Why we hunt with dogs
We don’t go to the field and hunt with our dogs to be part
of some hobby. It’s not some experience we’re after. We do it
to be part of the world, a world that’s good, balanced and makes
sense.
When you go to the field and let a dog go to work a trail
and listen to him go over hill and dale, off into the distance,
and follow him here and there, past houses, roads,
hedgerows, hollows, you’re going through a world. It’s real.
We know this is true because that world is no longer there.
The world is no longer real. You can’t let your dog go work
a trail anymore. If he does he won’t be trailing past houses
and swales: instead he’ll be trespassing to one extent or
another. You can watch your liability rise and fall as he
works a trail in this non-world. Your neighbors are now
your enemies–they don’t necessarily mean to be; it’s
nothing personal, it’s just how the new non-world
works. They watch your dog’s every move. They no longer just
plow on past and give a wave with their hat. They evaluate
liability. Err on the side of caution: “I’m afraid we can’t let you.
We would if we could but you know how it is.”
They’re trying to work back to life from statistics.
It don’t work, it don’t wash. It falls apart. Just look.
We know this is true because you can now have that trailing
experience with your dog, as perhaps the brochure describes it.
You just drive to the right place, maybe public and set aside
by tax money keeping the pavers at bay,
maybe private and you pay your fee: either way you pay.
You can have your trailing experience. Ooo-weee. Hollow
as that log. No matter how you dress it up, it ain’t a world.
It’s just shopping.
You can shop your dogs to events across the land but that
doesn’t change what it is: shopping. Buy the dog, buy the
rights, buy the experience. It isn’t a world you’re trailing
your dog through anymore. It just don’t wash.
We’ll be as bad as the Europeans in short order: join a club
and go thru some formalized fancy dan rituals or get lost.
No, we’ll be worse: the Euro’s still have a public culture
to go with their crowded conditions. No liability worry there
(yet) destroying everything in its path. We’re worse than
the Soviets were: we don’t have the real culture living
beneath the surface. We’ve all bought into the ruse, resent
anyone who hasn’t. We’re goners. The worst of all possibles.
No world.
Even outlaws are hopeless today. Outlaws are never loners.
If outlaws are thriving it’s because there’s a subculture for
them. Today there’s no room even for outlaws. The higher
calling of freedom and culture doesn’t exist when there’s no
one out there to hear it fall.
I hope you have it LOTS better where you are than
we do here. The thing is that they’re fixing to make it like here
where you are there. We were dirt road neighborly 20 years ago.
Not any more. I suspect it’s that way within 50 miles of any major
town in any direction anywhere. Arable land filling in with 10-acre
liabilities. Commuters spreading far and wide, stressed out, looking
for their main chance, freely dealing resentment to neighbors
one and all. My rights. Dodos. Too bad for the dogs.
