Huntin’ vs. shootin’

Don’t even think about it

Monday, January 20, 2014

OKAY, OKAY, no need to feel ashamed if you’re watching the news out of Colorado with a little more interest than usual. Or a lot more. Arkansas came close to approving “medical” marijuana last year. And now Colorado has moved on to legalize recreational use of the loco weed. It’s been a slippery slope so far, and the stories coming out of that state aren’t good, so attention should be paid to the COLO wire. It can be an educational experience.

If you were watching developments in Denver last week, you might also have run across a report about hunters using drones to track animals.

Drones. In the sky. Tracking big game.

If that’s not the definition of unfair chase, what would be?

(Editor’s note: The report did not-repeat, did not-link the new marijuana laws with this new hunting idea. It just sounds like they should be connected, like one really bad idea to another.)

Drones are said to be a fast-growing techie product, and, as with cell phones and great big TVs, the longer a new product is on the market, the cheaper it becomes. Until even the kind of folks who’d hunt with drones can afford to.

There’s already a video making the rounds on YouTube showing a drone hovering right above a moose. A moose, it should be said, that looks a bit annoyed, but is not startled enough to run away. Moose are big ol’ things and maybe this drone struck her as just an outsized mosquito. Anyway, we’d never experienced such a fellow feeling for a moose.

Ethical hunters are already making their voices heard in Colorado. They want no part of this new technology. Good for them. Admit it: You know somebody in your deer camp, or maybe the next deer camp over, who you’d suspicion would just love to sit in his truck all day drone-hunting. It would save him (and somehow it’s always a him) the trouble of having to actually lift his own hindquarters out of his truck, walk in the woods, track an animal, get cold, get wet, and maybe come back with nothing. Who needs that?

Somebody sitting in his truck-or in his easy chair back home-fumbling around with a joystick could eventually spot a 14-pointer grazing under a pecan tree on the Back Forty. Then he could just drive over, creep along a few steps, and BANG!

But that’s not hunting. That’s shooting. Or, better said, just killing. Better those types should go to an indoor shooting range where they can sit in comfort and fire off rounds all day long. At least they wouldn’t do any harm that way. Probably. But leave the real hunting to hunters.

There’s a reason why there’s a law on the books against hunters’ shooting at animals fleeing water or fire. Because otherwise some damfool might set the woods on fire, or maybe blow up a levee, to drive the deer his way.

There’s also a reason this state sets limits on how many turkeys, squirrels, ducks and deer that hunters can take any season. Because otherwise somebody who calls himself a sportsman would fill up his truck bed with animal carcasses.

Since there probably is somebody damfool enough to follow animals around in the woods with a drone, everything fitting and necessary to stop this outrage, including passing any needed laws, needs to be on the to-do list.

What a crazy world. Next thing you know, drones will be delivering packages right to our door . . . .

Editorial, Pages 10 on 01/20/2014