Countryside Alliance Idea

[xeroxchick]

Okay, I am a big Gordon Ramsey fan and love watching him on “The F Word” when he hunts his own food or raises his own food. In fact, I am sort of impressed that it is actually shown on tv. For instance, he caught a hare with an Eagle once and cooked it for his children, and each season he raises animals, slaughters them and cooks them. It is probably very educational and appealing to pure food yuppies. So the thought occurred to me - shouldn’t the Countryside Alliance or the Sportsman’s Alliance do something with this concept in order to promote and protect hunting? We all know that absolutely nothing beats fresh food - weather you grow it or catch it, and the food snobs out there might latch on and try it. It might be a way to bridge the gap. Any thoughts?

Or is this not related? Thought about our rabbit and fox hunting in peril, and ways to undo the misconceptions. One of the prime reasons to hunt is to eat! But I’ve never eaten a fox.

[LexInVA]

I can see where you are going with this but I don’t think most pure food yuppies would latch on to the idea. That crowd is either vegan/vegetarian or trendy suburbanite/city dwellers who just buy whatever at the markets. You can’t really sell hunting and certainly not try to promote Foxhunting to either one of those crowds. The veggies generally abhor anything of that sort or simply want nothing to do with it for obvious reasons while the urban health eaters don’t care unless they have a taste for game. In short, you can’t really sell it to anyone who isn’t already interested. The best way to promote Foxhunting to those who do not understand it or know much about it is to separate it from the stigma that the word “hunting” often carries with it in the eyes of those who do not engage in such activities. How you do that exactly, depends on who you are trying to promote the activity to and what their beliefs are. Obviously there are many urban people who think that chasing an animal with the intent of killing it for any reason other than survival or safety is just plain wrong. So, one must remove the notion of killing for pure sport from their minds when discussing things like Foxhunting with those who do not participate in it. One of the things that I picked up on when discussing Foxhunting with the locals is that they specifically made a point of the fact that they do not chase the fox with the intent of killing it but rather to simply invoke it’s natural behavior to run from potential predators and that the foxes who do end up injured from the chase or killed by hounds are exceedingly rare instances of what would otherwise happen in nature to those foxes who are too old and weak, unlucky, or simply not fit enough to survive being chased by other natural predators. At least that’s how it came across to me. I’m sure JSwan will shoot me if that’s not correct. :lol:

[ArtilleryHill]

They’ve done it, more or less

For about 10 years, if I remember correctly:

http://www.countrylife.co.uk/countryside/article/369442/Mark-Hix-produces-seasonal-food-booklet-for-Game-to-Eat.html

[JSwan]

[QUOTE=xeroxchick;4241157]
Okay, I am a big Gordon Ramsey fan and love watching him on “The F Word” when he hunts his own food or raises his own food.
Or is this not related? Thought about our rabbit and fox hunting in peril, and ways to undo the misconceptions. One of the prime reasons to hunt is to eat! But I’ve never eaten a fox.[/QUOTE]

I caught an episode where he’s patting a pig and I thought - oh my - here we go… thinking that he was going to wax poetic about Peta or something.

Then he was like - bye bye piggy and the next scene he’s eating it. Mmmmm… .bacon…

Stupid me - to think that Gordon Ramsey waxed poetic about anything.:lol::lol:

Anyway - I don’t know what agencies are doing across the country but in Virginia the DNR does make attempts to get people more interested in wildlife issues - and for women (not trying to be sexist) there is a Women in the Outdoors program.

From a conservationist perspective - one benefit I see to mounted foxhunting, or the use of dogs in hunting, is that it can mimic the role of a much larger natural predator - an extirpated predator. However, the use of dogs/hounds is different in that the predator (the hound/dog) is controlled, and is part of an overall management strategy designed to maintain sustainable populations of wildlife; particularly near areas where livestock are present and present an easier target for a predator. So there are limits, seasons, laws and regulations, pressure on a species is not constant the way it would be if a natural predator was present.

In areas where large predators have been reintroduced (wolves), dogs are used in programs as part of an aversion strategy designed to limit predation on livestock. Basically - using dogs/hounds to chase or to discourage.

However, the programs are funded at taxpayer expense or in part by charitable donations; and those programs are now largely unfunded. I think in some states the coffer has been empty for several years. Speaking as a conservationist, that means predator reintroduction or other conservation programs may fail due to increased complaints about livestock and pet (and maybe eventually human) predation. It seems that in all cases - the sportsman is still the one to fund the conservation effort, support it - then be excluded from the environment, then be invited back because the urban/academic/modern approach fails.

With an increasingly urban population, I’m not sure how to explain that to someone who calls every deer “bambi”. I know we like to joke about that but in all seriousness - there is a tremendous gap - and poachers and the bad apples among sportsmen are sometimes the most visible image the public has of hunting.

If I was to suggest anything - it would be more outreach. Not just by foxhunters and foothunters but by all sporting groups. And not just to the public - but to each other. There is a lot of misunderstanding between some sporting groups - and that puts us at odds with each other when in reality - we shouldn’t be.

I’ll probably piss someone off by writing this but I believe it is something every foxhunter or foothunter should do - not rely on their Master(s) or the MFHA leadership. How many of us attend game dept. meetings? Participate in the regulatory process? Express interest or try other forms of hunting? And… ahem… how many of you don’t bother to purchase a hunting license? We’re all hunting - hilltopper, field, staff, Master and whips. Buy the license - faithfully.

As far as the “localvore” thing - I can’t figure these folks out. I’m a producer (teeny operation) - and the people I’ve met are supportive of hunting - as a concept. Fits in with the whole organic green flavor of the moment stuff. I think there is an opportunity there - to educate. Just don’t know what form that would take as producers can vary so dramatically from one another. But if sporting groups worked with producers (probably via Farm Bureau or eatwild or something) like putting links to Hunters for the Hungry, PEC, on their websites, or a producer offering educational materials along with his products - I could see something like that being positive.

On my site I was leery of posting links to anything that might be “political” -but on the other hand - is the whole “buy fresh buy local” idea a wee bit political anyway? I’m just a wee bit sleepy now and would have to think on it some more.