August 2008 Updates page 11
19 August
Scouting
From Jeremy's recent scouting trip. He has the ability to find the bucks!
How many bucks can you count in this picture? There were 9 total in the group.
More to come!!!!
This gives us the wow factor. Thank you Jeremy, we can feel your pressure. The very best of luck to you.
The Other Side
Animal rights groups that have for the past year+ focused on emotion based pet and school children food safety issues have again turn toward hunting.
The current mainstream media notice involves a suburban neighborhood with deer eating landscaping problem. PETA stands in their way suggesting birth control over controlled hunts. (Bow hunt to thin deer resisted, by Cortney Langley, The Virginia Gazette, August 16, 2008, James City.)
This is on the heels of a win/lose compromise in Pennsylvania involving making it more difficult to breed hunting dogs.
Once again hunting oriented organizations such as the NRA and US Sportsmen's Alliance have fallen by the wayside as have conservation groups such as PF, DU, QU as being seen as irrelevant by mainstream media. Until these groups are able to build credibility equal to the animal rights groups toward mainstream media, hunters will lose the public relations battle. What a chance for a bow hunting association to step in with financing from hunter groups to offer a traveling package of information, training and safety controls employing local hunters to reduce local deer populations. An articulate spokesman for such a group would be sure to get in the local news, maybe even equal to that of the animal rights groups. Just cutting in half the amount of NRA junk mail sent out in a year would probably fund such a traveling advisory group to liaison between communities, DNR's and the media.
