A breakdown because they can't shoot? Put them on the boat to Misurata.
Published:
September 4, 2011 at 11:41pm
Istja, Cali - hawnhekk buli. Malajr ghaddieli l-brejkdawn.
The Times today reports:
The Federation for Hunters & Trappers(FKNK) has again said that government decisions against hunting and trapping have caused some of its members to suffer psychiatric disorders.
Mur gibhom jiggieldu l-Libja, msieken. Ma’ l-ghasafar biss ghandhom il-gazz.
If they’re so desperate to let off steam with their guns, why don’t they take the first boat out to Misurata?
I’m sure AST and Karmenu have a few keffiyahs they can give them. They have the rest of the gear already.
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Has the suicide rate increased?
They’ve got the guns…..
You know where my question is heading, right? Why is it always the good who die young, or who die at all?
No, not yet.
That phenomenon is not expected to surface before the spring of 2013.
From then on the increase will be slow but inexorable.
“The Federation for Hunters & Trappers(FKNK) has again said that government …………caused some of its members to suffer psychiatric disorders. ”
Are Cyrus, Robert, Jeffrey, Jesmond and Salvu closet hunters?
Don’t think these Neanderthals would shoot at anything that shoots back.
On this I cannot agree. You are too detached from such people to understand them. You cannot just abruptly change a persons life and passion.
On this I cannot agree. You are too detached from the rest of the world to understand it. You cannot just abruptly go around killing everything that flies and expect everyone else to put up with the noise, inconvenience and sheer unpleasantness of a dead countryside swarming with men with guns.
Oh dear. They’re going to sue for compensation next. Perhaps we should counter claim for the decades of limiting our access to our countryside for fear of having our backside shot off.
Put it this way. I know people who enjoy hunting, three to be precise. They are polite and respectable people who do hold down decent jobs.
They used to go hunting as a family, very much like people go fishing together. Nowadays they don’t and it has changed their life. They would eat the birds they caught too, so it wasn’t just a case of firing guns for fun.
I can never understand what type of joy they get out of it, the same way I cannot understand why people enjoy fishing. But it is arrogant to ignore the fact that people enjoyed hunting, and it was more than just shooting whatever flew overhead.
Unless you are a vegetarian it is hypocritical to demonize others who kill animals for food since most people have no problem with the way cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and ducks are slaughtered.
There are people who live very different lives, and they get a lot of fulfillment from it.
So I can see why they view the situation as unfair, when part of their family tradition and, like it or not, our country’s tradition is snatched away from them by people they don’t know and who don’t know them, or anything about hunting to begin with.
That being said, having a breakdown is a bit much. I don’t know what they are trying to gain by claiming that.
@ Edward Caruana Galizia:
“our country’s tradition” – do you have supporting evidence for that, or are you just taking their word for it.
I can accept that hunting IS a tradition, but to call it a “national pastime” or “national tradition” is as much an exageration as having a breakdown because the hunting season is reduced.
So would you say that slavery should have been phased out instead of abolished? It is not us who are detached from these people. It’s the other way round.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M—OdpSCA8
sssh! cheep talk in public can kill!
“The Federation for Hunters & Trappers(FKNK) has again said that government decisions against hunting and trapping have caused some of its members to suffer psychiatric disorders.”
Like what. Sanity?
I agree with Bob hundred percent. My husband is 70 and he was brought up in that culture.
You don’ understand about hunting and traping,Everywhere around the world there is hunting and traping season,even prince Charles and Philep go hunting, Bing Crosby he use to go hunting for doves and he said “turtle doves are the nicest to hunt for.”
My husband he did suffer a stroke four years ago when the season was close. Daphne i do read your blogs everyday and i tell my friends and encourage them to read them to, but on this subject please don’t write because you hurt our feelings.
So the stroke was caused by the hunting season being closed? Do you realise what an extraordinary claim this is?
“My husband he did suffer a stroke four years ago when the season was close”.
It’s probably none of my business, but that says a lot about your marriage, doesn’t it?
Just because Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Bing Crosby blast small, defenceless feathered creatures out of the sky for fun doesn’t make it right. Using them as examples is no defence.
I cannot understand the joy in having a dead bird. How much better to see them flying free and living their small lives in peace, as God intended.
