I have been reading the articles based around the young man in
North Carolina that screwed out-of-state antlers on a locally sourced deer, and
then passed the antlered head through scoring, until his online images were
questions. These questions lead to the authorities investigating the young
hunter’s buck and foul was proclaimed, with penalties. The scorer of the
antlers, amiss with the foul, bowed out of the job of scorer. Let us not forget the young hunter's foray into some supplement he was reported to be working on.
What a nutshell story.
The young man’s reputation is tarnished. Can he be redeemed, or
do we, as a Hunting Nation, not care about the way in which this young man
arrived at the shores of deception in hunting?
Every article bashed him for his treachery and deception. I
couldn’t tell if he was from South Carolina or North Carolina, as one or two of
the articles reported, but it appeared to be North Carolina. This young man’s
picture was published for public condemnation and shaming. The young man's future
hunting will be put under a magnifying glass, in need of witnesses, for the
hunting-community-at-large. He was possibly fined, and could pay more with his
hunting privileges denied for an unknown amount of time.
Coming from adults, where are we going wrong with our children?
Can no one see, for the disgusted stone throwing, the conditions
and pressures adult seasoned hunters are setting and pressuring young hunters
to far excel others at any cost or risk?
The young hunter gets caught committing
a wrongful act, because the pressure to be viable and competitive amongst its members is exclusionary to what could be considered substandard hunters, is silently there, lurking. Why is no adult, master hunter-in-good-faith, as mentor, stepping up to re-school this young man in the moral,
ethical, and personal parameters of a hunting participant?
How can we do a turn-of-the-screw, to say, and see a different perspective?
This young man presented an opportunity, yet it was thrown down
to the wayside, just as the young man has been; an alleged substandard poacher
that once was a hunter, no longer acceptable for consideration.
Where is that article? No
one defined a master hunter as someone who solely goes out and takes big game,
in unnumbered amounts, with skins and horns bedecking the walls.
How many other times has it been said about hunting photography
on the internet that some images are staged? Yet we pursue these images as
examples of hunting participants’ credentials at being a master, expert,
intermediate, or novice hunter. A picture cannot always tell you the caliber of
person you are dealing with or looking at.
For focusing purposes, I do artistic facial reconstructions of the archaically deceased. I have no
idea if these are good people I am drawing or bad people, but there the image
is all the same, with liberty given to the facial details.
The press for younger individuals in the hunting culture to
compete with seasoned adults, whom they enamor based on unrealistic
advertising, television editing, and general inappropriate modeling online and
through other media, is distorting the hunting ethic, its moral center, and the
overall quality of the hunting experience.
Young hunters, just starting out, have to compete economically
and through celebrity-driven hunting culture, which illustrates some of its
younger counterparts are straying down the wrong path, a path set by poor
modeling and third-hand mentoring from a television screen and computer
monitor; enter virtual strangers.
Who stands on the path to direct their journey? Even in First
Nations culture, there is someone observing the journey of the hunting initiate? Why
does it exist in the hunting culture, this lack of disregard?
Granted there is
not always going to be someone to monitor individual doings, but given the case
that something like this happens, why not reassert the young individual back on
the path with an appropriate person to guide them on to a better understanding
of the self, and its internal and external interweaving with the world of
Nature, animals, and treatment of the conscious reality we interact with?
Is redemption or forgiveness available?
When a hunting participant uploads hunting exploits, which are
questioned for good reason, into the public domain and social media, the
exploits can be found to garner legal repercussions based on information established
by legal authorities.
Does this necessarily mean the hunting community turns its back,
in shunning fashion, on our young people, who merely acted on the pressure from
adult hunting participant members, modeling unrealistic behaviors to keep up,
satisfy, or make themselves relevant in a dog-eat-dog world to other substandard
hunters posing as Masters?
Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore
~Courtesy of the AOFH~
