Dennis Paulson:
>I took out a Tahoma Audubon birding field trip some
>time ago and was fascinated to discover how many of the participants were
>either past or present duck hunters. It's not blasphemy to hunt birds
>legally and use them for something (typically the pot); it's part of our
>heritage as humans.

People can be very strange creatures. We used to have a big annual
picnic at Portland Audubon and Lynden Farms, a local chicken
manufacturer (hard to call something so mechanized "farming") would
donate us chickens to barbeque. We'd put on a great feed.

One anti-conservation type person once commented that Auduboners
were bunch of hypocrits when we claimed to love birds because
we served chicken at our picnic!

And, one of those "I want to die" moments as a trip-leader...

I was leading a group of PAS members to the Goshutes on an
organized tour (organized larceny, really - I raised $1,000
for the project!) a few Septembers ago. On the way home,
we stayed one night at Denio Junction on the OR/NV border,
the night before opening day for mule deer season.

On woman, a real dingbat (I relate several trip-leader hell
stories about her), with a Texas twang, was apparently amazed
to find us sharing a breakfast table with a bunch of hunters.
This place has long bench-type tables to eat at.

Anyway, I was sitting next to her, and in total sincerity
she asked the hunter across the way, "you're not REALLY going
to kill bambi, are you?". I'm telling the absolute truth!
I've got witnesses! I wanted to die or crawl under the table
or something.

I quickly launched into my hunters-support-conservation-financially
speech I've prepared over the years just for this kind of situation,
and told her to shut up.

Hunters are like any other segment of the population. Some are
wonderful people with a real love of wildlife and the outdoors.

And others are conservative Republicans :)

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>