cktimes.ca Archives for Ecowrappin'
Ecowrappin'
Shooting Sports
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The sports section of the local paper featured a story a couple of months ago that is very rare for this day and age. Complete with a colour photograph, the three-quarter page article told of a trio of young people from the greater Barrie area that won the gold, silver and bronze medals at an event held at the Fervenca Shooting Club in Barcelos, Portugal. The event was part of the 24th World Shoot and hosted by the Muzzle Loaders Association International Committee. This trio, all under 20 years of age, consisted of two girls and a boy. To quote from the newspaper article, “They proudly stood upon the podium in the packed awards ceremony in front of 400 muzzle loading shooters representing 24 countries as Canada’s flag was raised to the strains of O Canada”. Was this significant achievement given any notice beyond the local paper? I doubt it! Yet if a comparable level of achievement had been made in almost any other sport it would have been all over the national media. Why the major media disregard? Because guns and shooting are involved. The media provides ample coverage to the unlawful use of firearms, but is reticent to present a good news story related to any shooting sport. Witness how little coverage our biathlon (cross country skiing and target shooting) team gets at the Winter Olympics compared to the other events and individual athletes.I have been a shooter most of my life. I started plinking at targets with a .22 under the direct supervision of my Dad when I was nine or ten. My Dad frowned on kids that had BB or pellet guns---he believed they fostered careless gun handling habits in youngsters. He insisted that I start with something that was capable of killing, as that would demand immediate respect for the firearm and lead to the highest standards in gun handling ethics and safety.
By the time I was twelve I was carrying a gun on hunting forays on the farm property. This involved shooting the ground hogs (woodchucks) that existed in almost phenomenal numbers in that day and age and caused considerable damage to pastures and hayfields. During the winter I pursued snowshoe rabbits (varying hares) in the cedar swamps and balsam thickets with our family beagle.
Walking around openly with a gun in your hand drew little if any attention in those days. It was commonplace for people to walk the streets exiting or entering town carrying rifles or shotguns. I once took my first gun, an auto-loading .22 that I still own and shoot, to high school, and then along on a seniors field trip to an island in Georgian Bay. During my second year of college, 1972 as I recall, I walked in and out of Barrie carrying a brand new auto-loading shotgun; and the residents hardly took notice. The area where I spent that day chasing a Jack Rabbit (European Hare) around – unsuccessfully – is now covered with houses. My neighbour tells me that she belonged to a high school shooting club and her school actually had a shooting range in the basement. I believe this was rather commonplace in some of the high schools in the larger centres during the fifties and sixties. The town of Wiarton had a youth shooting club comprised of well over one hundred participants and they had a range in the local arena; in a large, heated room overlooking the ice surface.
The foregoing of course harks back to a different time with different perspectives. In those two or three decades following the Second World War the shooting sports were encouraged. I still have old pamphlets and other literature that promoted shooting as a healthy and enjoyable family pastime. A populace that was knowledgeable in the proper handling and use of firearms was considered an asset, if not a deterrent, given the lessons of the War. Those thousands of Russians armed with pitch forks, shovels and axes where of little consequence to gun-toting Germans.
But now, in the eyes of a largely brain washed urban society and many ignorant and un-thinking, dare I say brain dead, politicians; guns are no longer mechanisms of survival and the procurement of food. They are no longer tools of recreational or competitive pursuits. They are just bad! The misguiding and highly falsified rhetoric surrounding most efforts to suppress guns, and by direct association the shooting sports, has cost the law-abiding gun owner and the Canadian taxpayer billions of dollars for no real tangible or measurable positive result. That rhetoric and resulting laws oppress the law-abiding and are of no deterrent to the law-breaker. Strict gun control measures, including confiscation in some countries, notably Australia and England, have actually been followed by rapidly escalating crime rates.
Safety is the issue, at least the one expounded by politicians and other gun control crusaders. But how safe are you in a society where only the police and army; and now terrorists and religious fanatics, are heavily armed? History has shown time and time again that you are not. In times of insurrection and civil unrest, you are helpless and defenceless.
Handguns have been under strict control for decades; you need a special permit, renewed annually, just to transport one from your residence to the shooting range and back. Yet the strict level of control imposed on handguns, as readily concealable weapons, has had minimal impact on those who are lawless by nature or activity. Gun control advocacy now encompasses the long gun, largely traditional hunting and target shooting tools and targets the law-abiding citizens that own them. I believe part of the gun control advocacy is rooted in the anti-hunting establishment; yet another un-informed collective that spews half-truths and outright lies as the primary means of advancing their cause.
And where does conservation come into play in all of this? The first, and for a long time the only, conservation initiatives sprung from and where solidly based in the hunting fraternity. Hunting involves firearms of considerable choice, primarily long guns, but also specialized handguns. Hunters, and later anglers, led the way in the promotion and enforcement of fish and game laws, limited hunting seasons, bag and creel limits, the protection of threatened species, and fish and wildlife habitat protection and restoration. Check into any established and active conservation entity that is providing tangible results as far as fish wildlife conservation and habitat restoration and enhancement is concerned and you will find that organization rooted in the hunting fraternity. Whether forest, prairie, marsh, meadow or stream, the hand and wallet of the true conservationist has always been there in assistance to these natural places and their inhabitants. And many true conservationists, past and present, involved themselves in the shooting sports.
Yet there are those that wish to banish guns. They persecute those who would defend them and the things they love most. To quote the wisdom of a great man:
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson
I was born on the Bruce Peninsula on July 20, 1951 and raised on a farm just south of the village of Lions Head, which is located about halfway up the peninsula on the Georgian Bay shoreline. I graduated from Georgian College of Applied Arts and Technology in Barrie in 1973 as a Resources Engineering Technologist. I was hired by Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) in April of 1975 as the first DUC employee in Ontario. Throughout almost 29 years I was involved with the implementation of more than 500 wetland projects and project complexes in southwestern and south central Ontario. Some of these habitat projects included important waterfowl and migratory bird habitat along the eastern shoreline of Lake St. Clair. Just three weeks short of completing 29 years with DUC, I accepted an early retirement opportunity effective March 31, 2004.
