Monday, March 25, 2013

Outdoor Update – March 2013



I left work early on Friday and headed for Portland, Oregon, the land of the lower Columbia River and spring Chinook Salmon fishing.  I hit my buddy’s house in Hillsboro, Oregon at 9 pm, and then stayed up until 2 am getting the boat ready to go and catching up.  We launched in the morning and started having problems, to the point to where we couldn’t fish because the boat wouldn’t run.  We were 7 miles out from the launch, and had to run back in at half the speed of smell on the kicker motor.  We then proceeded to spend the remainder of the weekend trying to get the boat to run.  We never did succeed. 


 Working on boats is never much fun, as my buddy Ian is demonstrating here

We went to a good cigar and whiskey bar in Hillsboro called McMinimans.   Had some Laphroaig Quarter Cask scotch and a Punch cigar.  Amazing on both counts.  I’m going to have to pick up a bottle of that Laphroaig.  That’s some damned good stuff.  It smelled strongly of vanilla, and had a sweet flavor that I’ve never picked up drinking any other scotch before. 

So we didn’t catch any fish because we barely even got a line in the water.  But we enjoyed ourselves anyway, and worked on the boat just like the old days when we were constantly working on our stuff because it was all junk.  

But not anymore - nice boat, right?  Too bad it is broken in this picture

Friday, March 15, 2013

But Teh Ebul Kemikals is Gonna Kill Us All!!!!eleventy11!!


As I’ve been saying all along, “organic” farming – the little butt-nugget of feel-goodery that keeps sprouting up in seemingly every grcery store and every talking point of the eco-facists – is not a good thing.  It sprang from a massive fear of chemicals – such as pesticides and “inorganic” fertilizers that allow our modern farms to feed the masses at rates far above what the likes of Ehrlich ever thought we could when he wrote his warnings back in the 70’s of famine by the mid-1980s.  If we switched to “all Organic, all the time” farming today, there WOULD be a famine like the world has never seen, but that, I guess, is not an issue.  It would only be those “brown” folks “over there” that starved, anyway, so rich white folks have nothing to wrry about.  Like I’ve been saying all along, the racism in these pet eco-causes is barely even hidden.    

What is more, these fears of chemicals are largely unfounded.  There has never been a study that has shown that these chemicals cause harm in the production of food.  Ever. 

What HAS been proven to cause harm is bacterial contamination.  Bacteria, like that from cow turds, which is the major source of “organic” fertilizer used in our wonderful “organic” farms.  This prostration to all things natural has never made since to me.  You know what else is natural?  Ricin.  Cyanide.  The most deadly toxins known to man are 100% certified natural.  You know what else it totally natural? 

E.Coli. 

Like the E. Coli that was recently found in the farmed produce from one German organic farm that recently made the news for sickening hundreds of people and killing 29.  We now have one German “organic” farm that is responsible for the deaths of more people than the much-maligned Gulf oil spill, Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the Fukushima Nuclear disaster combined, but you won’t hear about that in the news, I’m sure.  

You know how many people have been proven to have been killed by the dangerous chemicals used in non-organic farming?  Zero.  Zippo.  Zilch.  Nada.  (Unless you count industrial accidents either at the place of manufacture or the farm, itself).  

You can have your organic limes.  When I drink my Tequila, I savor the wonderful pesticide aftertaste.  You can savor the bacteria-ifested cowshit all over your limes if you want, but count me out.

Possibly the Best Reason, and the One Nearest to My Heart, For why Government Run Healthcare is a Bad Idea...



Money quote:

...Bloomberg highlighted a comment from a supporter of the ban, who wrote, "Anyone who pays taxes and thus bears the health care costs of obesity should support this."

The article summarizes the dangers in this thinking much better than I ever could, so I won’t try.  

In a free society, individuals are able to take risks and make decisions detrimental to their own well-being — be it smoking, drinking, excessive eating or anything else — because they’ll bear the ultimate costs of their decisions. But when government assumes a greater role in the health care system, suddenly there’s a societal cost to individual risks. This provides an opening for those who believe in a paternalistic role for government to make their regulations seem pragmatic. Bloomberg used the “health care costs to taxpayers” argument during his previous drives to ban smoking in bars and restaurants and to outlaw the use of trans fats.

