Journalists, like cops, get to see people at their worst. This holds true even in sporting journalism, as I am reminded all too frequently.
Case in point: The boys at VeloNews forward me a letter to the editor from a Denver reader who is beside himself over a photo in the December issue of single-speeder/mountain biker Ross Schnell posing with an elk he has killed. The pic, more typical of a hook-and-bullet mag’ than a bike rag, illustrates a Robbie Stout training piece about doing something other than cycling in the off-season.
Now, I don’t know Ross Schnell from mach schnell. Maybe he hunts for meat, not trophies. I don’t hunt at all, unless you count stalking the wily skinless chicken breast at Vitamin Cottage-Natural Grocers. However, I know a few folks who do, reasoning that free-range elk is a whole lot tastier and better for you than feedlot beef.
But our reader apparently has Ross Schnell’s number, based on a single photograph. He is an “assclown,” a “jackass redneck,” a “semi pro CO dolt with a tiny dick,” an idiot and a coward. Our reader adds: “Want sport? Try to hunt me, I’ll not only come after your hillbilly ass, I’ll come after your family — then you can hear all about the terror, pain and torture a hunted animal experiences from your kids or wife.”
A little casual research using our reader’s name and location, e-mail address and forum handle leads me to believe he is a vegetarian. If so, he makes a very poor advocate for the moral superiority of gatherers over hunters. I’m not sure the Buddha would be down with going after someone’s family, even a poorly hung hillbilly’s, with a heart full of righteous indignation and a fistful of deadly zucchini.
What’s amusing about the letter, other than the mental image of its purple-visaged author, is the clear sense that our reader is absolutely certain that he is correct about the evils of hunting, when he is mistaken about so much else. He got the author’s name wrong, calling him “Robbie Scott.” And he mentioned wanting to speak with “one of your three editors. Steve, Charles or Patrick. …” We three edit the VeloNews.com website, not the magazine. Says so right there in the masthead on page 14.
Finally, he mistakenly elevates the “predominantly white collar and educated clientele” of a bicycling magazine over the blue-collar, Guns and Ammo rednecks of the world. I’ve lived among both ’necks and yuppies and find both crowds astoundingly human, which is to say imperfect, possessed of traits I admire and others I dislike.
But the rednecks have stopped more often to offer me a lift or some tools when they saw me fixing a flat tire during a ride. They’ve cheerfully given me venison, elk, even bear, from their hunts. And somehow I can’t recall one ever proposing to come after my family in the name of “sport,” or even something I’d published.
“Have some class and a conscience for god’s sake,” concludes our reader. And they said irony was dead.
Mad Blog Media 
Actually, is it really all that surprising when there are so many nutcases killing people “in the name of the Lawd?”
Monkey see, monkey do, bruddah!
Let’s see: Don’t get into an argument with an idiot. Don’t get into a fight with an inanimate object. I guess exposing them is perfectly ok.
Ross is a nice guy, even if he did completely kick my ass (and everyone else’s) at SSWC09. And elk tastes pretty damn good. What’s the problem again?
Wow. Sounds like dear reader has some suppressed anger and aggression problems. Maybe he needs to ride more and vent less.
I’ll testify to the better taste of wild game compared to feedlot meat. Not to mention, the feedlot and slaughterhouse animals don’t exactly live normal animal lives.
Aside from the occasional problems of being shot at by fellow hunters (i.e., Greg LeMond, yours truly), I have a lot more respect for hunters than for those idiots who don’t have a clue as to where there last hunk of flesh came from or the environmental costs involved.
Out here on the west slope we have two distinctly different groups of hunters: those that are out to restock the freezer with healthy meat that came from an animal that had a relatively happy life (compared to a feedlot cow), and those hunters that are out to kill something. Anything. And running something over with the truck counts.
The latter group tend to be real jerks, and that’s using G-rated language. They’re commonly from out of state (notably Texas and California), but there are plenty of home grown ones as well (especially west slope). You can easily pick out this type of hunter by the can of Budweiser they hold in the hand that isn’t holding the rifle.
My wife and I (we’re geologists) have lately been doing field work around Rangely (if you look on a map of Colorado it’s a little dot in the upper left hand corner) where we’ve encountered plenty of hunters of this sort. We wouldn’t dream of doing our field work without wearing brightly colored vests as this crowd tend to shoot at anything that moves. In fact, we heard someone nearby taking a shot at something just this last Monday morning, which is notable as the current hunting season ended on Sunday night!
Driving around the Rangely area on Sunday and Monday also got exciting as we were sharing the road with many hunters driving home in their big trucks who, judging by their homicidal driving, apparently didn’t “get their deer”. (I wonder if they were after “long pig”?)
Having said all this, I do hope my neighbor got his elk this year. He likes to share, and I like elk.
