Is it?
It's something else. Something ugly, and no more 'sport' than Cheney's canned hunting expeditions. Hunting for sport is supposed to involve some opportunity for the prey to have a fighting chance at survival. These animals do not.
Killing animals with a rifle or a bow for food is hunting. Shooting them in the open from a plane is just plain mean and frankly, a bit cowardly.
Video Credit: defendersactionfund
I grew up in Pennsylvania, where the first day of deer season is a school holiday. I don't hunt, but I have lots of family and friends, both men and women, who do. In southwest PA, it's a part of life, like Steelers football and pothole dodging.
There have been plenty of deer and critters hanging from my mom's porch and my neighbors' basement through the years, waiting to be taken to be processed, then loaded into the big freezer or distributed to friends. I've watched as my brothers prayed for snow so that they could wake up at o-dark-thirty and freeze their butts off in a tree stand for hours on end or tracking their prey through the woods, hoping to get their deer so they could get home, get warm, and brag to their friends about how friggin cold it was. I also watched my mom nurse her dog back to health after he was shot by a careless hunter who mistook him for a wild animal, and learned that not all hunters live by the same standards. That said, I can't see any of the hunters I know shooting helpless animals from low flying planes with high powered rifles. Where's the sport in that?
I've seen hunting. This isn't it. It's not sport to shoot an animal that has no chance at survival. Sniper practice, maybe, but it's not any kind of hunting I've ever seen.
Can't say I'm surprised, though. Gov. Palin has filed a lawsuit against the US government for placing the polar bear on the endangered species list so she can protect 'big oil' and her archaic ideas on energy and the future of our nation. I don't get that, either.
