Kate Middleton goes hunting, and while we always avoid the People Magazine angle at the Standard Mischief blog, this time it’s relevant to the topic at hand.
Kate Middleton is entangled with the Royal Family in England. Go click on the Wikipedia link if you want more info. She goes hunting, and the media reports this and PETA (no, not this one) has a cow over it.
(clickable photo, although the pop-up is not much bigger. Can you see the “can” on the end of the muzzle in this picture?)
Of course, we bloggers never get tired of ripping the media to shreads, having a chance to bash PETA is just icing on the cake.
First I’ll take a jab at the AP. Teh Royals ain’t big news over here, (thank goodness), but the AP just happens to cover the story. What I found really odd is while they describe the photos in detail, they didn’t bother to show any of them.
LONDON (AP)  Photographs published Sunday of Prince William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton, clad in khaki on a Scottish hunting trip, have rekindled speculation that the pair will soon announce their engagement.
British Sunday newspapers ran pictures showing Middleton, 25, on a stag hunting expedition at the royal family’s Balmoral estate alongside William’s father, Prince Charles.
One shows Middleton, in jeans and a camouflage jacket, lying on her stomach as she lines up her rifle for a shot, reportedly at a practice target.
Although there’s no grand conspiracy, perhaps it’s not to far off to suggest that the American press do not want to present “silencers” being used in a helpful, practical manner? There’s no sensible reason why we shouldn’t allow the use of these firearms mufflers to reduce the level of objectionable noise in hunting lands located near residential areas. Doubly so as the noise of firearms is used as a stand-in argument against Sunday hunting here in Maryland (originally it was a blue law).
Anyway, here’s the source of the above photo, the Daily Mail, a UK site.
But she was photographed practising with a formidable bolt-action hunting rifle watched by Prince Charles and two ghillies before heading off into Highlands.
Heh. In the US, she’d be practicing with a “deadly scoped sniper’s rifle.”
As she lay prone in the heather with her rifle, which had been fitted with telescopic sights and a silencer to allow her to shoot a stag a mile off, she appeared completely at ease as Charles’s ghillies talked her through the firing procedure.
(emphasis mine) Well, they sure blew it there. Although even a sub-sonic round (and it has to be low velocity, below the speed of sound or the silencer is worthless) can travel over a mile, 1,760 yards is far, far out of the effective range of the rifle. I’d be surprised if she took a shot past 100 yards on her first time out.
According to the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, deer can cause considerable damage to farm and timber crops if their numbers exceed the available food supply in their woodland or hill habitat.
To reduce such damage and to ensure that the population remains balanced and healthy, deer stalkers use rifles to cull individual animals.
It’s only two paragraphs near the end, but I’d love to see a statement like that (at the very least) end up in our local press. Instead, I’d expect something like this:
Last night a spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sports lambasted Miss Middleton for taking part in the shoot.
“Killing deer for a sport is a horrible pastime. It’s very sad that she has chosen to participate in this cruel sport.
“It’s hardly a setting a good role model for young women, killing animals and I can’t see that this will do her reputation any good whatsoever,” he said.
and
“It is shocking and abhorrent that she is engaging in blood sports.
“Kate is obviously trying to endear herself to the Royal Family and her decision will do her no favours whatsoever,” said a spokesman for campaign group People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“It wasn’t so long ago when she was pictured wearing a fur hat which caused a public outcry and now she is endorsing blood sports.
“The vast majority of the public will be disgusted by these images.
more
Anti blood sports campaigners insist, however, that the chances of a hunter – especially an inexperienced one – failing to kill an animal instantly, leaving it in enormous distress and pain, is high.
Yup, it’s far better, according to PETA, to let the deer herd grow out of control. Then commuters like me can hit and cripple the deer, causing a slow and painful death and quite a bit of car damage too.
So here’s the rundown of ideas I heard from the PETA crowd, and why their “solutions” are expensive and won’t work.
- Fencing. The theory is that you can reduce car-deer impacts with a barrier. The facts are that to fence out deer properly, you need 3 rows of fencing. Besides the expense of installing 12 foot high fences everywhere, aren’t the PETA people against zoos anyway? Even de facto ones?
- Deer contraceptive. Some kind of injection might work, but you’d have to catch the deer before you gave the injection. Then you would also need to tag the deer so that if it was successfully hunted, the owner would not attempt to eat the tanted meat. Then, of course, you would need to do all that catch and release stuff over again the next year.
- Relocation. I suppose they would try to live-trap again and truck them away. Well, the reason the deer around here are such a problem is that there are a lot in the area due to the abundant habitat and very little hunting pressure. Deer have legs and would just migrate back into the area
I don’t want to come off as anti-vegan. Really, I could care less what you chose to put in your mouth, as long as your not thinking that you have the right to dictate to me what I’m allowed to stick in mine. Although I know that not everyone is willing to support hunting, at least recognize that hunting is really the only practical, cost effective way to manage wildlife and stop putting up roadblocks to the practice.
I should also stick in a link somewhere to the PETA people getting caught killing pets, but I’ll just let you google that up by yourself.
