Category Archives: Hunting

So, I’m a big Second Amendment fan but I think most politicians are cowards when it comes to defending why we have a Second Amendment. — Charlie Kirk

The murder weapon used in the killing of Charlie Kirk was a Mauser bolt-action rifle in 30-06 with a scope, a make and model of hunting rifle commonly used in North America. I have several left-hand bolt-action rifles topped with scopes in my collection in various calibres. I use them for hunting small game, varmints and big game. I occasionally visit the rifle range to ensure the rifles are sighted in before hunting. I am a good shot. When you choose to kill a game animal, you want to place the bullet in its vital area to ensure a quick, humane death. The suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk, I will not mention his name, allegedly shot Mr. Kirk in the neck from a distance of two hundred yards. I have no idea of the suspect’s history with guns or whether he was a good shot. Regardless, he succeeded in mortally wounding Charlie Kirk with either a well-placed or a lucky shot. Of course, that is reprehensible. When a hunting rifle is used in a homicide, inevitably, some people blame the rifle, guns and gun owners in general. There is an expectation that I should rethink being a gun owner and hunter because someone used a hunting gun to commit murder.

Continue reading →

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart. — Marcus Aurelius

Leave a reply

A recurring theme in ancient Greek mythology is that you cannot outrun your fate. I think about that idea when I look back on my life and how, throughout it, people assumed that I was a homosexual. In grade school, a woman who lived across the street from my family was hired by my parents to prepare lunch for my siblings and me when we came home from school. I recall how she said that I would end up a confirmed bachelor. A confirmed bachelor was code for a homosexual historically. In middle school, I had a fleeting romance with a girl. When my seventh-grade teacher learned of our liaison, she expressed surprise; she never imagined me being interested in girls. In high school, I asked my brother if he would sound out a girl I fancied to see if she was interested in me. He reported that when the girl realized what he was up to, she retorted, “He’s a fairy!” When I joined the Canadian Army as a Reservist at eighteen, I entered the classroom one day at the Armoury and found a caricature of me as a pink bunny drawn on the blackboard captioned with anti-gay slurs. To their credit, the other recruits told me it was intended as a joke–that they liked me. Still, I wondered why people thought I was a homosexual.

Continue reading →

People have gone down this spiral of cancel culture and the idea that everything is offensive. — Bianca Del Rio

Leave a reply

Jason and I are good friends and hunting buddies.

Here is a photo of my friend and hunting buddy Jason and me. Jason is a family man and a man’s man; he is happily married and has a six-year-old daughter. Not long after we became hunting buddies some years ago, I told him I am gay. His response was, “and that will affect our hunting how?” Since then, our friendship and hunting partnership flourished. It was under Jason’s guidance I took up whitetail deer hunting. Hitherto, I was first and foremost a gamebird hunter. Upon taking up deer hunting with Jason as my mentor, I took four deer to date, starting in the 2012 season with a nice doe, a nine-point buck in 2016, a spike horn buck in 2017, and an eight-point buck in 2020. As a result, I have a presence online as a gay hunter. I publish a blog, Geoffrey’s Hunting Diary, subtitled “memoirs of a gay huntsman.” In addition, I have a YouTube channel called The Gay Huntsman. Those who view my videos and read my blog posts find the emphasis on hunting and not that I am gay. Yes, Jason gets it; my sexual orientation is irrelevant–it has no bearing on our shared passion for hunting and our friendship. Continue reading →

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. ― H.L. Mencken

3 Replies

Geoffrey out duck hunting.

The words “gun lobby” and “gun nut” are slurs invented by prohibitionists–people opposed to gun ownership and hunting–to besmirch the character of gun owners and hunters. I heard the term “gun nut” used on American television sitcoms like “All in the Family” as early as the 1970s. I shrugged it off at the time as inconsequential. I had no reason to believe as a boy that there was anything wrong with gun ownership and hunting. I remember how other children brought things like duck wings for show and tell in kindergarten and primary school. Wings taken from the wild ducks that their older brothers and fathers shot while out hunting. Other children proudly told the class about their fathers, who had returned from successful big game hunts. My dad and my uncle enjoyed hunting cottontail and jackrabbits when I was a boy. It was not until late in 1989, following the mass shooting at the engineering school at the University of Montreal that I first heard mention of the “gun lobby” used as a pejorative term in public parlance. It came as an unwelcome surprise. Continue reading →

The personal is political. — Carol Hanisch

2 Replies

Jason and Fran on their way to their deer stands on a November afternoon.

The Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau enacted the prohibitions of 1500 makes and models of semi-automatic rifles via an Order-in-council. It came as no surprise as I knew long before now that the Liberal Party of Canada does not care about the rights and freedoms of Canadians when it comes to gun ownership. I am a gun owner–I started handling guns in 1969 when I was eight years old. My father gave me and my siblings our first lessons in the safe handling of firearms. He bought a .22 calibre pellet rifle and taught us how to handle safely, take aim and shoot at targets in our back garden. While my siblings did not take up an interest in guns, I am a lifelong enthusiast for firearms and hunting. My dad gave me my first shotgun, a Savage hammerless single shot in 16 gauge, back in 1975 when I was fourteen. I had to wait until I was fifteen and completed the Hunter Safety Course and pass the safety test before I got my first hunting license. Once certified as a licensed hunter in 1976, I took to the field with my single shot 16 gauge shotgun and never looked back. Continue reading →

The wolf is always at the door. — Don Henley

2 Replies

wolfatthedoor wheel_of_fortune_british_museum_424x560

Keeping the wolf from the door is a fact of life. You never know what fortune will bring. I am reminded of this by the horror unleashed in Christchurch, New Zealand when a maniac went on a killing spree at two mosques where people gathered for prayers. The suspect in this atrocity live-streamed his attack on worshippers at the mosques as he gunned them down. The video is available online for those who want to view it. I listened to the description given by someone who saw the video, and that is more than enough for me; I will not watch the video. What came through in the description of what happened in the video is the sad reality in this horror is the people who perished were utterly defenceless. The likelihood of finding yourself caught in a terror attack at the mercy of someone intent on mayhem is remote but a possibility; just one of the vagaries of fortune. Continue reading →

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible. — Maya Angelou

2 Replies

Prejudice is defined as “an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge.” (Cambridge Dictionary) I experience prejudice as both a gay man and gun owner. You may be familiar with the crude caricature of a gay man: that of a limp-wristed, effeminate man who speaks with a lisp and has an incessant compulsion for sex. You may also be acquainted with the cartoonish stereotype of gun owners as lower class white men who are uncouth and certain to tell you the only way you will take his gun from him is “from my cold, dead hands.” Certainly, these are the extreme ends of these particular prejudices. There are occasions in my life when people directed anti-gay slurs at me and to a lesser extent snide remarks about my supposed lack of virility and questionable mental health for being a gun owner. Still, the prejudice I face as a gay man and gun owner that really concerns me is far more indistinct than loutish people who call me “queer” or “gun nut” because they just do not know any better. Continue reading →

Is she coming too? — Frances Hammerstrom

Leave a reply

Jason and Fran, husband and wife, on their way to their deer stands, November 2015.

Sgt. Tatyana Danylyshyn of the Canadian Scottish Regiment and champion marksman.

I have a lifelong passion for hunting and shooting. From my early childhood I remember my father and my uncle John going hunting in the Fall seasons. My dad really enjoyed hunting cottontail rabbits and European hares, commonly called Jack rabbits, outside Kingston in the mid-1960s. I yearned for the day when I would be old enough to join them. As I grew older and entered my formative years, I remember poring over the hunting magazines, such as Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, Field and Stream, my father amassed over the years. I combed these magazines for articles on upland bird hunting and waterfowling, mostly. I was eager to learn all I could about these pastimes so I could apply this knowledge when I came of age. I got my first hunting license at 15 and never looked back. When I entered my 20s I took up collecting books on guns, hunting, gun dog training and wildlife conservation. Currently, I have a growing collection of books that detail the North American hunting and shooting culture of the 19th and 20th centuries that guided me in my development as a hunter. I take great pride in my heritage as a gun owner and hunter. I keep these books, hoping they will help preserve a record of my gun and hunting heritage for posterity. In fact, I often point to this heritage in standing up for the rights of gun owners and hunters when gun ownership and hunting come under attack from critics who denounce these activities as archaic, old fashioned and out of step with the times.

Continue reading →

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done – these are traits of the human race at large. ― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

4 Replies

The killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe by an American trophy hunter has fanned the flames of the controversy surrounding sport hunting. A familiar claim made by people opposed to sport hunting is that sport hunters “like killing things,” that is to say they enjoy killing for the sake of killing. This claim typically leaves me at a loss for words as it is so egregiously wrong. Yes, I enjoy hunting, but no, as hard as it is for you to believe, I do not like killing things. While most of my hunting expeditions are in pursuit of game birds I enjoy big game hunting too. To date my big game hunting experience is in the pursuit of the whitetail deer. My introduction to the sport of whitetail deer hunting was by Jason, one of my hunting buddies and a seasoned deer hunter, in 2011. It was not until my second season in November 2012 that I shot my first whitetail deer. It was a happy and exciting moment for me; the successful conclusion of the hunt with a whitetail deer harvested and secure in the knowledge it was a fair chase as the deer we hunt are wild, not the least bit habituated to humans. Continue reading →

I’m concerned about how accessible guns are. — Stevie Wonder

1 Reply

A shooting at a sawmill in Nanaimo, British Columbia on April 30, 2014, has left two men dead and two in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds. The gunman, a 47-year-old former employee, is in custody. The murder weapon is a shotgun. I will not be surprised if prohibitionists use this tragedy to step up their complaints that it is the “availability of guns,” that it is too easy to get a gun, as to what is to blame for such incidents. “Availability” or “access to guns” is commonly held as a problem in the ranks of prohibitionists who tirelessly assert this claim. Researchers have tried to test this theory that there is a causal link between the availability of guns and deaths and injuries by gun. The difficulty for researchers studying this theory is in generating data that can be tested using scientific research methods. However, their inability to find a causal link between the availability of guns and deaths and injuries by gun has not stopped prohibitionists from advancing their belief that such a relationship exists. Continue reading →