cktimes.ca Archives for Ecowrappin'
Ecowrappin'
GAMES VERSUS SPORTS
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The terms sport or sports are used pretty loosely these days. And just what is a sport anyway? It doesn’t matter whether it is an individual competing against himself; trying to better a previous performance or time: or a competition between teams of players, nearly everything has been labelled a sport. And what is a game? There are card games. Poker has become a popular pastime, if not just a current day fad. Could it become, or be called, a sport? Then there are board games ranging from snakes and ladders to monopoly to chess to crokinole. These, in my recollection, have always been called games.Yet, we have the sports of hockey, football, soccer and basketball. But we go to, or watch on TV --- hockey, football, soccer, and basketball games. We don’t call it a hockey sport; we call it a hockey game. We have the Olympic Games; yet nearly every activity therein is called a sport.
In days of yore recreational pursuits or competitions of a “sporting” nature were called duels or jousts, or games. None of the participants were referred to as sportsmen. That term came much later and was initially applied to anglers and hunters who pursued these time-honoured pastimes for recreation and exercise: fabulous table fare being a much-anticipated bonus. Yet the terms game fish; big game; small game; and dangerous game are regularly mentioned in hunting and angling tales.
Just last week I saw, in a travel brochure promoting the features of a certain locale, bird watching labelled as a sport! Bird watching? Now bird watching is an excellent pastime, one that I have pursued much of my life, but a sport? I seldom bird watch as the sole purpose for being out in the open environment; it is usually a sideline of some other activity that I am more focussed on. Yet, I am tuned into birds, whether visually or audibly, while working, fishing, hunting, walking or even while doing yard work here in the suburbs. Yes, quite a number of birds can be heard, and seen, at almost anytime of day, even here in the urban world. Harsh winter days may be the exception.
So what is a sport; and what is a game. There is little confusion or dissention as to card and board games being just that. Hunting and fishing have been called sports throughout most of modern times. Back in my younger days groundhogs (woodchucks) were a plentiful nuisance. We regularly went out “shooting groundhogs”: not hunting, shooting! For that is exactly what it was. We not only traversed our own lands, we were welcomed onto other properties by the majority of the farming community. Groundhogs were a pest!
Let us take a moment to look at hunting, in these times more a recreational and wildlife management pursuit as opposed to the procurement of meat, though proper utilization of the harvest as table fare is legally mandated. Hunting, perhaps more than any other pastime, differentiates sport vis-à-vis game. Indeed, hunting and fishing are frequently undertaken one on one, the hunter or fisherman versus his quarry in the quarry’s own bailiwick; sometimes in the quarry’s specific habitat. Often referred to as fair chase, the advantage is with the quarry. Or at least it used to be. Nowadays I am not so sure. You see; we are living in times of instant gratification; and immediate results, at least as far as our personal aspirations are concerned. And there is an ever-increasing myriad of gadgets, most of them unnecessary if not useless, that, via slick marketing, persuade the modern day “sportsmen” that any or all of these gadgets provide the quick and easy route to success. Sitting in a tree stand all day long out in the woods takes patience and perseverance, traditional qualities of a good hunter; but if this is hunting, rather than just shooting when the quarry presents itself, it is arguably border-line at best. If that tree stand overlooks a food plot designed to draw the quarry from its protective cover into the open view of the “hunter”, it surely is nothing more than shooting. Very quietly and very slowly stalking, or “still hunting”; with your senses honed to their peak, and finding, maybe only getting a quick look at, but not necessarily taking, the quarry---this to my mind is the epitome of hunting. Do you adhere to time honoured tradition or do you take the path of least resistance? Do you subscribe to the traditional standards in equipment or are you a collector of modern gizmos and so called aids? So what are you, a hunter or a shooter? Are you a sportsman or a gamester? These are questions that bear personal consideration. It matters not whether you are hunting or fishing; they are parallels in the natural environment.
Getting back to baseball, hockey, etc.. Are they sports or games? I expect this could be debated from here on out. What about gymnastics or golf? Skiing? Biathlon? Gymnastics, skiing or biathlon can hardly be called games. But golf can. If there is any real difference between a sport and a game I think it is a function of how it is undertaken and by how many. Games are generally played, and frequently as a team activity; or at least one on one; i.e., tennis. Sport is more of an individual effort; not so much played, but rather, a competition with ones self. There may or may not be an audience; hence, witnesses. When one pursues a sport as an individual he or she is trying to achieve, or surpass, a personal best. This is the case in gymnastics, golf, skiing, biathlon, running, swimming, etc., etc. This is often true in hunting and fishing as well; the primary difference is trying to outwit a wild creature with superior sensory and survival skills operating in its own very familiar living space. Self-discipline, honesty and ethics are paramount attributes of individual sporting pursuits because, as previously mentioned, there are often no witnesses.
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.