They have such short lives as it is. I think people who shoot animals for fun are arrogant and must already be suffering from psychiatric disorders. No normal, sane person would do such a thing.
I liken hunting for fun on a par with fox hunting, cock fighting, bear baiting and dog fighting, all banned “sports” in the uk. As for hurting your feelings, what about the feelings of the dumb animals slaughtered by the likes of your husband and his friends. Could his stroke be God’s punishment on him?
I feel as sorry for your husband as I do for the birds.
“I feel as sorry for your husband as I do for the birds”.
I feel more sorry for her. She seems to rank second place in the list of priorities.
For some of the hunters and trappers, their “delizzju” is a drug and they are addicts, complete with withdrawal symptoms. This addiction is what makes the issue so difficult to tackle.
I hold a hunting licence and when time permits I hunt game birds on my own land. Land I keep as well as possible, planting trees, enjoying the open air. Chameleons, the odd weasel, nesting birds, a huge range of insects, shrubs and plants all tale quale.
My bag (meagre as it is, comparing Malta to other bleeding-heart countries) is all for the pot and tastes just great. No more great than a juicy steak, some grilled chicken or bbq’d pork that so many of the anti-hunting lobby tuck into without a second thought.
And no, thanks for asking, I am not depressed or suicidal. I am, however, disgusted at the empty written declarations. the failed promises, the incompetence and the laid-back unprofessionalism of the authorities.
Collective punishments, shortened seasons, stupid and pointless restrictions, dumb regularions, kow-towing to foreign activists whose own countries have far more shameful records, banning of centuries-old traditions and pastimes. Forget the drama for a minute, and think about how all this might have affected certain people.
Not that far fetched after all. And regretfully all too true.
Oh for f**k’s sake. Centuries-old traditions. You want centuries-old traditions? I’ll give you one. Hunting with a sling and pebbles. Firearms are – what – only five centuries old.
Centuries-old traditions are rabbit-hunting with ferrets and klieb tal-fenek. Or falconry. Or hunting with a bow and arrow. Or, at a pinch, hunting with a muzzle-loading musket.
THESE are the traditions you fellows should be fighting for.
(Daphne, perhaps an article on klieb tal-fenek in one of your mags?)
You forgot the most relevant example, Baxxter – trapping as practised in Malta, selectively and with clap nets.
Songbird trapping has already been banned. Wanna hear this year’s nugget? We can shoot and eat plover, quail, turtledove and thrushes…but can’t trap them!
For f**k’s sake squared. Mur ifhem.
Baxxter, here’s a Canadian hunting tradition for you. My brother’s father-in-law, 91 years old, just returned from hunting bear in northern Canada (mostly black and brown bear). Goes every year. His buddies, 70 to 80 years, use bow and arrow, but they allow him to use a rifle. He didn’t fire a shot, saw two bear, and his buddies got three.
I know, still not fair for the bear. But a little more chancey than hiding in the rocks shooting sparrows with shot guns,
Absolutely. Look, hunting is a noble sport, and as a defender of anything remotely civilised, I’d be the first to support it. But it’s got to be done with CLASS.
In Malta? Our hunting lobby goes on about traditions. Bollocks. People hunted for subsistence, the Maltese population was a fifth of what it is now, birds of prey still nested in Malta, and you could still come across the occasional stoat and weasel. You’d go out at the crack of dawn, walk ten miles to the nearest wooded area, spend one minute reloading your musket, and maybe fire off five shots, hoping to catch one, if you were lucky enough to own a gun.
Now the population density has exploded, you go out at the crack of dawn, get your fat arse into your Pajero, drive to the last few remaining square inches of greenish space, and blast away at anything that moves with your shotgun. Then you go back to your terraced boxy shytehouse to eat chicken kievs. That’s not class. That’s hamallagni of the basest kind.
Forget the drama for a minute and think about how all this affects many people:
. waking up to the sound of gunfire at dawn (no, I don’t live out in the sticks)
. being out in the ‘countryside’ without seeing any live birds, except in cages set up by trappers
. walking in that same ‘countryside’ and feeling unnerved by the sight and sound of men with guns firing at anything that flies
. being taken by surprise when a live bird is able to fly around for a few minutes before disappearing in a hail of pellets
. seeing hunters blatantly flouting the law and not being able to do anything about it (“don’t call the police, the hunters know who it is and will pay us back”)
. not being able to let children run around freely for fear they might cross an errant hunter’s path
Hunting’s like smoking. It doesn’t affect hunters alone.