The problem with socializing health care costs is that everyone else now has a vested interest in your health.  If you choose to do unhealthy or risky things, THEY have to pay for it, so now they get a DEFENSIBLE, JUSTIFIABLE reason to meddle in your private choices and desires.  

Jeb Corliss – do you like wing suiting?  Then you’d better be against socialized medicine, because your fellow citizens are going to have to pay for the risks of your wing suiting, and may very well decide that you shouldn’t be allowed to wing suit anymore.

Travis Pastrana – like racing motorcycles?  Then you’d better be against socialized medicine, because I can gurantee you that society is  not interested in continuing to pay for your broken bones and dislocated spinal columns.  

Most interesting man in the world?  Better stop smoking those cigars that you sell to cuba, because our society has no patience for paying the costs of your habits.

Everyone else?  Like having a Red Robin burger occasionally?  Or a soda?  Or using a bit of chewing tobacco on the hunting weekends, or smoking a cigar, or drinking some fine bourbon on the back porch?  Well, you’d better enjoy it while you can, because every one of your neighbors is about to get a fully justifiable, legally defensible say in everything you do with your body, and they could very well decide that your favorite vice is the next to hit the chopping block. 

After all, if I have to pay for your lung cancer treatment, shouldn’t I get a say in the cost to benefit ratio of allowing you to smoke a cigar? 

If I have to pay for the dislocated spine, shouldn’t I have a say in whether Travis Pastrana should be allowed to attempt a backflip on a motorcycle? Can you believe where this is headed?  

Welcome to the new world, folks, where every life decision is made by committee.  And to think that you all asked for this with cheers and applause.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

What's Your Total Tax Bill?


It occurs to me that if, instead of distributing your tax bill incrementally by direct deductions from your paycheck, additions to your purchases, add-ons to your gas prices, percentage of your mortgage payment, indirectly through increased product prices, on your phone bill, on your electric bill, and so forth, ad nauseum, the politicians just sent you a bill for the full amount at the end of each year, there would be a lot more realization of the total amount being paid, and there would be far fewer people thinking that we need to increase taxes.

In fact, my guess is that the entire nation would flip the fuck right out and we’d have politicians hanging from lamp-posts in DC and the State capitals, with no other change than just showing folks their total tax bill. 

I’m middle class.  Not upper middle.  Just middle.  My guess is that my tax bill approaches dangerously near to 50% of my total household income every year, once you add this all up.  What if you showed people their total bill every December, and these folks realized that you could buy a brand new, fully loaded, four-door 4x4 full-sized pickup every stinking year for what they’re spending on the government?  What would happen?  Would they accept that and buy off on the fact that they are getting a new full-sized pickup’s worth of value from the government every year?  Or would they be pissed? 

I’m pissed, because I sure as fuck am not getting a full-sized pickup’s worth of value out of them.  In fact, being involved in a small business, I would guess that I’m getting more negative value out of them than positive in the last several years.  The roads that they provide are more or less the only thing that I’ve benefited from, but they’ve been letting them go to shit for the last three years or so.  I’ve never sat down to figure out what my share of the roads should be, but in a nation of 300 million people, it sure as fuck isn’t $45,000 dollars.  

So here is your homework:

Go try to add it up.  You won't get it all perfect.  Just take a swipe at it.  Grab a pay stub, figure out your bill per week, times 52 weeks.  Then add up state sales tax, income tax, property taxes, gas taxes, phone taxes, and so forth.  See if you don't pop your top like I do every time I add it up.  

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Outdoors Update - March 2013


Pheasant hunting this weekend!  It was pretty fun.  We had 11 guys meet up at a local hunting ranch for the weekend, where we rented a cabin and just enjoyed ourselves.  We got a lot of hunting in, which was very good for the dogs.  Also for me, since I don’t get enough exercise anymore, what with my sedentary job and my proclivity towards physical inactivity conditioned into me from my injury and illness years back. 

My bird dog, Dutchess, is worn out.  She hasn’t moved much for the past couple of days.  So much so that it didn’t even bother her when my daughter crawled up on her while she was sprawled out on the couch – she usually hates that.


