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| Phil Burpee |
Burpee is a carpenter and farmer living north of Pincher Creek. He keeps an eye on the world from under the big Alberta sky.
Picture this. A grown man sits in a pick-up truck on a gravel road out on the bald Alberta prairie. He is dressed in forest pattern camouflage so that he cannot be seen inside his cherry-apple red GMC 3500 SuperCab against the monochrome tan of dry grass. He sports a pair of 10x50 HyperMax Celestron binocs. On his dashboard the GPS nav system tells him that he is exactly where he is - which is indeed exactly where he is. His buddy, also garbed head to toe in camo, is texting Cabalo's in Spokane to see if they have in fact spritzered themselves with just the right mix of doe-piss to outfox the notoriously discerning and wily muley buck that is their intended prey this day. Slung on the window racks behind them are a couple of Battlestar Galactica motif compound bows - camo, of course. Safely tucked into camo rip-stop quivers are two dozen fibreglass, razor-tipped arrows (camo) fledged in day-glo green nylon. A hundred and fifty feet away, standing calmly in barley stubble, a three year old muley buck stands chewing quietly, bemused at the odd-looking farmers parked by the side of the nearby road. He has seen pick-ups all his life and recognizes them as only strange but benign things that hurry around on the landscape in clouds of dust with some kind of monkey-like creatures inside, sometimes towing boxes on wheels with a couple of his horse-cousins riding along inside. He is unaware that he has become the focus-point of several thousand years of technological evolution, culminating in the arrival this day of two fine, Copenhagen-sucking, male representatives of the human race, bent on securing meat and glory.
A cloud passes over the Sun. The hunters' hearts beat quicker. Co-pilot turns to reach for the bows. The weight of centuries bears down. As in ancient days, men are poised to lay low the mighty beast and secure their place of pride back at the hearth, along with the appreciative embrace of their womenfolk. The moment is pregnant. Fate swirls in. Time slows to a stop. Silence reigns but for the steady ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom..... Shhh!....... such magic! Sadly, however, our lad in the passenger seat becomes so transfixed with the majesty of it all that he inadvertently swallows his snoose plug and explodes into a roar of hacking, gagging and spewing. The buck swings off and lopes away across the field. Suddenly the nav system flickers and is replaced with a 'Server not found' sign. The spotter man turns to admonish his partner and inadvertently hits the window-winder button with his knee, causing the window to snag his binocular strap on the way up and bang his nose against the glass. Furious misery permeates the cab. The Trickster has found his Fools this day.
Picture this. A grown man sits in a pick-up truck on a gravel road out on the bald Alberta prairie. He is dressed in forest pattern camouflage so that he cannot be seen inside his cherry-apple red GMC 3500 SuperCab against the monochrome tan of dry grass. He sports a pair of 10x50 HyperMax Celestron binocs. On his dashboard the GPS nav system tells him that he is exactly where he is - which is indeed exactly where he is. His buddy, also garbed head to toe in camo, is texting Cabalo's in Spokane to see if they have in fact spritzered themselves with just the right mix of doe-piss to outfox the notoriously discerning and wily muley buck that is their intended prey this day. Slung on the window racks behind them are a couple of Battlestar Galactica motif compound bows - camo, of course. Safely tucked into camo rip-stop quivers are two dozen fibreglass, razor-tipped arrows (camo) fledged in day-glo green nylon. A hundred and fifty feet away, standing calmly in barley stubble, a three year old muley buck stands chewing quietly, bemused at the odd-looking farmers parked by the side of the nearby road. He has seen pick-ups all his life and recognizes them as only strange but benign things that hurry around on the landscape in clouds of dust with some kind of monkey-like creatures inside, sometimes towing boxes on wheels with a couple of his horse-cousins riding along inside. He is unaware that he has become the focus-point of several thousand years of technological evolution, culminating in the arrival this day of two fine, Copenhagen-sucking, male representatives of the human race, bent on securing meat and glory.
A cloud passes over the Sun. The hunters' hearts beat quicker. Co-pilot turns to reach for the bows. The weight of centuries bears down. As in ancient days, men are poised to lay low the mighty beast and secure their place of pride back at the hearth, along with the appreciative embrace of their womenfolk. The moment is pregnant. Fate swirls in. Time slows to a stop. Silence reigns but for the steady ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom..... Shhh!....... such magic! Sadly, however, our lad in the passenger seat becomes so transfixed with the majesty of it all that he inadvertently swallows his snoose plug and explodes into a roar of hacking, gagging and spewing. The buck swings off and lopes away across the field. Suddenly the nav system flickers and is replaced with a 'Server not found' sign. The spotter man turns to admonish his partner and inadvertently hits the window-winder button with his knee, causing the window to snag his binocular strap on the way up and bang his nose against the glass. Furious misery permeates the cab. The Trickster has found his Fools this day.
Ah yes, it's hunting season again. Across the landscape men are lopping their feathered shafts in a steady rain of Gillette-tipped mayhem. The hunter-gatherer society may have long since lapsed, and the only gathering that gets done these days is Air Miles, Corn Flakes and Jumbo Kitty Kibbles down at Cosco's, but the beady-eyed hunter is resurgent. Fleets of them are seen sweeping down the highways out of Calgary and other urban centres for the wide open spaces and the promise of a fine trophy. They have gathered for months in their garages and dens, polishing their toys, watching YouTube exploits and DVDs with oddly butt-slap-happy names like 'Boyz, Bears n' Bucks' or 'Ready, Aim...Gotcha!', and regaling one another with strapping tales of derring-do in the wild country. At about the eleventh or twelfth brewski, the stories have typically morphed beerily into life or death struggles for supremacy in a ferocious wilderland, red, as it were, in tooth and claw. They have found the hairy men within and, with gonads full to bursting, are prepared to challenge Nature herself in the time-honoured battle between the fertile and quick-witted Mind of Man, and the bestial power of the dreaded, and notoriously treacherous, ungulate. Bambi beware. Men are afoot.
