be squandered.
Respect is also earned and must be nurtured.
Trust and respect build self-confidence.
Guns can kill and must be handled with caution and knowledge.
We certainly wouldn’t want to teach kids any of those things. Oh, and BTW it’s bad form to hang out with your son or daughter all day. Quality time is the key, deep bonds are formed quickly don’t ya know.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 pmI see many here already echo what I have to say. I have been around guns, hunting and shooting since my earliest memories and taught what a gun is what it is capable of. I was ten when I got my first guns, younger when you count bb guns, and have never abused that right. Now a dove or rabbit may disagree or that criminal that tries to invade my home. As my Marine SGT Dad taught “It ain’t the gun, it’s the screw behind the buttplate”.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 amHere’s to one inch groups at 500 yards with the rifle, 100% broken skeet with the shotgun and clean head shots on the pistol range.
I was 4 or 5 when I learned to tag bottles at the dump and mastered it quick with an ancient single shot .22 that I have today.
Welllll. . .as a deliberate observer of the subculture, I’d have to say the FPS games have nowhere near as much responsibility for that as do all the idiotically bowdlerized cartoons in which virtually nobody ever really gets hurt.
And while FPS games won’t sensitize you to the effects of violence the way that direct experience with animal kills will, the thing is, OTGH, a lot of those urban kids have plenty of direct and immediately indirect experience with real-life violence, and I’m pretty sure that trumps any desensitization effects from FPS games.
I suspect that the real agent of change in their cases is not so much being exposed to freshly dead animals as it is being exposed to the company of strong, responsible men with superior ethics and character.
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 amThe people who think that “take four-year-old hunting” = Give 4 y.o. shotgun have obviously never hunted with kids. Which is okay, but they should stfu about something they don’t understand. I’ve “hunted” with my dad all my life, hunting is not necessarily an all-day excursion (usually leave around dawn and back in time to shower before church on Sunday, because we hunt on our OWN land), and the four-year-old is not shooting anything just yet.
My now ten-year-old sister got a .22 for her seventh birthday, and just killed her first turkey last weekend. She thinks hunting is grand, has nothing but respect for firearms, and has a lot of confidence in herself that comes from being different from all of her wussed-out citified classmate children of non-thinking liberals. That can only be a good thing.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 amMy husband takes our 3 year old “hunting” all the time. At this stage of the game, it’s mostly my husband showing our son all the different animal tracks, shows him where deer have rubbed up against trees - basically, all the things involved in tracking and figuring out where the animals are and have been. I’m really impressed with how much my son has learned - he can tell you the difference between the tracks of a buck deer and a “girl deer,” he knows what deer like to eat and where in the woods they find their food, etc.
But of course, people who don’t hunt think you just stand behind a tree - any tree - and wait to blast the first thing that moves. Yeah. My husband says there’s a word for those kind of hunters - vegetarians.
Personally, I think one of the best things you can do for your children is teach them that food does not appear shrink-wrapped in the wild. My son really gets that the sausage we ate the other night came from the wild boar that my husband shot, and that the venison we eat a lot of came from deer. Perhaps that letter writer to Dear Abby would prefer it if their grandchild ate only Happy Meals?
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 amYah. I still love , but, y’know. . .as I’ve matured and learned better, on some subjects, it now kind of sounds almost like a caricature of snotty, ivory-tower-ignorant leftist intecliquetual whorebaggery.
Especially when compared to all the plain old rational common sense being presented by all the hunters speaking up here.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:49 amI’ve hunted and killed a lot of animals in my life including some big game with a bow. You have to get close…20 to 25 yds. It is a challange. A huge adrenalin rush. But killing with a bow is brutal. It can take hours for an animal to die. A well placed bullet is much more humane than a broadhead.
I’ve always maintained that if you eat meat you should have the guts to do the job yourself.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:02 pmWhoever wrote that crap has never been bear or boar hunting. If you miss your target, you have a very large, and very pissed off creature coming towards you at a fast pace. And they aren’t coming over to give give you a belly rub either.
