Always possessed of strong hunting instincts but also strong empathy for my prey, early in my life I gravitated toward more challenging weapons and hunting methods in order to emphasize
quality of the hunt over size of the bag.
After taking up traditional bowhunting, I also built custom longbows and recurves professionally for a couple years; my bows called
Sporting Chance. Managing a bicycle store in Austin, Texas at the time, I kept a few of my bows on display in the shop. Suffice to say there was no shortage of hard-core liberals shopping for bicycles in Austin, but the bows were too gorgeous to ignore. I'd always wait for the customer to inquire about the bows, then take one down, string it, and hand it to him or HER; whereupon a smile would invariably envelop the whole face as he or she took in the whole
sensual experience. No doubt like a liberal handling a nice handmade bamboo fly-rod, they'd always ask, "Can you actually HUNT with this?" I never hesitated to answer, YES, I hunt with them;
that's what they're made for!" As he or she fondled the gorgeous thing pondering actually HUNTING with such a simple and aesthetic WEAPON, the usual response went something like, "Wow... I can RESPECT that!" Matter of fact such interactions spawned a chapter in my only non-airgun-specific book,
A Sporting Proposition; the chapter titled
Hunting For Respect! On a slightly different but related note, my empathy for the prey is also what drove me to mostly abandon body shots with airguns for more humane brain shots where the prey never realizes it's been shot, much less suffers moments of intense horror and trauma. That same empathy also ultimately drove me away from bowhunting (though I still love traditional archery).
Thanks for sharing that video, Edosan. That sportsman is a credit to hunting ethics. Does he have a television show? If not, I can follow him if I can get his name.