And, of course, with the demise of the bow later in the Fall, and with troops of pin-cushioned furry bulls-eyes gimping around the countryside, sporting their gaily-coloured quills courtesy of various cross-eyed marksmen, come the Men of the Long Rifle. Ah, here is yet another cunning breed. These stealth artists, similarly clad in the aforementioned forest pattern camo, belly their way into firing position like true frontiersman of yore. Except at this range, some 300 metres plus, you could pretty much land a Sikorsky helicopter without so much as causing a twitch in the distant speck that is your quarry. The target is so far away that the well-prepared sportsman has plenty of time to sip a quick coffee while he waits for his round to arrive. Then it's time to scoop the quad and journey to that distant place where his booty awaits. Goofy grins and heroic posturing is duly recorded on camera for the folks back home. Another successful mission is tallied up. Another fine rack above the garage door. And so they traipse home with visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads.
What's wrong with this picture? When exactly did securing a Winter supply of meat become a military affair? Didn't guys used to go out to hunt in blue jeans and checkered shirts with red caps on their heads? Didn't they make camp and follow the spoor? Didn't they used to deploy knowledge of the land and the movements of their quarry, rather than satellites, motion-cams and infrared sensors? And when I see four grim-looking dudes in a Gator with camo fatigues and rifles, I'm thinking platoon scouts, not sportsmen. Somebody's been sold a bill of goods here. Or maybe somebody's just tapped in to the frustrations and gullibility of modern technological Man. The crafts of War have been wilfully intermingled with the crafts of the Hunt - and goofy modern males, the big, hairy boys with all their failed puberties, take the bait.
If all these guys creeping around in camouflage weren't so - well....creepy - I guess you could just write them off as so many bumptious dweebs. But I was raised in a country (this one) where soldiers were not meant to be seen except in times of a critical nature. This whole thing about marketing the military look is an import from the armed camp that is our neighbour to the south. And it has its roots in the Militia Movement. We should be concerned about raising a whole generation of men whose view of Nature is as a foe on a battlefield. Whatever victories we might achieve in our troubled world will not come from a spirit of domination. If we continue to drug our men with the Toys of War, I think it will not come out well. Men of character, real men, show a deep respect for the animal that is their prey, not merely a thing to be vanquished.
Mothers, beware delivering your little boys into the hands of Elmer Fudd and his dopey battalions. We might all end up in the stew pot with that 'wasscawy wabbit.'
Phil Burpee
September 18, 2001
And, of course, with the demise of the bow later in the Fall, and with troops of pin-cushioned furry bulls-eyes gimping around the countryside, sporting their gaily-coloured quills courtesy of various cross-eyed marksmen, come the Men of the Long Rifle. Ah, here is yet another cunning breed. These stealth artists, similarly clad in the aforementioned forest pattern camo, belly their way into firing position like true frontiersman of yore. Except at this range, some 300 metres plus, you could pretty much land a Sikorsky helicopter without so much as causing a twitch in the distant speck that is your quarry. The target is so far away that the well-prepared sportsman has plenty of time to sip a quick coffee while he waits for his round to arrive. Then it's time to scoop the quad and journey to that distant place where his booty awaits. Goofy grins and heroic posturing is duly recorded on camera for the folks back home. Another successful mission is tallied up. Another fine rack above the garage door. And so they traipse home with visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads.
What's wrong with this picture? When exactly did securing a Winter supply of meat become a military affair? Didn't guys used to go out to hunt in blue jeans and checkered shirts with red caps on their heads? Didn't they make camp and follow the spoor? Didn't they used to deploy knowledge of the land and the movements of their quarry, rather than satellites, motion-cams and infrared sensors? And when I see four grim-looking dudes in a Gator with camo fatigues and rifles, I'm thinking platoon scouts, not sportsmen. Somebody's been sold a bill of goods here. Or maybe somebody's just tapped in to the frustrations and gullibility of modern technological Man. The crafts of War have been wilfully intermingled with the crafts of the Hunt - and goofy modern males, the big, hairy boys with all their failed puberties, take the bait.
If all these guys creeping around in camouflage weren't so - well....creepy - I guess you could just write them off as so many bumptious dweebs. But I was raised in a country (this one) where soldiers were not meant to be seen except in times of a critical nature. This whole thing about marketing the military look is an import from the armed camp that is our neighbour to the south. And it has its roots in the Militia Movement. We should be concerned about raising a whole generation of men whose view of Nature is as a foe on a battlefield. Whatever victories we might achieve in our troubled world will not come from a spirit of domination. If we continue to drug our men with the Toys of War, I think it will not come out well. Men of character, real men, show a deep respect for the animal that is their prey, not merely a thing to be vanquished.
Mothers, beware delivering your little boys into the hands of Elmer Fudd and his dopey battalions. We might all end up in the stew pot with that 'wasscawy wabbit.'
Phil Burpee
September 18, 2001
Wow. I'm going hunting next year.
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