“Good thing I didn’t use a gun. Now he is only gnawing on my spleen.”
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:35 pmHunting is different than taking your son/daughter bowling. Nothing focuses the attention like danger. “If you don’t follow these rules for safe hunting, you and I and everybody within range are in danger.” Attention in the child, attention in the adult. I believe that this “attention” is what children crave. Maybe not all kids, but all the ones I know.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:38 pmI’ve taken my sons hunting and shooting innumerable times, starting …….. starting before they were born I guess. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I only fired a gun once in the vicinity of my pregnant spousal unit. (Some things you only have to do once to learn your lesson.)
I’ve noticed the same thing in domestic animals. If you want your dog/horse/pig to really love you, train it. Training is expensive in time. You HAVE to be patient, you HAVE to be persistent, and you HAVE to be consistent. It’s the interaction and utter focusing of conscious that’s so enjoyable for your kid or dog. Give them a break, give them a piece of you. You’ll both be better for it.
I wonder if wonderbrain down in Florida thinks that buying his food in the supermarket exempts him for judgement?
My step-brother was a National Park superintendant for many years (in Canada) before his retirement, and I remember his cooment once when we were all at our parents for supper — he hadn’t had “tame meat” in his freezer at all during the time his jkids were growing up. When his son was old enough for hunting licenses, there was even more meat and variety in the freezer - deer, moose, bear, sheep, etc. Here was a guy who was responsible for the wildlife in large parks, and had no problem hunting … we need to eat to survive, and the end result of any animals life is death. In some cases that is quick, at the impact of a bullet …. sometimes slow in the jaws of a cougar. Such is life.
Were I to compare them, I’d ay my stepbrother is more of a man than asshat Walter … since Walter is apparently not capable of doing his own hunting and gathering … he needs others to do it for him. And my first thought when I read that blurb was “did he build his own house, build his own transportation, grow his own clothes”? What a moroon!
As far as taking a 4 year old hunting… I guess it depends on the 4 year old. Raised in a caring household and NOT subjected to liberal brainwashing and drug cocktails, it would be quite easy to keep them occupied and interested. The outdoors is a big place and — as pointed out by “irritable” — there’s lots to see if you use your eyes and ears instead of your mouth.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:57 pmAs much as ‘Abby’s’ letter writers do to expose the wussification of American culture, the posters here do more to restore my faith in my fellow citizens — Heck, I wish my daughters could meet your sons!
The whole discussion reminds me of an old Grim’s Hall post — all about how the key to social harmony is more dangerous old men — that, for some blessed reason, Instapundit linked to recently. It’s a brilliant read:
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:00 pmTo hM, who posted that he’s been playing video games like Castle Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem since a young age and isn’t violent -
I partially agree with your point and partially don’t. Yes, for you and your friends, and other well-adjusted, normal people like you, shooter games won’t turn you violent. However, for those who are particularly maladjusted to begin with, playing shooter games doesn’t help in the least.
I recently heard Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (the author of On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society) speak on this subject on a radio program. His comment was that he’d studied the psychology of the various school shootings in the past decade. All of them, he said, had something in common: once serious resistance showed up (whether in the form of the police as at Columbine, or an armed security guard returning fire as happened at the New Life church in Colorado), the shooter committed suicide.
Why? Well, Lt. Col. Grossman’s analysis was that until that point, it was just a game for the shooter, a feeling of holding godlike power over other people’s lives. Once return fire was heading his way, though, suddenly the game wasn’t fun anymore and the shooter’s “normal” psychology returned. (I put “normal” in quotes because most of those people had very abnormal amounts of hatred, anxiety, paranoia, psychosis, and/or depression.) Confronted with a situation he’d never trained for — in the video games you never get real bullets coming your way — the shooter chose the only way he could see to get out of the situation immediately, suicide.
So while there are millions of people like you who can play shooter games without being turned into murderers, it’s worth remembering that that’s not the case for everybody.