It caused me to realize that at 8, she isn’t exactly a spring chicken anymore.  I felt a twinge of sadness in the realization that I might only have 5 more seasons with her if I’m lucky.  I’ve come to realize that Kipling was right about the foolishness of giving your heart to a dog.  Yet I continue to do it over and over again, and already have plans of picking up a pup so I can get started on training while I still have Dutchess around to help out.  So much the fool. 

I’ve come to realize that my little Remington 1100 20 gauge is really a nice little gun.  My realization came when I broke it down after the trip and saw that it hadn’t been cleaned in a while.  A long while.  I figure it has 6 rounds of sporting clays and four hunting trips since its last cleaning, and yet, it didn’t malfunction once on me this weekend.  I felt kind of bad, so I took extra time yesterday to clean it well before locking it back up in the safe.  Good little gun.  Bad owner.  

Monday, March 11, 2013

5 Reasons We'll Never Agree on Global Warming


We humans are a funny lot.  We like to think that we’ve evolved beyond the animals around us – and in large part, we have.  However, it never ceases to amuse me how we can all be so quick to fall back into tribalist mindsets and start flinging poo at each other over things in which we disagree.  It is even funnier when you consider that half the time, we are arguing past each other, and aren't even bothering to understand what the guy we're arguing with is actually trying to say.. 

One of the more polarized poo-flinging contests of late has been the debate over global warming.  This one, too, causes me to laugh quite often.  These are the 5 reasons that we will never be able to have a constructive discussion about global warming.

#1: We don’t actually have a good way of measuring what the climate was beyond about 75 years ago, and the ways that we have to measure now aren’t that good

The data that we have available shows that it is very slightly warming, and has been for about 150 years.  Some folks have questioned that data, showing that the measurement data is being collected from sites that would give results that are biased towards warming, such as being strategically located in the middle of a black asphalt parking lot, or right next to the hot air exhaust ofan air conditioning unit.  They argue that the people who installed these weather stations 30 years ago weren’t total fucking idiots (and in most cases, they weren’t) and installed the station somewhere where these biases would not effect the station.  It’s just that 30 years can change a lot of things, and the stations stay in the same spot and get built around, leading to that station showing a net warming effect that may be exaggerated or not actually there at all because it was created by heat islands or outside sources.    

The other thing that is happening is that the global network of temperature measurement sites sucks.  80 some percent are in the northern hemisphere.  Most of those are in the western part of the northern hemisphere.  There are places in the world where the distance between two sites is greater than the distance between New York City and Los Angeles, and because there is a lack of data, the scientists are just making the assumption that the data is uniform between those sites, and that the temperatures average between them.  Imagine the temps in New York and LA on any given winter day.  It’s going to be colder in New York than LA, right?  So, in this situation, the scientists would assume that as you leave New York, it starts getting warmer, and continues to get incrementally warmer as you head towards LA. 

Of course we know that this is almost certainly not true.  In the winter time, it is almost certainly colder in Iowa than New York, not warmer!  How about the Rocky Mountains?


Rocky Mountains: Generally colder than New York City

#2: They actually agree on more things than either side would care to admit.

Want to know something that I’ll bet you didn’t know?  This may come as a shock, but most people who have been branded “global warming skeptics” actually agree with the global warming consensus that the world’s climate is warming.

How about another one?  Most folks who are riding the global warming consensus train agree that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, by itself, is getting very close to doing just about as much damage as it is going to be able to do. 

Wait, what?

Reasonable global warming skeptics are not arguing that the world isn’t warming up.  As described above, they may be saying that the sites are biased and so forth, but nearly all of them agree that we are going through a period of warming.  The disagreement hinges on their contention on a couple points that the consensus crowd uses to forward their argument:

The first point that the consensus crowd believes that the skeptics refute is that the warming will be a runaway event that cannot be stopped.  You’ve probably heard Al Gore talk about the “tipping point” after which nothing we do will stop the run-away freight train of global warming.  This belief hinges on something called the “feedback effect” and whether it even exists.  You see, the consensus crowd and the skeptic crowd actually agree on something here, as mentioned above, and that is that carbon dioxide, by itself, has done about as much damage as it can possibly do. 


 I agree with everything you’re saying!

