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Wheelchair Hunting
Now, I don’t want to start anything that would be considered insensitive, but yesterday I saw something really weird on television that could make for an interesting conversation. It was a special about a place called Dreamcatcher Ranch, somewhere in Texas.
This ranch specializes in allowing people with disabilities to go hunting and fishing. I’m not sure if it’s a non-profit organization or what, as I only caught a couple minutes of this special. Did anybody else see it, or has anybody heard of something similar, so that we could have more information about it?
I guess wherever they were in Texas had passed a law creating a special hunting season for people with disabilities (here’s a link to something similar in South Dakota). On the one hand, I think it’s really important to allow people with disabilities to engage in a normal life, or as much as possible. But on the other, it just struck me as really fucking surreal to see these guys in wheelchairs scooting around in the forest and sitting in camouflaged blinds shooting at deer. God bless them for having the drive to get out there and do their thing and for other people helping them to do it, but damn - it just seemed so incongruous to what I thought hunting was all about. Hell though, I guess in some ways it’s really no different from the way a lot of non-disabled people probably hunt.
Not that I’ve ever gone hunting myself (although I would try it out, given the chance, I suppose - at least one time). Have you ever gone? What was it like? Would you ever do it if you haven’t? Is it “right” to do it to begin with, nevermind if you’re doing it from a wheelchair? Are people who think hunting is bad merely denying some fundamental evolutionary-survival instinct? Where would we be if we’d never started hunting in the first place?
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January 17th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Now I have not heard of this place but I was listening to NPR a couple of months ago and had heard something just as bizarre and I thought more or less the same thing.
Some guy, I believe in Montana, got the idea to let severly disabled people hunt online!!! Basiclly this guy set up a hunting shed in the middle of his range and equipped a gun to a robotic arm. The arm received signals from the disabled person’s mouse and moved accodingly. As well there was a mounted camera for the obvious reasons.
The interviewer interviewed a person who had resently went through a stroke and lost just about all fuctionality of their body. The person for the most part was misrable but was over joyed by the fact that he might be able to hunt again.
Anyways long story short he was the first person to try this zanny Montana man’s website / shed o death to go hunting. The guy didn’t kill anything but was crying with joy….
I almost got into an acciedent listening to this out of part amazment and part appalledness (my word… Steve Colber does it…)
January 17th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Hey me again. In case anyone is intersted. Found the story from NPR. It was actually in Texas but yeah. If want to listen to the weirdness of our country just follow the link
January 17th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
That didn’t work the way I expected so
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4586255
January 17th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Holy crap! That really is a step beyond, isn’t it? Wow, what a crazy world we live in now. Why don’t these people just go play a video game instead? Jeesh!
January 17th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Yes. Ted Nugent is still an idiot though.
I betcha the Americas and most northern climes would not have been inhabited until recently. The inuit for example subsist almost entirley on seal blubber - its hard to imagine any group making the trek on foot across the Beirng strais without significant amounts of fat in their diets.
Then again I’m just talking out of my ass here… who knows?
January 17th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Because in a video game after you kill your game someone won’t bleed it, clean it, chop it up into steak and send it to you!!! Oh and instead of a high score to be proud of you still get to mount some heads on your wall….
You know this is so appalling but at the same time it gives me the biggest hard on!!!
I personally hate hunting for hunting sake. I’m the type of person that if told to either shoot an animal for fun or a human for fun I would oppt for the human!
But at the same time I’ve always been mesmerized by technology and where we can go with it. I have the same feelings for the advances humans have made in brain research. We have plugged a bunch of wires into a monkey’s brain and allowed a monkey to control a robotic arm in another room by using sheer thought!!!! The military can’t wait to outfit humans with this so we can have superhuman/robot infantry running around terrorising… eh I mean protecting the world. The thought of it is gut wrenching but then again… My manhood has never been stiffer…. Something is horribly wrong with me!
January 17th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Im sorry its just i know im crazy but my heart does go out to the liberals and the free thinkers in america, the N.R.A. on a public relations exercise and i think i would like to know how to hunt just in case.
January 17th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
I don’t disagree but there is hunting and then there’s HUNTING. I think everyone should know how to hunt but why do we need to game hunt? This is a point of view and I’ve learned never to get in this argument again (as I walked away very, very, very angry) so I’m not here to argue the point of wether or not hunting is ethically correct. But we need to acknowledge that there is a diffence. Kind of like, “it is a good idea to learn how to drive,” To “I drive a F@cking HUMMER in Los Angeles!” I think that is the anology I’m after!
January 17th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I wouldnt do it for fun and only if it was a case of hunt or die(which isnt likely) so that analogy sounds good to me.
January 17th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Thoreau was a vegetarian but he had the savage impulse to eat a chip munk. But his Higher laws he did not want to eat animals so much. Love animals don’t eat them. Carl Jung was a vegetarian he felt eating mammals was cannibalism. I feel if a person goes hunting at least approach it the way Native Americans did, pray to the animal and eat it, and give it a chance to live if you miss it.
Lastly possibly the reason the world is overpopulated is because people are eating too many animals, and the animals are becoming reincarnated as human beings for the first time. In conclusion, more vegetarians will help us from over-population.
January 17th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
So by that logic… If we start eating humans then humans will reincarnate as??? That would help the crises doubly… well that is assuming that humans don’t come back as humans but come back as… =)
January 17th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
On a related topic, how would you feel about a quadraplegic physician?
When my sister was in med school or residency (can’t remember which) there was a quad (or maybe just a paraplegic, my memory is going) who was in his second or third year of med school. On rounds, he was generally a pain in the ass, essentially getting in the way during life+death situations (e.g. ER).
I don’t mean to be a totally insensitive jerk, but to what extent do we accommodate handicapped persons, especially when others’ lives may be at stake?
Just a thought…
January 17th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Do you have a reference for that? I’d like to read about it. I find it kind of surprising. I remember one of the big things in Joseph Campbell’s analysis of “primitive” levels of myth is that they had to find ways to overcome their guilt about killing animals. Hence they built mythologies where they prayed to the animals and the animals offered themselves willingly, and so on.
Thinking about that though, Campbell’s angle of attack is interesting but precludes the notion that maybe it’s not a myth at all - maybe the animal spirits really DID give themselves willingly.
Love that as an idea, but it’s just too crazy for me to accept literally.
That is fucking crazy, Slomo. Fucking crazy, and that’s all I’m going to say about it for now, so as not to be arguing about this for the next ten years.
January 19th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Well, I guess my memory is somewhat deceitful. I could have sworn Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections said he was a vegetarian and eating animals was cannibalistic. But he did say “I loved all warm-blooded animals who have souls like ourselves and with whom, so I thought, we have an instinctive understanding.” and “my compassion for animals did not derive from the Buddhistic trimmings of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, but rested on the deeper foundation of a primitive attitude of mind-on an unconscious identity with animals.”
January 19th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Oh, your memory may be accurate. I’m really not sure. I’m curious either way. I brought mention of Campbell into this because he based a ton of his work on Jung, so I thought maybe there was a connection. Could be totally different viewpoints between the two though.