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The Bayfield Bulletin, 1964-11-26, Page 6Page 6—Bayfield Bulletin—Thur., November, 26 1964 RUSHY TALES by ART ELLIOTT KEN'S TELEVISION HI-FI SALES AND SERVICE Phone 356-J-4 Hensall For Prompt Service Reasonable Rates Here's a letter from a guy that doesn't mince words. I've been through the white waters with him in a canoe and had half of the partnership. He's another ex-serviceman who has had most of the corners knock- ed off, a husband, father and farmer. Without comment we put his woods into type: November 24. Mr. Art Elliott, Bayfield Bulletin, Bayfield. Dear Art: Enjoyed your exchange of letters with Ellwood Epps re advantages of hunting with a camera instead of a gun. You're bucking a tough league and human nature. Trying to sell camera-hunting to a gun and 4 Clinton Community Auction Sales EVERY FRIDAY at 1:30 p.m. Government Inspected Scales Cattle Sold by Weight TERMS: CASH JOE COREY, Sales Manager •••••••••Mm..1110 Are You Short of Money This Christmas? DO YOU NEED MONEY FOR TAXES TO FINANCE A NEW CAR TO GET THAT NEW APPLIANCE or To Consolidate all your debts under one loan with one payment, where the interest charged is limited by law and where all loans ore fully insured against both death and total disability. SEE CLINTON COMMUNITY CREDIT UNION LIMITED • S Be A Horse Of A Different Color! We have grown accustomed to the names on the mailing list and have come to think of all these people as friends. Lf you do not find a date code number on your mailing sticker, your subscription is past due. Many are receiving the paper free at some cost to the publisher. Send in your subscription to- day. Be a horse of another color! We are enclosing $4.00 for One Year - ($5.00 to U.S.A.) $2.00 for Six Months - ($2.50 to U.S.A.) $1.00 for Three Months ($1.25 to U.S.A.) NAME STREET CITY or TOWN PROVINCE or STATE (Please Include Postal Zone if any) ammunition merchant is akin to trying to persuade the to- bacco industry that a lung- cancer scare even exists, or a well-heeled defence worker that some disarmament might be a good idea. Most farmers will agree that our No. 1 farm pest is the hun- ter and his deg. I'm excepting the one-in-a-hundred idyllic hunter described by Ellwood. We never see him. What we do see is the other 99%—lame- brained adherents to the "if it moves kill it" philosophy who sneak in the back way leaving carnage in their wake. They shoot any wild duck you've lured onto farm ponds to nest; adult marsh hawks are shot, their nest atop a muskrat- house ransacked; you find the freshly-skinned bodies of a family of 'coons you've watch- ed grow up, tossed just inside the gate; you find another still in a trap—half-starved and with a broken paw, debate whether to kill it or let it go; in the cedars is a gut-shot deer a poaCher is too lazy or too scared to fallow up and kill; rain-bow trout are blasted, shot, speared or netted as they lie stunned during the spawning operation; dead and wounded gulls litter the duck blind at Black's Point where sportsmen have "cleared their guns"; others simply set up bottles on the sand, pulverize them and leave the splinters buried for some child's foot to find next summer. I won't go on, Art. You know the picture as well as I do. High-paid, socially irrespon- sible advertising writers for the "outdoors" type magazines are responsible for much of this situation. To get as many guns into as many hands as quickly as possible they use the same theme as Ellwood; take you young son or daughter into the bush With a gun, let him watch some creature dying in agony that wanted to live and explain that he or she is now a "sports- man", or "sportswoman". "I know there is nothing as heal- ing, as invigorating, as conduc- tive to clean thinking and liv- ing that starting a young boy OT girl properly in the sane and sensible use of a gun," writes Ellwood. Farmers, once naive enough to leave their woodlots or streams unposted, have only to attempt to shingle a cottage roof during the partridge sea- son, or fix fences in ground- hog country, to rush fcr signs, nails and hammer. Any boy who looks close to 16 can buy a .22 rifle, blaze away to hearts content. A recent drive to cur- tail use of rifles lead to char- ges of "limiting personal liber- ty" by the powerful "sports- man" lobbies. In farming areas there is only one spot for rifles —supervised rifle-range. I'mwith you, Art, and the thousands who made their first visit to the woods in search of animals to kill, and later found far more pleasure of an enduring sort by hunting with cameras. They have all the pleasure of roughing it in the outdoors. They must show far more than the killer's skill, must work closer to their prey. In a second they have a per- manent record of their hunt, and lasting pleasure for them- selves and friends. They leave the woods clean and unsullied. They are true conservationists. They record and protect a heri- tage that was intended for us all, not the idle amusement of a few selfish men with high- powered firearms in their hands. Best of luck with your paper, Art. I enclose $2.10. The two bucks is for a few more issues, the ten cents is towards a "Buy-Ellwood-A-Camera" cam- paign. (Signed) J. C. Hincimarsh.