My buddy Hal is one of the good hunters. He knows the country he hunts, does his stalking on foot and sober, respects the quarry, doesn’t take stupid shots, eats what he kills. Pretty basic stuff, but a lot of nimrods still fail to grasp the concept.
During our sojourn in Weirdcliffe we encountered plenty of the other sort during the various hunting seasons. They were numerous enough that the Bear Basin Ranch dude-herders used to patrol their acreage bearing firearms. One numbnuts drove an ATV through our fence chasing something or other, and more than once I found arrows — not Native A. relics, either — on our property.
Hal has a solid piece on this very subject coming up in the next issue of Colorado Central. Maybe once it hits the streets he’ll post it over at Hardscrabble Times.
Pat, I do know Ross, and I do believe that he’s one of the “ethical” hunters, out to stock the freezer.
I’m going to add magazine and online editors to the very long list of professions that don’t get paid enough to deal with the worst in people.
This reader’s response, “…I’ll come after your whole family,” really gives me the creeps. That the reader had these thoughts is human–scary, but human. That he put them in writing is poor judgment and, I’m pretty sure, a criminal threat.
This morning, my wife shared with me a story about some very well-healed women making totally over-the-top threats (and attempting an assault) because they weren’t getting their way at a horse training stable.
Then there’s the whole “teach ’em a lesson” story that’s been all over VN Online.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Wednesday without a bomber taking out a whole market of innocents somewhere in the world.
Hmmm. I think I’ll just quietly go to my appointments today. No more mass media for me. Breathe in peace, breathe out love. Breathe in peace, breathe out love…
Maybe the above mentioned women were well-heeled. They are clearly not well-healed or they wouldn’t be quite so full of venom.
Where was I? Oh yeah–breathe in peace, breathe out love. Breathe in peace, breathe out love…
John, I used to do my field work between mosquito season and big game season in central Minnesota. Usually that meant bringing my blaze orange hunting clothes with me in case I worked past opening day. Fortunately the Minnesotans I ran into in those days were pretty decent folks. They were hunting deer or bear and I was hunting rocks.
Patrick & John have nailed it. The situation here in Virginia is the same. Most of the deer hunters I know use black powder rifles (one chance to get it right), and hunt for the freezer. The other type is the reason Shenandoah National Park law enforcement rangers carry M-16’s in their trucks.
Khal, I think I’ll stick to hunting rocks. They’re easy to sneak up on and they’re not as dangerous when wounded.
Patrick mentioned “stalking on foot”. Earlier this year I was mapping the geology on some private property north of Meeker. The guy who owned this land, who lives most of the year in Arizona, had set up hunting blinds all over his property which looked like black, plastic port-a-potties with gun ports. This guy claimed that charged hunters anywhere from $5000 to $10,000 to sit in one of these things and wait for their “prey” to wander by on the way to the watering hole. No stalking, no taking wind direction into account, and, because a road lead to every blind, they didn’t even need to walk . Just sit, wait, and shoot. This was called “sport”.
Seemed pretty stupid to me.
Spending 10k to sit all day in a port-a-potty sounds pretty stupid to me, too. At least at home I have the magazines in the Throne Room and its paid for as part of the mortgage.
What kind of projects you working on, John?
That’s “hunting?” Sounds about as sexy as fishing in an aquarium.
Both sides of my family stopped hunting when my parents were young. Instead, everyone fished. We ate what we caught.
Lots of people I know hunt at every opportunity. When they aren’t hunting, they’re talking about it or getting ready for the next season. That means I get venison sausage and alligator. I like ’em spicy with red beans and rice.
Venison sausage with red beans and rice sounds fantastic. I doubt it would go over very well with my Hindu bride, though.
Khal,
About ten years ago, I worked with a guy who’s family had their own brick smoke house about the size of a two-car garage. That’s where the best venison sausage came from. I’d get about 10 pounds of it free around Christmas just for watching their dogs when they’d go out of town. They also made a lot of homemade jerkey. Oh, and at Thanksgiving, they’d have 3 or 4 turkey fryers set up in their driveway. Anyone could take a turkey or chickens (or whatever fowl you wanted) to their house the night before the big fry. They’d have picnic tables set up in the garage with all the spices and injections for whatever you wanted to prepare. We’d spend the night prepping our birds, drinking a lot of beer, and telling lies. The birds would be refrigerated overnight, covered in rub and injected full of spices. Then everyone would go back to their house the next morning and start frying. We discovered a great side dish for fried turkeys–big slices of sweet potato dropped in the fryers after the turkeys were done. The sweet potatoes soak up the spices. They’re the best fries ever. Hmmmm.
I haven’t even started on the crawfish and the fried alligator. Let me say there are a lot of Louisiana transplants in Houston who know how to cook. I just try to make friends with all of them.