TomTeriffic
Active member
Are there any urban or suburban avid sport hunters here? I ask out of curiosity since most American hunters, it seems, have a rural life background. Are there any hunters here raised in the suburbs or the city?
I was born in 1964 and raised in a suburban-to-semi-rural setting with horses and other farm animals nearby. Neighbors has a few sheep, goats, ducks, geese, chickens, horses and a couple head of beef on small properties. Yet, within a five-minute drive from home in a small valley northen California town, called Novato, there would be a large post office, a couple fire stations, major supermarket chains and a police department. The beach was about 30 minutes away and San Francisco was about 30 minutes south. This area was surronded by woodsy rolling hills with black/white Holstein dairy cows and red/white Hereford beef cattle.
At school, I only knew about two boys who hunted. This community was not much of a sport hunting community. Occasionally, I would see a rifle or shotgun on the back of some guy's motorcycle or in the gun rack of a truck. Fishing was more widely accepted in this local culture than hunting though there were coastal black-tail deer all over the joint. A handful of locals were duck hunters, dove hunters, pheasant hunters (there was co-op pheasant shooting nearby) and shot clay targets with shotguns.
There was a wooded hill right next to my boyhood home with deer. My mother was anti-hunting but would complain about the damn deer that came into her garden and had a feast. The local deer were feral, largely semi-tame. Always does and/or fawns to be seen but never hide, hair nor antler of a buck. The cowardly bucks always hid out under cover. My mother called the county sheriff on at least one occasion because, circa 1970, somebody was shooting a gun up on this wooded hill, in the dark of night, which was private property and posted against hunting. My mother told me how she heard from one of the local deputies that a fresh bleeding deer carcass was found up on this hill. A fawn. It must have been some young punk with a gun maybe. Our sheriff's department had bloodhounds for tracking. There was a time when young boys and younger men acted like juvenile delinquents with hunting weapons. Most hailed from the city: the concrete jungle. They were not raised with sportsman ethics. They just thought it "cool" to shoot animals dead with guns or archery bows and leave them, sometimes to suffer. Unfortunately, they did some unethical if not unsafe or unlawful doings. But I digress.
PS - I hope this kind of unethical behavior with hunting equipment is no more. I can't imagine rural-raised people do stupid things with guns and bows in the boonies.
I was born in 1964 and raised in a suburban-to-semi-rural setting with horses and other farm animals nearby. Neighbors has a few sheep, goats, ducks, geese, chickens, horses and a couple head of beef on small properties. Yet, within a five-minute drive from home in a small valley northen California town, called Novato, there would be a large post office, a couple fire stations, major supermarket chains and a police department. The beach was about 30 minutes away and San Francisco was about 30 minutes south. This area was surronded by woodsy rolling hills with black/white Holstein dairy cows and red/white Hereford beef cattle.
At school, I only knew about two boys who hunted. This community was not much of a sport hunting community. Occasionally, I would see a rifle or shotgun on the back of some guy's motorcycle or in the gun rack of a truck. Fishing was more widely accepted in this local culture than hunting though there were coastal black-tail deer all over the joint. A handful of locals were duck hunters, dove hunters, pheasant hunters (there was co-op pheasant shooting nearby) and shot clay targets with shotguns.
There was a wooded hill right next to my boyhood home with deer. My mother was anti-hunting but would complain about the damn deer that came into her garden and had a feast. The local deer were feral, largely semi-tame. Always does and/or fawns to be seen but never hide, hair nor antler of a buck. The cowardly bucks always hid out under cover. My mother called the county sheriff on at least one occasion because, circa 1970, somebody was shooting a gun up on this wooded hill, in the dark of night, which was private property and posted against hunting. My mother told me how she heard from one of the local deputies that a fresh bleeding deer carcass was found up on this hill. A fawn. It must have been some young punk with a gun maybe. Our sheriff's department had bloodhounds for tracking. There was a time when young boys and younger men acted like juvenile delinquents with hunting weapons. Most hailed from the city: the concrete jungle. They were not raised with sportsman ethics. They just thought it "cool" to shoot animals dead with guns or archery bows and leave them, sometimes to suffer. Unfortunately, they did some unethical if not unsafe or unlawful doings. But I digress.
PS - I hope this kind of unethical behavior with hunting equipment is no more. I can't imagine rural-raised people do stupid things with guns and bows in the boonies.
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