Think of it this way.  There is a window in an otherwise unlit room, allowing sunlight to come in.  You put a mini blind over the window.  It stops some of the light, but not all of it.  So you add another mini blind, which stops more light, but some still gets through.  So you keep adding mini blinds until you get to a point where no light at all is getting in, and the room is totally dark.  At this point, you can add as many more mini blinds as you want and it will make no further difference because no light is getting through anymore.  That is more or less like carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect.  You see, carbon dioxide can only slow down energy within a certain bandwidth.  That bandwidth is almost maxed out by what CO2 is already in the atmosphere, and other greenhouse gasses there that occur naturally.  So the heat that CO2 can stop is already all being stopped now, anyway.  Add more CO2, and all you get is another mini blind trying to stop light that has already been stopped. 

The point of contention is the above mentioned tipping point.  You see, another powerful greenhouse gas is water vapor.  The slight warming caused by CO2, they argue, will allow more water vapor into the air, increasing the warming, which will allow more water vapor into the air, increasing the warming even more, and so forth in an endless cycle.  This will then warm the earth enough that permafrost will start to melt, which releases methane, which is – you guessed it – another very powerful greenhouse gas, which will make the problem even worse, and the whole mess will spiral out of control and we will all die horrible, super-heated deaths.


 Like this.  Just exactly like this.

The skeptics say that there is no recorded evidence of this ever having happened before, and that the earth’s climate has to be self-regulating enough to stop this sort of feedback effect or else we’d be constantly seeing unanticipated massive, drastic climate shifts all the damn time in the climate record.  They say that there is no evidence of these unanticipated shifts, and that all the climate shifts that we’ve seen in history and pre-history have been routine, normal, and a result of rotational axis changes and earth’s orbit, and that any effort we expend trying to solve this problem will be wasted – and that the effort we’re talking about is not a small undertaking to be considered lightly.

The consensus is not so sure, and thinks that we should err on the side of caution. 

The second point is that the consensus crowd believes that global warming will be catastrophic to humans and life on Earth, in general.  Global warming skeptics are not convinced by this, and in fact, there is a lot of data that shows that the most prosperous periods for humanity have occurred during times when it was actually a bit warmer than it is today.  Skeptics, in the other hand, tend to concentrate on the negatives that will surely come with that change.  An increased hydrologic cycle will surely lead to increased rainfall and flooding in some areas, while in others, the increased heat could lead to desertification.  Some say that the warming could result in more and stronger storms in some areas, while others say that they will be reduced in other areas.  The net effect of reading all of this is that there will be change.  Some of it for the better, some of it for the worse. 

There are actually three sides to this debate: 

  1. Those who think that the worse will offset the better; 
  2. Those who think the better will offset the worse; 
  3. And those who don’t know, and don’t put much thought to it because they think there isn’t much we can do about it anyway, so why worry?  
So why do we only hear about the bad?  I must admit that articles talking about the effects of global warming tend to be a little biased.  Here is a link to an article that sprang from the fact that a warmer Earth with more CO2 in the air (read, gaseous fertilizer) will result in longer, more productive growing seasons for plant life.  Reading the results of that study, the people who wrote this article said “Wait a goddamned minute, we can’t write an article about a positive effect of global warming, or we’ll be branded “deniers” and marginalized as being non-scientific douche-nozzles!” so they worked long and hard to find a way to make longer, more productive growing seasons for plants a bad thing.  The result?  An article about how global warming will result in more poison ivy


Truth – not necessarily the result of politicizing science

The second point that the participants disagree on is that humans are causing the warming (or enough warming to be statistically significant).  Again, this all hinges on the feedback effect of CO2 in the atmosphere, because the CO2, itself, isn’t causing all of the problems that the consensus is warning us about.  Yes, we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere.  Yes, that is not natural.  The question is, what will that do?  Many argue that the warming that is occurring was happening before mankind started contributing meaningfully to the CO2 level in the air.  Many argue that the speed of the warming ramped up after we did start contributing.  Both have valid arguments, but those arguments will never be debated, because: 


#3: They are talking past each other, and exaggerating the other side’s actual position.

Simple human nature does not deal well with understanding that that other guy who you disagree with might have a valid point that needs to be discussed further.  It all boils down to the fact that we are, at our very core and nature, simple poo-flinging monkeys. 


