I am not a gun person. But for the gun persons, how about you speak out?

[marions ghost]

49. "Since when did hunting become target shooting"

Interesting little article on the subject (excerpt):
http://www.hcn.org/wotr/17388/print_view

"I’ve been a hunter, but never that kind of devoted hunter. It only took one incident to convince me I was not a killer for sport. I was a teenager when I shot a cottontail in the woods of northeastern Ohio, but when I went to pick up the dead rabbit, it was gone. The wounded animal had dragged its bloody body into a dense thicket where I couldn’t reach it. Although I’d never intended to skin the rabbit to bring it home for dinner, the idea of leaving an animal to suffer and die in the underbrush made me feel sick. I decided then that if I wasn’t going to kill for food, I couldn’t be a hunter.

The naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch once said, ”When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him sportsman.” I may not be that radical in my assessment of hunters, but I’ve begun to think that hunting doves brings out the worst in people.

A few days after the season began, my dog and I went for a hike in the desert behind a mountain outside of Las Cruces. The first thing I saw was what looked like a tornado of turkey vultures – 15 or 20 birds spiraling at various heights above the desert floor. Then, not 20 yards off the paved road near a new subdivision called Tierra Escondida, we came upon hundreds of 12-gauge shotgun casings, an empty 24-pack of beer and a dozen assorted wings and other body parts of decimated doves. Whoever had hunted here had blasted away, relishing something other than the taste of succulent dove meat.

That’s what’s unsettling. How do you educate these people? And what can be done about them? If officers from New Mexico Game and Fish had made contact with these shooters, the hunters could be cited only if they failed to possess valid licenses and stamps for that specific area. If game wardens returned later and found that the site had not been cleaned properly, the hunters could be cited only for littering. But short of having psychologists doubling as conservation officers, there’s no way to determine a hunter’s motivation. Even if an officer could cite somebody for an illegal motive, what would it be -- taking too much pleasure in the kill?"