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Show FEBRUARY SOUNDING BOARD Wrong on Blood Sport Editor, When I began my now-completed stint at the Park Record newspaper, revered Parkite Blackie Jones offered me a bit of advice. “Never,” he said, “let the truth interfere with a good story.” As we were sitting in the Alamo Draft House tipping back a few cold ones at the time, it was clear that such wisdom was purely tongue-in-cheek It appears Randy Hanskat received the same advice but unfortunately took Blackie’s words literally. Hanskat’s anti-hunting diatribe in the December Mountain Times is not only lacking in truth, but his namecalling makes claims to a good story dubious at best. most egregious error Hanskat’s comes in his declaration that money paid by hunters, “doesn’t go toward protecting land or species, but to protecting herds so that they can be hunted down next year.” In Utah, sportsmen (including anglers) pay a $5 habitat fee prior to purchasing a license. That money goes precisely to what Hanskat claims hunters don’t support; namely, habitat procurement and protection. Other states have similar programs. As for Hanskat’s name-calling, well, since he hasn't any factual basis on which to make a claim, all that’s left is resorting to asinine statements and TVsitcom stereotypes. According to Hanskat, hunters are all “back-asswards, Stone-Age-thinking, Deliverance- gene-pooling, Republican-voting, wife- beating, cow-shooting freaks.” Sorry to disappoint you Randy, but I’ve never voted Republican in my life. And I’m single. As for our first three characterizations, well, you're entitled to your opinion of course, but I'll stand by my education and intelligence against yours any day. And there are many people, more intelligent and Democratic than I, who hunt. Check out “A Hunter's Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport,” which contains the writings of people like Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, Tom McGuane, Rick Bass, Jint Harrison and Peter Mathiessen reflecting on the complex, emotional subject of hunting. As for why I hunt and fish, suffice it to say I believe such activities enable human beings to become participants in the wilderness. Rather than simply observing nature, hunters and anglers must learn the intricacies of both the animals they on which pursue and the earth knowledge they’re hunting. Such grants human beings entry into a much larger world than one of shopping malls, condominiums and Town Lift projects. Indeed, for those in a place such as Park City, where nature is under constant assault, getting out and experiencing the natural world as a participant rather than an observer would be nothing short of revelation. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the National Rifle Association. Their extremism is as reprehensible to me as Hanskat’s. But when such misinformed writing as Randy Hanskat’s sees the light of publication, I begin to wonder if perhaps the NRA is right: that to combat such fanaticism on one side, one has to be fanatic on the other. I hope not. As for the Mountain Times, if you won't insist upon accuracy from your columnists, why should readers regard anything in the publication as more than mere personal opinion? Truthful presentation of the news does not require you to do away with your agenda. @ Columbia — Luke Smith, Falls, Montana Editor's note: Randy Hanskat’s humor column appears every-other month in the Mountain Times. We stand behind Randy’s right to express his opinions, just as we stand behind Luke Smith's right to express his. ESZEusD Ee Nacho Room at Nacho 1997 Mamas Come join us for aprés ski or a late night snack in our relaxing, comfortable non-smoking atmosphere Mamas Serving Dinner Nightly 4 p.m. to midnight Pool Table Foose-ball 1821 Sidewinder Drive in Prospector 645-8226 In Praise of Furballs, Leghounds, and Slobbery Widows By Randy Hanskat A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down. — Robert Benchley I don’t trust people who don't have pets. It's not, probably, that they are inherently evil, although one can’t be sure. It’s that they must be so, so... into humans I've got to think they don’t know what they’re missing, these non-pet-oids. I mean, what’s a carpet if it doesn't have a few discolored spots, bygone reminders of the time Rover got into the food closet, ate his entire bag of dog chow, then returned said _contents in 23 piles all over the living room three hours later? What kind of car doesn’t have a layer of fur covering those nice plum seats and slobber marks on the windows? What’s a chair without an odd colored area where Fluffy decided to rid himself of the grass he’d been eating all morning? You become especially acquainted with that last activity, ralphing, when you have dogs and cats roaming your house. Never have you seen people move as fast as they do when they hear the telltale beginnings of a dog or cat in the process of throwing up. Bodies that may not have broken a sweat for decades are instantly propelled into action, sprinting, grabbing Skipper with one hand (while screaming “Hey! Uh, no. WAIT! Stop. Hang ONNNW!”) and reaching for the back door with the other. Invariably, Skipper is just about wrapping things up by the time you get him out the door. Cats seem to relish puking. They do it enough. If they’re not eating half the lawn, they’re power cleaning their coat. The resulting digestive reject will greet you outside your bedroom first thing in the morning, as you blindly make your way — SQUISH! — out to make coffee. OK, so things can get a little messy at times, but pets are good barometers of people. new her Want acquaintance? to your pets to check out some Introduce and him sit back or and watch. If a new person comes into our house and doesn’t pay any attention to the cats, or worse if he or she openly dislikes them, they don’t get an invitation to come back. Hell, the cats would probably suck the breath right out of them anyway! And they'd have it coming to them, untrustworthy sons of bitches! It works the other way, too, because animals have some sort of ESP thing about people — they know which people like them and which don't. I remember back on a trip to Europe, eating at the outdoor brasseries throughout Greece. It seems I was always surrounded by a dozen stray cats looking up at me, expecting me to deliver a few scraps. How did they know I was an easy mark? Eerie. Cats also have some sort of ego thing. They need to make friends with people who don’t like them. No sooner does a visitor say he or she is allergic to cats, or worse that they don’t like them, and the cats are jockeying for who can jump on the person’s lap first. If they are staying in the guest room, guess who'll be on the bed when they wake up sneezing? Dogs have their own deal, often times revolving around a bit of randiness. What better way to say “hi” to a guest than a horny dog doing his best impersonation of a leghound. Back in college at U of F, I went out with a girl owned who's roommate Barney, a large, rather randy Airedale. In a school known for its skimpily clad women, Barney was in heaven whenever a new friend visited in a short skirt. His straightforward form of hello? A cold wet nose right up the skirt. Nothing says embarassment quite like a big dog. Just when your grandmother has stopped by for dinner, you can bet your yellow lab will be bored with the lack of attention and will soon have nothing to do but lick a certain area of his anatomy. You had better get Nana out of the room quickly, before the alien-resembling end result of such private attention rears its ugly head! Need to clear a room? Give that same big dog a rawhide chew. In about 20 minutes the seemingly rocklike off-white item will have been transformed into a gooey, slimy blob. In another 20 it will be fully ingested. Time to everyone go to Red in the room Alert, because will soon have real empathy for those who fought in WWI and were nailed by mustard gas. But it’s all great, the good, the bad, and the olfactory — petlife. Life without beasties? Show me a home with no slobber marks on the window by the front door, with no snags on the easy chairs, with no dead spots on the lawn, and I'll show you some people badly in need of a trip to the Humane Society. There’s someone with a wet nose waiting to be introduced. @ |