I totally agree.
… having my children get all excited at seeing a hoopoe http://www.google.com.mt/imgres?imgurl=http://www.birdsoman.com/Birds/091-Hoopoes/EurasianHoopoe/EurasianHoopoe-39557.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.birdsoman.com/Birds/091-Hoopoes/EurasianHoopoe/EurasianHoopoe.htm&h=340&w=510&sz=62&tbnid=FdmvMFP49moeeM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhoopoe%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=hoopoe&docid=TebmMzctMVWsrM&hl=mt&sa=X&ei=NtBkTtqNI4aQ4gSn7uSoCg&ved=0CCUQ9QEwAQ&dur=483 ) or a golden oriel ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/kvjrkr/2371466930/), only to see their faces crumpled in sadness at the almost immediate sight of 10 odd men (pun intended) ready to shoot them down …
Exactly. All the rest of us, around 400,000, are passive hunters.
We have had more than enough of them.
It is about time they recognised the real situation.
They should be thankful for small mercies.
Drewsome, if by “failed promises” you mean the famous ‘letter’ by Fenech Adami that hunters are always referring to, you should know that, for a number of years, that promise (i.e. that hunting regulations would not be changed after we join the EU) was kept and, for some time, the status quo was effectively maintained.
Unfortunately many shooters saw this as carte blanche to disregard all rules and slaughter every bird – protected or not – they happened to meet,
Surely you remember that Good Friday of some years ago when hundreds of buzzards and harriers were blasted out of the sky. The minister suspended the hunting season following a public outcry.
That and other incidents (e.g. the chasing and killing of swans, with photos published in the papers) increased public indignation and impatience with shooters. Birdlife Malta saw its chance to tighten the screw, as it were, and push for a permanent ban on the spring season.
To shorten a long story, shooters have only themselves to blame for the present state of affairs and, before you speak of collective punishment, you should tell us whether you have ever cooperated with the police by reporting law-breakers. Those who witness illegalities but remain silent are just as guilty..
As I said in my earlier comment, this situation has exposed the fact that, for some people, shooting is not just a hobby but a powerful ‘drug’ – a form of obsessive-compulsive behaviour – for which they should have sought medical help long ago.
How about asking Caritas and Appoġġ to set up a section for shooters and trappers?
Hunters, like the ATP bus owners/drivers, have been and still are their own worst enemies. Always flouting laws and regulations, always promising to tidy up their act through self-regulation and yet we always finish with protected inedible birds being shot out of the sky and what’s left of our countryside becoming a no-go area for non-hunters/trappers as the machos go out on the prowl with more camo than the NTC forces on the way to Sirte.
I “don’t mind” you killing birds to eat them but I do mind killing birds just FOR FUN. How many birds are just left dead in the fields? And what about all those lead pellets in the fields where food is grown? And lead seeping into the ground and into the water table?
I totally agree again.
According to the mentality of members of the FKNK there would be no fun in shooting at a target that could actually shoot back at the hunter.
That would materially increase the incidence of metal illness among the shooting fraternity – apart of course from decimating the FKNK membership.
Usually serial killers have got such a strong urge to kill.
“. walking in that same ‘countryside’ and feeling unnerved by the sight and sound of men with guns firing at anything that flies” (La Redoute)
Not only at “anything that flies”! When I was a houseman at St Luke Hospital we always knew when the “passa” started by the emergency admission of hunters peppered by pellets from fellow hunters sportingly shooting at exhausted birds resting on our rubble walls.
Is that Ganna or an Elf ?
I think you opted to surgically quote what befit your argument. The FKNK press release as reported by The Times concerned trapping and not hunting.
There’s lots of “steam” being let off and by the looks (more aptly smell) of it, misconceived opinion coming out of the most inappropriate of orifices.
Maybe they should take up bird photography instead. I think most of the excitement and adventure of bird shooting that they miss can still be experienced by shooting photos of the birds instead of blasting them out of the sky.
It requires more patience, perseverance and skill and I think will be found more rewarding.
Maybe there should be some government program to assist hunters with the ‘conversion’ perhaps even providing some element of subsidy on the equipment which generally costs far more than guns.