Apologies in advance if there is a better community for this question.
Just out of curiosity, how many folks around here hunt?
I ask because I don’t encounter too many people far left of center (especially in my geographic region) who hunt. Fewer still, are those who keep and train dogs for this purpose.
Not intending to start a debate, just checking the barometer around here.
I pretty much abhor hunting culture (or any sort of purely extractive subculture for that matter), but I continue to participate in the ways I do because I appreciate the opportunity to spend time with people who are ideologically opposed to me. We are all members of the proletariat, and I’m quite certain that I am one of the few leftists many of the hunters I encounter will ever personally meet — much less have a relationship with.
Curiously enough, the right seems to be doing a sufficient job of alienating their base of hunters. Millions of acres of public lands are slated to be sold, while countless more are being opened up for mining and various other forms of resource extraction.
Additionally, non-toxic (read: lead-free) ammunition is becoming more expensive due to the ongoing trade war with China, which controls upwards of 80% of the global supply of bismuth and tungsten. This poses a problem for migratory bird hunters and all hunters who hunt on federal land regardless of pursuit. Federal regulations stipulate that use of lead shot is forbidden for pursuit of migratory birds, and the mere possession of lead shot is forbidden on federally owned and managed lands.
Copper and Steel alternatives exist, yes, but they are as yet inferior to bismuth and tungsten. Prices for bismuth and tungsten cartridges skyrocket, as does demand for steel and copper, thus driving the price for those inferior products ever higher, and —as fucked as they all are — I can’t see any federal regulatory agency backpedaling on the issue of lead. Moreover, the so-called “ethical hunters” who refuse to shoot lead are in an even bigger pickle. Superiority of bismuth and tungsten is due in large part to increased density which means superior killing potential over steel and copper. This results in fewer crippled birds, and thus, is considered more humane.
Autistic info dump. Sorry. Anyways, I’m curious to see how all of this plays out.
how sure are you of that? because from what i understand, most hunters are either landowners, or related to landowners. the requirements for hunting dont really fit working class constraints.
Being a landowner is not incompatible with being a proletariat. Moreover, hunting does not require ownership of private land — a great many hunters are not landowners. They either benefit from family or acquaintances who are landowners, knock on doors of complete strangers and ask permission to hunt their land, or — if they are fortunate enough to live in a state with an abundance of public land open to hunting — they hunt public land.
Surely, there are those who only hunt estates, ranches, preserves, etc., but I’d wager they make a up only small, but disproportionately represented percentage of the hunting population due to their visible wealth.
As I said in another comment, many of the hunters I encounter are of humble means, many are immigrants, and most are working class.
Interesting. I haven’t thought about that
That depends entirely on where you live. Not every country works like the USA.