"This offends me!"

So the skeptics don’t want to discuss the changes caused by global warming from the viewpoint that we should maybe do something about it, like cut back on using so much coal and replace it with something more sustainable, without accusing the consensus folks of wanting to return us to a Hobbesian, hand-to-mouth existence where we live in caves, which isn’t what they are advocating at all.  The consensus don’t want to discuss the fact that the skeptics might have a valid point about the warming being natural, because there really is very little science that has been (or even can be) done to show what is causing the warming, leaving them in a more difficult to defend position.  Therefore, they just accuse them of denying the warming altogether (which they don’t), brand them deniers, and refuse to talk about it any further, which is a lot easier position to defend, and is easier than debating reasonably from even starting points. 

You’ll see this all the time anytime these debates happen.  The discussion eventually degrades into the skeptics being branded a “denier” that doesn’t think the world is warming, and that wants to watch the world burn so the oil companies can make a profit. The consensus will typically then be accused of wanting to turn back the clock on hundreds of years of human innovation and make children starve because they are scaredy-pants.  Neither one of these arguments is true or valid, and neither one springs from the actual stance that most of the participants on either side are taking in the debate.  It is just too damned satisfying to fling poo when things like this get politicized.


 Although, I do find myself in agreement with that final statement

#4: The effects of trying to stop global warming could  suck just as much as the warming, itself.

Much like the more hardcore people in the Society for Creative Anachronism who actually go around telling people that they’d rather live in the medieval times than today, the consensus folks have no idea what it is that they are actually asking for. 

 Seriously, I would be so much more successful if I lived in a time where hard, physical labor, rampant disease, imminent starvation, and widespread physical violence were more common!

Some of them actually do advocate returning to a more pastoral, localized life less dependent on energy, sort of like the Amish.  Being an outdoorsman, I’ve lived like that before for short periods of time, and while it isn’t a big deal and can actually be enjoyable and novel for a week or two, if you were asked to do it for longer, or, say, for an entire winter, it would suck.  A lot.  Even most of the dedicated Amish cheat a little here and there.

But even those that say that we can cut greenhouse emissions without cutting back on our lifestyle at all don’t understand what they are really asking for.  The reason for this is technology.  Currently, there is only one way for us to provide all of the energy that we need and use on a daily basis without using CO2 emitting fossil fuels: Nuclear fission.  If you’re even vaguely familiar with nuclear power, you’ll know without following this link that it has its own set of serious downsides and side-effects. 

Other types of energy that are emission free, like hydroelectric and wind power, also have their downsides.  Both of them are ecologically devastating to the areas in which they are employed.  This, coupled with the fact that using current technology, there is no way in hell we could ever even get close to making enough energy using both of them combined to feed our need means that anyone saying that these are the answer is either anticipating some huge technological breakthrough or they are an uniformed idiot.  Also, I might note that removing fossil fuels from the repertoire of energy sources would leave us all driving electric vehicles, the very best of which can go a jaw-dropping 40 miles before needing to be charged for 5 to 6 hours at a special charging station.  So, yeah, really, really shitty. 

It is for these reasons that most skeptics demand a bit more proof before we take drastic steps to fundamentally change the way we live to avoid this looming calamity, because taking these steps will be a calamity in and of themselves.

#5 Efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions might be a good idea even if we find that global warming is not caused by humans

Some of the more reasoned consensus crowd know that removing fossil fuels altogether is not an option, but want to reduce the amount that we use by implementing as much alternative energy as possible.  This, in and of itself, is not a bad idea, and is really something we should all get behind, for one reason:  no matter which side of the debate you take, you have to admit that we don’t really know what all this CO2 is going to do when we put it into our atmosphere.  Since it is our only atmosphere, it may be a good idea to take steps to maybe stop fucking with it until we know what is going to happen when we’re through fucking with it. 

Also, the fuels that we burn that release CO2 also release other nasty shit into our air (which, I might add, is all the air we have) so cutting back on CO2 also cuts back on the release of these other types of pollution.  So I think we’ve found some more honest middle-ground here, which is to say that we should probably try to cut back a little and replace as much fossil-fuel energy with other types of non-pollution and CO2 creating energy as possible.  And yes, this probably means that nuclear energy is in all of our futures.  

