The Crystal Ball of Hunting.

Remember this: It doesn't take a psychic to predict the occurance of a bad event, if every decision with cause and effect is driving a narrative to a tragic end....for someone. It will eventually happen.

I was watching Jim Shockey's Uncharted a couple of nights ago on the Sportsman's Channel. There was this little umble dude about to fall off a log and the natives caught him. He put his face in the camera and spoke. He reminded me of Gru with hair. I heard someone call him Corey then I thought...wait a minute. I think that is the guy from  the Black Rhino debacle. I finished watching the show and wanted to update myself by reading up on Corey Knowlton's endeavors to see what end it came to.

Most of the articles were stating his family's lives were in danger, the FBI got involved, he had security detail, animal activists where threatening his life and Anonymous got involved; or at least someone claimed to be Anonymous.

I looked at Knowlton and couldn't make my mind up over the fact that he looked sickly or stressed to death.

I then see this 19 year old cheerleader that has been in the news for lion hunting imagery circa Bachman.  Some of the things being said here is the fact this person is excited over all the attention she is getting; good or bad. Of course, my first thoughts were that this had FBI written all over it. She truly is nothing more than bait.

No one really is looking at her accomplishments. This should have been relegated to her peers. She is now hashtagged the Happy Huntress, murderess, and a slew of other words. Her narrative right now is not an ambassador for hunting or conservation. Just a twat with a gun killing exotic animals; regardless of her age. Of course that is not my opinion because its futile with this subject matter  but the people at large in the world.

The only reason I am  writing this is a marker for myself. I want to see how much time will pass before the hunting and anti-hunting machine ends the life of a person.  This could be through murder, suicide, happenstance, or whatever. This is not what I lay awake at night thinking about but somewhere it does bother me that it doesn't seem to bother anyone else. I guess if you play in traffic expect to get hit by the bus. I do go about my life and forget these thoughts until I see articles and disputes posted to the net.

The concern I have is this:

How do parents or the individual prostrate themselves or their children out publically to a world that has already exhibited an underlining murderous contempt for hunters? Simultaneously hunters have thrown  gas on the fire of internet conversations, to invite something so negative into OUR world, in the name of hunting or conservation, which doesn't seem so positive anymore based on participants behavior.

I have no idea which way this situation will go. All I see is a group of people or an individual egged on by a group of people in hunting, while putting a target on themselves.

One bright day, an extremist person who is against the idea of hunting is going to decide to make a  clear statement. This statement will be: one or more persons' losing life, limb, or being scarred for the rest of their life. Conditions over this topic are revolving. Its an  escalating situation with lows and very big highs. Anything with this tendency will eventually peak or spill over. 

Disturbed people kill for non-sensical reasons all the time en masse such as James Holmes, Elliot Rodgers, and the Columbine shootings. In the case of hunting, its pretty square the possible reasons an extremist will flip his or her lid. There doesn't seem to be any kind of damage control to hinder the progression of this kind of fall-out by death. If they are far enough away a gun will not help you.

Also the narrative of this young girl's life will be altered. The possibility the narrative will go in a negative direction to come back to bite her later in life is there. All this attention seems great  right now but the downside comes quickly. When you can't even go out in broad daylight of your own freewill because  you never really truly know if the people stalking you have gone away, is a lot for a young person to deal with.

The narrative I see is hunters re-enforcing liberty, freedom, and the right to hunt yet these online personalities are damning themselves to a form of self-incarceration. I have been confused for sometimes on the true reason for this. Hunting, conservation or celebrity? Now because of the pointless conversations in hunting, conservation is under fire.

Hunting participants as a whole are being chucked in with the bad behavior of online personalities that make way more money than the average man. I can not grasp the concept that in order to push conservation and hunting the best we can do as sportsmen and sportswomen is to use the most negative platform and podium to speak from. The other problem is it is not the voice of a hunting collective but a hypish frontperson that is stumbling over his words like Barney Phife whilst shooting us all in the foot, behind and the face for good measure. If you really want to do yourself a favor as a person who hunts, stop kissing Gluteus maximus just to be in the hunting cliche. (No, that is not a Roman  Emperor).

I feel like there are established groups in the hunting echelon that think they are driving the narratives to protect and improve hunting when it is damaging hunting left and right. These groups that we can't see could not give two shits about the rest of the hunters because they want their agenda pushed. Their agenda is going to be the undoing of hunting and chokehold conservation,  if it goes unchecked. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see this is a fear driven machine.

I feel truly empathetic towards this young girl because she is a tool in a game. She is just being used for some end that is temporary but the effects will loom over her for a lifetime. I hope she is at least getting a fat paycheck. If she is going to sell her soul young, she might as well be able to pay for a bodyguard.

Mark my words. Eventually someone, somewhere will lose their life or wish they had. Everybody involved will be asking themselves for what end or purpose did it ever serve.

Finally the only conclusion I can come to is an empty pointlessness. Someone is using a young female to anchor a dispute when there are better ways to argue the concept. This is nothing more than kindergarten school yard fighting, where kids hit each other in the back then run away; rinse and repeat.  There is always that kid held as a shield to block the onslaught of blows. Kendall Jones just hasn't felt the full brunt of it yet. Ergo we could ask ourselves, why do grown adults act like children? For rhyme or reason, humans do things all the time that don't make sense.

Hunting is there for everyone; not just for a group with a political agenda.

I think I shall go vomit now.

 Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

The Blurry Face of Hunting

Remember this: There are now a lot of hunters roaming the countryside blurry and out of focus where before it was crystal clear.

I was doing the rounds looking for something interesting to read. I will say now that I am not anyone's social police. I just read things and write for my enjoyment. You can read or pass, rich or poor, nutty bird or sane-whatever. I can show  you some love as long as you don't overstep my boundaries. Boundaries are important. I had to get some.

