A little of this and a little of that – a mixed bag of news

© By Othmar Vohringer

Yesterday I looked at this blog and realized my last post had been written in the first week of February and now we’re almost in the last week of the month. I have been extremely busy with several projects and totally forgot that I wanted to take part in Kristine’s Non-Traditional Faces of the Outdoors Challenge. The challenge was in response to an article in the American Spectator written by Christopher Orlet, titled The Hunt of Gray February. I am not going into the details here of what the article is all about. If you want to read it click on the link. But be warned it may make you as angry and upset as it did everybody else who read it. Suffice to say the article starts by insulting women hunters as unwanted intruders in a male dominated sport and then goes on to insulting male hunters too and from there it just goes downhill into the gutters.

The article caused an outrage among the hunting community, ultimately leading to the challenge of the Outdoor Bloggers Summit to the members to write about the true spirit of the hunting community. Many fine bloggers took the challenge up with some absolutely terrific responses, providing testament of the real outdoor community spirit. You can read the posts here. All I can say to the responses is that I am proud to be part of this community and well done to each and every writer who took part in this challenge.

I am sure many of my regular readers remember the controversy surrounding the World Hunting Association in 2006. I wrote my first of many posts about the WHA on June 1st. of 2006. For those of you that have forgotten or do not know what it was about let me rehash. The WHA was the brainchild of a real-estate agent, by the name of David Famerman, who wanted to turn hunting into something like the bass fishing tournaments combined with reality TV show. The idea was to send hunters (competitors) on a contest where the winner would be decided by who shot the biggest deer in the contest.

The reason why I took issue with this type of entertainment is because I believe that hunting never should be reduced to a mere spectators sport. But I was equally disgusted with the fact that the deer would not be killed and provide food. Instead the idea was to replace the deadly bullets and arrows with darts and tranquilize the animals. I have a big problem with that too because I believe that there is no justification whatsoever to drug wild animals unless it is for medical or research reasons, but most certainly not for sport and fun. To me the whole thing had absolutly nothing to do with hunting. It was just plain harassing of wildlife without a shred of dignety just for entrainment and money.

At the time it seemed that many real hunters and hunting organizations thought along the same lines, resulting in a flood of opposing articles and letters to sponsors of the WHA. To make a long story short. The sponsors eventually pulled out one by one and without money to go ahead with that ludicrous idea of harassing game animals for fun the WHA went into oblivion where they came from and where they belonged.

By now you may be asking why I dig up the past and I gladly will provide the answer. Yesterday I visited Jake’s Outdoors and read to my surprise that from what I gather to be a similar attempt is been made again. In his article Real Hunting, Jake writes about a hunting show he has seen on television where hunters chase wildlife with tranquilizer guns. Jake notes that instead of calling that type of hunting, and I use this term very loosely here, “catch and release” it’s now referred to as “green hunt” but in essence, Jake says, it is exactly the same as what the WHA tried to do in 2006.

I keep referring to Jake because I have not seen the show and when I tried to find out more information there wasn’t much. But you bet I will keep a close eye on that one and get ready to fire the first shoots, no pun intended, as soon as I hear more about this nonsense. In the meantime if any of you have more information on this topic I would appreciate if you could pass it on to me.

This leaves me just with enough time and space to update you briefly on a few things that happen here at the home front of Othmar Vohringer Outdoors.

I am pleased to inform you that I am now a regular contributor to Great Canadian Sportsman and their various magazines, Great Canadian Sportsman, Canadian Bowhunting and Canadian Deer Hunting. My debut article, “Choosing the right treestand for the perfect ambush” has been published in the new edition of Canadian Bowhunting.

Great Canadian Sportsman is unique in regard that it is a web based line of hunting magazines but made up like a real magazine, perhaps that is the future of all outdoor magazines. Ones you log in for free you can chose the magazine you would like to read and then “flip” the pages with the mouse. I like that format and I am impressed with the quality of the layout and editorial content the magazine provides to a variety of hunting and fishing interests.

Have you ever sat down and pondered for hours and days how you could swat two flies with one swipe only to realize later that the solution has been right there in front of you all the time? Well it happened to me a few months ago. Let me explain. Here in British Columbia turkey hunting is becoming fast very popular. With that popularity the hunter’s need for turkey hunting knowledge rises equally. Somehow, someone spread the word that I hunt turkeys quit successfully for many years and ever sine then there isn’t a day going by without the phone ringing or emails in my inbox from someone asking for advice.

This in turn gave me the idea to combine several of my turkey hunting seminars into one four-hour turkey hunting course. It's basically still a seminar but because of the length of it I call it course. At around the same time I was thinking about how I possible could raise more awareness and funds for our local Fish & Game Club of which I am a board member. I tossed a few ideas back and forth but nothing seemed to stick to the walls. Then a few days later, I am sitting on my computer writing the script for the turkey hunting course, it hit me like a lightening bolt out of the blue sky. Offer the course through the Fish and Game Clubs. I approached our club and they where all for the idea. The date for the course was set to March 15, and would you know, the course has totally sold out to the last seat within a few days.

Meanwhile, other Fish and Game Clubs heard about it and jumped at the chance too and before I knew it I was busy juggling dates and ended up with a seminar tour across the province of British Columbia. Many people, including hunters and fishers, have no clue just how much these organizations locally do to improve our environment, wildlife habitat and make sure that future generation can go hunting and fishing. Besides volunteers these clubs need money and that is why I came up with the idea to use the turkey hunting course as a fundraiser for these clubs. By providing hunters with much needed turkey hunting knowledge and offering the course exclusively through clubs as a fundraiser I managed to swat two flies with one swipe. I love it when things fall into place like this.


Othmar Vohringer Outdoors
Founding Member of Outdoor Bloggers Summit

Tags: Women and Hunting, American Spectator,Outdoor Bloggers Summit, Hunting Sport, Hunting TV Show, Jake’s Outdoors, Othmar Vohringer Outdoors, Hunting Magazine, Great Canadian Sportsman, Outdoor Writer, Turkey Hunting Seminar, Turkey Hunting, British Columbia