Friday, March 8, 2013

Benevolent Tyranny


There is a tendency for people to only mind authoritarian power grabs when they are attempted by the “other side” of the political spectrum.  A perfect example is the PATRIOT Act – if that thing had been passed by Billy Clinton or Barack Obama, I am not exaggerating or hyperbolizing at all when I say that I think that it would have sparked a revolution.  I mean that literally.  I’m seriously talking blood-in-the-streets, people shooting government functionaries, military in the cities quelling unrest, revo-goddamned-lution.

But it was passed by George Bush, and so it was welcomed with open arms.  It has only been since Barack Obama took office that you see a lot of republicans start to stand against it, thus proving a point that I’ve been trying to make for a lot of years, which is to say that you should always, always be against authoritarian government power grabs of any sort, even if it is your team implementing them, because your team won’t always be in power.  Once they are in power, the other team can use those laws and legislations against you once they get voted in, and all with your approval and applause. 

In my opinion, my esteemed colleague Borepatch is making just such a mistake on his blog.  With all due respect to him, I have to vehemently disagree with this.  At the link, you’ll see him detailing, and applauding, a law that is being considered in Nelson, Georgia to make gun ownership mandatory in that town. 

The township has a lot of very good reasons why they are considering this.  The town only has one police officer, and in the 16 hours per day that he is not on shift, the townspeople rely on the county sheriff for their policing.  The problem with that is that the county is stretched thin, too, and the response times are very, very slow.  So the government there has decided that the people need to be equipped to defend themselves during these off-hours if need be.  It’s not a bad idea to be so equipped.  If I lived there, I would be armed, without question. 

That being said, there is a huge gap between something being a good idea, and it being right and proper to legislate that all citizens do it.  I can think of a lot of good examples.  The first that pops into my head are seatbelt and helmet laws.  A second would be having health insurance.  Yes, it is a good idea to wear a seatbelt in the car and a helmet on your motorcycle.  No, I would never consider driving my car without buckling up, or riding my motorcycle without putting my helmet on.  However, any government that thinks that it can force me to wear my seatbelt or put on a helmet by threat of violence* against me can go fuck themselves, and are treading dangerous grounds perilously close to those of a benevolent dictatorship or tyranny. 

It’s my life, and my decision what I do with it.  If the citizens of Nelson, Georgia, do not want to own a gun, the government there would do violence against them* to force the issue, and I can’t possibly imagine how that is anything other than brute tyranny.  Just because I think that what they are proscribing is a good idea does not make it any more or less wrong than a government forcing me to buy or own anything else. 

I think it is a good idea to have health insurance.  I think that any thinking person that doesn’t have a catastrophic care coverage is a drooling idiot flirting with economic and physical calamity; but a government that tells me that they will do violence against me if I choose not to own health insurance can go fuck themselves. 

And so, leaders of the City of Nelson, Georgia, you are tyrants if you pass this bill.  Wear the badge with pride; you’ve earned it. 

I will close with my take on benevolent tyranny – it may actually be worse than a malevolent tyranny, as described below by CS Lewis:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

In Which I Continue A Horrible habit


I feel like I’ve been developing from Borepatch’s stuff too often recently.  To make up for that, I’m going to do it again.  He posted this as an example of a guy with lots of testicular fortitude and some seriously solid nerves.

I quipped with a Rourke quote that goes something like

"I could care less about those riflemen who can split a pea at 200 yards; I want to know how good you are on a charging Buffalo at twelve feet.”

But I had a serious sad when I watched the video, because I knew what was actually going on.  You see, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this guy before, and said so:

[quote] … I’m correct, I think I recognize this guy from his awesome mullet. I don’t remember his name or anything, but if he’s the guy I’m thinking of, this is his thing – he purposely wounds these dangerous animals, then walks up on them close with his double rifle and goads them into charging so that he can get amazing video footage of his near-death hunting experiences and then sell them on DVD. I’ve seen him do the same thing with elephants and hippopotami and other dangerous critters. 