I found a post on the Outdoor Life blog. Just as soon as I saw it I put my head down and shook it in consternation. It was one of those "I knew this was going to eventually happen" moments but hard headed people who think they are invincible just don't see the hatchet fall for looking at the basket. If one went back and read parts of my blog its like a prophecy almost.

Rewind to 2010. The posting of trophy animal photography was in full swing.

There were several male hunters, female hunters, and people pretending to be the opposite sex to lure people in for blackmail purposes to squash competition, be creepy, or any other unknown nefarious reason. I told these nameless people it wasn't prudent to interact with violent strangers on the internet or even suspiciouos people. Turn them into the FBI I said. I was ignored because an hour later these same individuals were seeking an aggressive audience with mutually aggressive strangers. Just watching the comments made me think, "God what a waste of energy."
I remarked it was not a good idea to leave family pictures on display publically after the hunter intentionally visited sites and antagonized anti-hunting people and vice versa. This was a mutual two way street of battling absolutely nothing tangible with no productive outcome.

I even noticed that a lot of the faceless attackers were rip offs of convict names from public law enforcement sites. How easy to make an online page of a convict then blame your shenanigans on them. Think about it. You're in jail for murder or car-jacking but Betty Sue is using your info to harass Alejandro online for posting a trophy photo. Not saying this is the case all the time but it could happen.

My second thought was if they are hunters why aren't they hunting instead of playing tag-you-are-it on social media. For me it made me not want to hunt because it disgusted me. I stopped looking at such things. My life returned to a normal happy place.

There was one site that all this negative corruption made birth on social media. I told my brother and  he was extremely irate. I eventually cut ties from that controversy because it was not worth being dragged into someone else's self created mess only to be pulled down by it. I also had a moment where as an indivdual I said, "This is not me. I am not a follower of bullshit and melodrama. I am a hunter". I sat back and watched these hunters and huntresses get sucked down into a problem they helped create. Now they are crying about it. The Blame Game phantasm begins where anti-hunting spooks haunt them but no one is really there.

At one point it really got rich.

Someone started blaming me for all their problems. I wasn't the one at the computer tapping away at the keyboard. No sir.  There is always people who do wrong then try to put the blame on another person so they don't have to face the consequences of their actions. To me this is what it looked like. The person walked into the woods, started a fight with a bear then really thought he or she would walk out without that bear ripping his or her head clean off. When they took this little trip into the mouth of Bear Hell they didn't even go prepared or even think out what would happen next; left all their hunting skills at the edge of the forest and forged ahead into the stupid bliss of controversy and murder threats.

Somewhere in me I feel somewhat sorry for these hunter people. Somewhere......

Then there were the now sensitive huntresses and hunters who saw a anti-hunter hiding in the dark shadows, under rocks, and peeping out from their keyboard.  After that came the direct attacks from hunters onto other hunters who had a differing opinion because they were now "secret anti-hunters", "tree hugger", or whatever nice label could be applied. I observed this was also a form of black balling, character attacking, low common dirty pool on the part of hunting competitiors. It always seemed to me the loser was the winner and the followers of the hunter who used character attacks was the losers. At least that hunter or huntress that stood their ground, didn't play dirty pool, and stood for something was the real deal. That's the one that can look themselves in the face in a pool of water and know who they are.

It was kind of comical because you can still see it on feeding streams. The post will go like this:

Poster points virtual finger and declares, "This looks like anti-hunting sentiment". If you say anything to the contrary the virtual finger points right back at you, "You're an anti-hunter" whether it is true or not. They tell all their friends  in private messages then you are the black sheep of the family or the hunting world. Baaa. Unfortunately no one asks you if this is true for not wanting to get pulled into the vortex of drama. Better to go with the devil you know.

I had hunters lurking around my private page, passive-aggressively posting things to engage me in battle as another hunter-huntress or pretender. At least if they can get you to argue with them its negative press but press all the same. I was scratching my head, said fuck it, I don't need this; goodbye.

One bad experience I had was friending a 'huntress' but she allowed other male hunters to attack a female hunter on her page then didn't say anything. She advertises she promotes females hunting and encourages it but allows male hunters to beat up on females as long as she's immune. This is how you question a motive by people's true behavior. Instead of breeding friendship or making a new colleague it was better to kick dirt in someone's face along with the men. Every now and again when her pages are not active she throws in the old anti-hunter ploy. Now she dreams of being the Queen of the Hunting Heap. Good luck to you; its lonely at the top because someone is always trying to push you off. As for me, I am riding the dirt roads on my white trash golf cart, carefree as a wild bandicoot.

I have also had this happen to me as well. When you have more than two men jump on one woman in one conversation that is suppose to be taking part in the same sport that female must either be a major threat or one awesome woman.

Yes these are bad experiences but when you know who you are it doesn't matter. All these bad behaviors and mistreatments are not doing anything for interpersonal relationships between hunters or huntresses. It just makes people look mean and self-centered on me, me, me; (all the way home).

I know I am not the only person this has happened to? I have spent the last four years looking for a female hunter to friend but there is none to be had.
Nowhere.......

Now going back to the previous mention of blurry faces. I looked at the image. Outdoor Life blurred out the face as requested. This being a type of defacing of the self by one's own hand no matter the reason. Self-effacing is defined as making your acts inconspicuous. A little late for that.  Now you have pressure on hunters to 'remove their face' from trophy photos. The groups against hunting now can pressure the hunters into marring their faces robbing them of media accolades over trophy photos and do it by the hunter's own hand and decision. This would be the first step in wiping it off of social media. The face today, the body, then the whole picture. Gone.

Yet there is still some things Angelia has yet to tell you............


Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~