Field Notes

In yesterday’s Pioneer Press, Minnesota reporter Kevin Harter asks, “If a car hits it, is it still a trophy?” Well, it is according Richard Sanders, co-creator of The Roadkill Record Book Club, with whom you can now register for posterity any trophy deer, bear, cougar, elk or other critter you may happen to flatten with your vehicle.

"It is not their fault they were hit by a car or truck. They shouldn't go unnoticed. They shouldn't disappear into thin air because there is no place to register them," Sanders told Harter.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources big-game program coordinator Lou Cornicelli doesn’t totally agree. "I don't see it serving a purpose, but if he wants to have a Web site for animals smacked by Buicks, more power to him."

What do you think? You may never shoot a record-book deer, but you might run one over with your truck. Would you register it with the new club?

From the American Hunters & Shooters Association:

Today, as President of the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), I [Ray Schoenke] announced our endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. . . .

We believe recent attacks on Senator Obama's stand on the 2nd Amendment and his commitment to our hunting and shooting heritage are unfair . . . .



Senator Obama has clearly demonstrated his commitment to the 2nd Amendment by his vote in support of the Vitter amendment to HR 5441, [which] . . . prevents the Government from confiscating guns in a time of crisis or emergency.

From the NRA:

In keeping with their “pro-gun” stance, this week, AHSA did the last thing one would expect of a pro-gun group—they endorsed Democratic hopeful Barack Obama for President! . . . .

Are you kidding?  Obama’s hostility toward the Second Amendment is so well known and well documented that in the 2004 elections, NRA’s Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) issued Obama a well-deserved “F” grade.  Obama is anti-gun.  Period. . . .

And from the AHSA again:

[T]he NRA sells out regularly to politicians who care nothing about the land or wildlife, but who will deliver votes against gun control. . . .

The problem is not that the NRA leadership acts aggressively to protect the Second Amendment. It is their mission. The problem is that they mislead hunters into thinking their actions will benefit hunting. . . .

The NRA feeds our money and our hunting heritage into the coffers of political snakes who will use their influence to ruin the land we hunt.

And from the NRA:

AHSA would be more correctly called the “American Association for the Protection of Anti-Gun Politicians.”  No gun owner or sportsman should take the group seriously or fall prey to its carefully crafted lies and deceptions, as clearly demonstrated by their endorsement of Barack Obama.

Care to chime in?

From The New York Times:

A Moscow court sentenced an American pastor to more than three years in prison on Monday for illegally bringing a box of hunting ammunition into Russia.

The pastor, Phillip H. Miles, . . . was charged with failing to declare a $25 box of hunting rounds. He intended to give the bullets as a gift to a fellow pastor and hunting enthusiast in Perm . . . .

For this, Judge Olga Drozdova . . . sentenced Mr. Miles to three years and two months in prison, despite testimony attesting to his many years of service in Russia and an impassioned 30-minute plea for clemency delivered by Mr. Miles himself in court on Friday.

“I’m very disappointed,” Mr. Miles said after his sentencing, The Associated Press reported. “It’s a strange sentence for one box of hunting bullets.”

Seem a just little excessive to you?

From CNN:

A US Airways pilot who aviation officials say accidentally fired his handgun in the cockpit during a flight will be fired, a spokesman for a flight officers group said.

The airline has begun the termination process for Capt. James Langenhahn, said Mike Karn, vice president of the Federal Flight Deck Officers Association.

Langenhahn told police that he was stowing his gun in the cockpit of a jet preparing to land in Charlotte,
North Carolina, last month when it accidentally fired. . . .

Karn said his group, which represents pilots who are federally trained and allowed to carry firearms on flights, will fight the termination.

"This was accidental not intentional," Karn said. "This is not the way to treat a long-term pilot."

What do you think? Should the pilot be fired?