You have to admire his balls, but he is an absolute asshole. I am an avid hunter, and would love to some day go to Africa and shoot a hippo and a Cape Buffalo and if possible, an elephant, but ethically with an eye towards as humane a harvest as possible. And anyone that wants to come on here and flame me for that, I’ll ask you to produce evidence that my next claim is wrong – the only reason that any wildlife exists on the African continent at this point is because hunters like me are willing to pay huge money to go over there and shoot it. Without that economic incentive, Africa would be a completely different place and they’d have killed it all off by now. So if you want to flame me, recognize what you’re asking for as an alternative to me shooting these animals. 

That all being said, this guy needs to be hung by his ballsack. Anyone who purposely wounds an animal to goad it into charging him to get a thrill is a horrible human being, and in fact, many countries in Africa won’t even let him into the country anymore. Realistically, any hunter stands the risk of being charged by a cape buff if he accidentally wounds it and goes into the tall grass after it. But look at what this guy does – he’s got an obviously wounded animal on the ground, hurt, wounded, and suffering (my best guess by the way it humped up when he shot it the first time is that he gut shot it – I base that off of lots of years of shooting big animals and knowing what a gut shot animal looks like. I’d say he did that on purpose, knowing this asshole, but I have no way to prove that). Instead of just shooting it again as he obviously had ample chance to do from the original shooting spot, or from any number of additional spots along the path that he took to the final location, and even at the final location before the buff charged, he walked up to it, and obviously and purposely waited for it to charge. Watch it again with that in mind. When he’s walking up behind it, for instance, and it is obviously still alive – why not shoot it then? Any reasonable, ethical hunter would have. He wanted the charge. He baited it into it. Goaded it. I wish the thing had gotten to him and stomped a mudhole in him and then walked it dry. 

You have to admire his balls, but he is an absolute asshole. I am an avid hunter, and would love to some day go to Africa and shoot a hippo and a Cape Buffalo and if possible, an elephant, but ethically with an eye towards as humane a harvest as possible. And anyone that wants to come on here and flame me for that, I’ll ask you to produce evidence that my next claim is wrong – the only reason that any wildlife exists on the African continent at this point is because hunters like me are willing to pay huge money to go over there and shoot it. Without that economic incentive, Africa would be a completely different place and they’d have killed it all off by now. So if you want to flame me, recognize what you’re asking for as an alternative to me shooting these animals. 
That all being said, this guy needs to be hung by his ballsack. Anyone who purposely wounds an animal to goad it into charging him to get a thrill is a horrible human being, and in fact, many countries in Africa won’t even let him into the country anymore. Realistically, any hunter stands the risk of being charged by a cape buff if he accidentally wounds it and goes into the tall grass after it. But look at what this guy does – he’s got an obviously wounded animal on the ground, hurt, wounded, and suffering (my best guess by the way it humped up when he shot it the first time is that he gut shot it – I base that off of lots of years of shooting big animals and knowing what a gut shot animal looks like. I’d say he did that on purpose, knowing this asshole, but I have no way to prove that). Instead of just shooting it again as he obviously had ample chance to do from the original shooting spot, or from any number of additional spots along the path that he took to the final location, and even at the final location before the buff charged, he walked up to it, and obviously and purposely waited for it to charge. Watch it again with that in mind. When he’s walking up behind it, for instance, and it is obviously still alive – why not shoot it then? Any reasonable, ethical hunter would have. He wanted the charge. He baited it into it. Goaded it. I wish the thing had gotten to him and stomped a mudhole in him and then walked it dry. So I guess my point from all that above is that, as impressive as this may look, it is really a shitty thing once you know what is going on. 
He gut shot it (I would suggest on purpose), and instead of shooting it again to kill it, let it suffer while he swaggered up to it until he got close enough to get it to charge, all so he could stoke his own ego and line his pocketbook with DVD sales 
  

I hated to do it, because they seemed to be enjoying the clip over there.  

Whew!


Anyone who has ever been in a competitive-bid type situation knows what I’m talking about when I say this:

Sometimes, the disappointment that all of your hard work, effort, sleepless nights, worry, and stress has lead to your being second bidder, is completely washed away by the relief that it’s all over and you don’t have to worry about it anymore. 

Sorry for being away for a couple of days.  I’m back now. 


 Until the next bid.