Personally, I also see a vast moral difference between games such as Halo, where you play a soldier fighting a war, and games such as GTA, where you play a thug committing street crime.
To Acksiom -
Thanks for using OTGH. Made my day. Now I’m going to have to go re-read those books.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:32 pmYou haven’t provided one shred of evidence establishing a causal link between their behavior and the fact that they played violent videogames. That’s not surprising, since no major study has been able to find such a link either. This is the same kind of junk science bullshit that MADD, the anti-smoking zealots, and the global warming cultists employ.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pmYour kneejerk reaction is off-target: I’m not trying to establish a causal relationship betweem their violent behavior and videogames. It seems quite obvious to me that the root cause of their behavior was their abnormal psychology and disaffection from normal society, and that their addiction to violent videogames was merely another symptom of that disaffection. Escapism, in a particularly violent form.
What also seems obvious to me, though I don’t know if any studies have been done to examine the point, is that those who’ve fed on a steady diet of FPS games will be more effective at mass murder than those who haven’t. Playing FPS games regularly trains you to select targets quickly and accurately, fire as soon as you acquire the target, then move on to the next target. At least, that’s the kind of tactic I’ve found most effective in certain maps on Halo. (Other maps, of course, are best beaten by good use of cover and sniping from range). The fact that this just happens to also be a very effective way of killing lots of unarmed people very quickly is, IMHO, why you tend to see high victim counts in school shootings. It’s not, per se, evidence of a causal relationship between videogames and violence.
However: I do think the desensitizing effect of video games should be kept in mind, and that you shouldn’t be, to pick an extreme example, letting five-year-olds play GTA. It’s rated M for a reason. Nor should they be watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre at that age, either.
In other words, apply some common sense, and be involved in your kids’ lives rather than letting the TV or computer be a babysitter. And take your kid hunting — it’s a great way to teach them viscerally that real guns aren’t toys. Which hopefully, they already knew intellectually.
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:47 pmP.S. I can see where you’re coming from, though. The bit of my comment you quoted was phrased poorly, and I can see why you thought I was saying that video games had turned those kids into murderers. I wasn’t trying to say that.
I do think, however, that FPS games can be particularly bad, mentally, for people with certain types of psychological problems; and that if someone with known sociopathic tendencies is also known to be playing lots of violent games, it should be taken as a red flag.
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:56 pmThe world is knee deep in fucktards. And neanderpundits hunt with whatever they got that will bring home the bacon, so to speak. Trust me on this.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:06 pmAnd, IRL, there is no ‘re-spawn’ — sigh!
My younger kid is learning to use her Winchester 1904 (the older one is at a State U., so she can’t have one!), but it is useful to remember that the parts of the brain responsible for risk assessment are still maturing
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 pm…Is a worthless hack. He refers to first-person shooters as “murder simulators” and claims they harden children emotionally to the task of murder and actually train children in the use of weapons.
I would have thought a member of the US Army would know better than to make such an ignorant statement.
You never get real bullets doing anything in video games. That’s why they’re called “video games” and not “reality games”. You shoot fake bullets at the bad guys and the bad guys shoot fake bullets back.
By the questionable logic of Dave Grossman, we should be seeing dozens of gun owners blowing their heads off all over the country. Very few gun owners actually train themselves for the reality of being shot at by criminals, so “logically” they should kill themselves the instant a criminal threatens them with a gun and presents them with a situation they were not prepared for.
So will playing paintball or going to the shooting range. What’s your point?
I agree, 5-year-olds shouldn’t be playing GTA or watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But not because it might turn them into ticking timebombs of mass murder. They shouldn’t be doing those things because they are entirely inappropriate for a young child to be doing.
The “desensitizing effect” of videogames is largely a myth anyway.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 pm“Christ on a unicycle”
April 24th, 2008 at 12:07 amoh good Lord you are priceless. If you ever stop blogging I might have to stop reading any blogs, it just won’t be the same, warn us ahead of time will ya..