via LBL Quota Turkey Hunt Applications Available Online | SurfKY.com.

Why I Eat Wild Meat – Nature and Community – MOTHER EARTH NEWS

A veteran hunter and nature writer shares his belief that traditional hunting of wild meat draws us closer to nature and is a physical and intellectual challenge that fulfills one of our fundamental instincts.

By David Petersen

The out-of-doors is our true ancestral estate. For a mere five thousand years we have grubbed in the soil and laid brick upon brick to build the cities; but for a million years before that we lived the leisurely, free and adventurous life of hunters and gatherers. How can we pluck that deep root of feeling from the racial consciousness? Impossible!

— Edward Abbey

As one who makes no secret of his life preferences, I am often asked why I prefer to eat wild meat almost to the exclusion of domestic. It’s a fair question, to which I hope I have fair answers — beginning with health and nutrition.

By any comparison with the factory-produced, chemical-drenched, fat-laden pseudo-meat that too many Americans grow obese and sick from eating today, wild meat — fish, fowl or red — is brilliantly natural, inimitably healthy and morally superior. Wild game is the meat that made us human. Best of all, we must hunt in order to have it. The alleged “wild game” sold in some restaurants is in fact the comparatively flaccid flesh of captive wild animals and has the same culinary relationship to true wild meat as farmed salmon does to the genuine free-swimming creature.

And — this is my apologia — if we hunt with gratitude and reverence, we gradually acquire a personally meaningful love not only for the act of traditional hunting and the meat it procures, but for the animals we hunt as well.

Baloney, say hunting’s harshest critics. How can one who kills for “fun” feel compassion for his prey, the victims of the hunt?

To this emotionally charged yet seemingly reasonable criticism, I respond with a question of my own. Which would you rather be: a factory pig in a wire-floored cage whose neighbor in the next-door cage chews off your tail in frustration (for these are sentient beings), and you his; a castrated steer standing knee-deep in feedlot manure, being artificially fattened for undignified and panicked mass slaughter; a production-line chicken whose beak has been burned off to keep you from pecking your mates to death … or a deer, elk, turkey, or anything truly wild: born free, living and eventually dying where and as you lived, taken down by tooth and claw or winter’s cold white fangs or, yes, given a swift wild death by a well-placed arrow or bullet sent by a true hunter, one who cares about wildlife and its dwindling wild world and who isn’t merely killing for ego and antlers and who gratefully and humbly consumes your flesh? Forced to the choice — domestic or wild — which would you rather be, in death as well as life? Speaking to my fellow carnivores, I ask which is the greater “cruelty”: production-line domestication and mass slaughter, or wildness and fair-chase hunting?  Click Link Below For Full Story!

David Petersen has a long history with MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine. He is the former Western Editor, and built his Colorado cabin from an early set of our building plans for a pole barn. He first met Edward Abbey when he interviewed him for the magazine. Check out his 9 wonderful books at David Petersen Books.

via Why I Eat Wild Meat – Nature and Community – MOTHER EARTH NEWS.

Bill for Sunday hunting in Va. makes it out of committee | PilotOnline.com

By Lee Tolliver

The Virginian-Pilot

The movement to open Virginia to Sunday hunting gained momentum Thursday when the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee voted 11-4 to turn a bill over to the full Senate.

Similar bills in years past have failed to make it out of committee.

“This has been a long journey,” said Matt O’Brien, a Suffolk hunter who two years ago started a Facebook page – “Legalize Virginia Sunday Hunting for All.”

“It’s game on now,” he said. “The Virginia Sunday Hunting Coalition gave a marvelous presentation.

I was not expecting this, and didn’t want to get my hopes up. But this is a huge day for Sunday hunting.”

The movement has had the support of other sportsmen’s groups, outdoors retailers, environmentalists and some lawmakers.

Several bills were rolled into one for Thursday’s session. The Senate now will review and vote on SB464, which allows private property owners to give permission to hunt on Sundays. Public lands would still be closed.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

The original bill was introduced by Sen. Ralph Northam, D-Norfolk.

via Bill for Sunday hunting in Va. makes it out of committee | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com.

Archery Range Opens In Madison County

FRANKFORT, Ky. – A new archery range is now open to the public at the Miller Welch-Central Kentucky Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Madison County.

Constructed on the northern edge of the WMA along Muddy Creek Road, the archery range consists of is a 12-target traditional range and a 30-target course through the woods, said Derek Beard, wildlife coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources’ Bluegrass Region.

Archers are already excited about the new facilities. “We had people using the range within minutes of putting up the final signs at the entrance and opening the gates,” he said.

Beard said the new ranges in Madison County will provide opportunity for area archers, bowhunters, and for groups such as sportsmen’s organizations, 4-H clubs, scouts, schools and church organizations. “With archery being one of fastest growing sports in the U.S. today, the new ranges will allow for expanded public archery opportunity within close driving distance of one of our fastest growing populations,” Beard explained.

The traditional static range includes 12 lanes with targets set at 10 meters and 15 meters, in addition to targets at 20 yards to 60 yards. Archers shoot into large outdoor archery targets that are secured into target sheds. The second range is a walking woods course consisting of a loop trail with lanes cut and a target placed at the end of each shooting lane. Archers can move within the lane to a comfortable distance ranging from 10 yards up to 65 yards.

The new ranges are open daily from 9 a.m. eastern time to sunset. To reduce impact to targets, broadheads are not allowed on arrows. Groups may apply to reserve a range for a shooting event, by submitting a WMA User Permit Application to the Area Manager for consideration. Call (859) 986-4130 for more information.

Kentucky Fish and Wildlife also has archery ranges at Jones-Keeney WMA in Caldwell County, Curtis Gates Lloyd WMA in Grant County, Otter Creek Outdoor Recreational Area in Meade County and West Kentucky WMA in McCracken County.

For a complete listing of shooting and archery ranges on Kentucky’s wildlife management areas, go online to www.fw.ky.gov and click onto the “Maps and Online Services” tab, followed by “Other KDFWR Maps.”

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