Upfront MessagesHunting has been a part of my life since forever, growing up in a small Northern Ontario town... At the age of nine, I had a black bear cub as a pet, and kept him until I was 12... at 17, I kept a polar bear cub for some time while he was acclimatized for shipping to a zoo... Shot my first moose at 11, guided since the age of 12, and love the outdoors and hunting.... It is time for you and I, as hunters, to be so very honourable, and to approach and profess hunting as the near-mystical ritual it is, tied to a deep and meaningful heritage... I believe that hunting will only survive the anti hunter if it is couched in our personal culture and heritage... Each of us must take on a very serious responsibility to portray hunting in nothing but positive behaviour, language, and thought... and to impress upon others this same attitude. Over the years I have probably hunted with some 1400-1500 different hunters, most are good men, with good intentions, and personally very honourable. But for many of these, there is still an awareness that must be taken on if we are to weather the storm of anti hunters... we must be able to articulate our position on hunting, and it must be rational.... we must seek to be almost flawless in how we approach both hunting and killing... We must be able to understand death, and our role in death, and still be able to argue that what we do in hunting is valid, valuable, and ultimately worthwhile... As a fellow hunter, I urge you to pass this thinking on to all hunters... Lark Ritchie
Hunting - Ethical & Moral ConsiderationsCopyright Lark Ritchie 1990 - 1998. Hunting in recent years has come under attack by several different interest groups. Long before these issue arose, I, and the people who make up the Bill Ritchie Hunting organization have worked under a set of principles that are driven by the appreciation of nature, wildlife, and traditional hunting.
The Bill Ritchie Hunting Organization is a group of hunters who
have come to an articlated understanding of hunting and related
issues. Bill Ritchie was a northern Ontario Native American guide.
I am one of his four sons.
These principles are not new; what's new is that few hunters
and those in the hunting business are willing to give you a philosophy or
personal attitude up front(although this number is growing.) Few are up front, willing to stand
on a long term record of success and at the same time tell you
that a successful hunt is not necessarily measured in the killing
of the game, and few will state that without government controls,
that they will actively limit their personal harvest of the game
animal. We do. To us, the hunt is a deep and meaningful thing involving much more than a trophy. To us, the hunt is an experience in comradarie , learning, self awareness, personal development, and respect for nature. If hunting is to continue, these things have to be understood, valued, and communicated by hunters. We aim to provide and disseminate these things, and we prefer to do it in a group setting. We consider ourselves Guides in the special sense held by Bill Ritchie, and transmitted to us. He took the designation "Guide" to mean "one who leads or directs to a destination", the destination includes developing and maintaining in himself, and bringing others to a personal attitudinal stance to life in general.
The particular vehicles he used were experiences
in the wilderness and hunting, since that was what he knew best.
He considered the Guide as a teacher and mentor. He also knew
bear hunting, and passed this knowledge and these values to ourselves
and those who now work with us. We continue this tradition. We are definitely guides, and damned good ones at that, and we do produce notable results for those that hunt with us. What's different about us and other guides is that we are professionals in more than one sense. Each of us has full time employment other than guiding. We make our living in a broad selection of fields spanning the engineering, computer, educational, forestry, construction, and business worlds. Each of us loves the outdoors, the wilderness and hunting in a personal way.
We consider ourselves "Professional"
in the Guiding field in that we "profess" a view as
defined in the dictionaries. We do it voluntarily, we share it,
and we admonish each other when we don't live up to the standard.
Each of us, including myself are still learning what it is to
be a Guide. We are constantly seeking to include others in our
group, to influence and widen our scope of awareness and effectiveness
in the Guiding Profession.
These pages are a vehicle for the non interpersonal profession
(e-mail/internet) of our concepts. Many "hard-core"
(I use this in its most negative sense) hunters may not agree
with us, and many will decide to not to associate themsevles with
us, because for them a "trophy" is all that matters.
That attitude is what has given the anti-hunter his leverage and
lobby position. I feel that the battle against the anti-hunting attitude can be won, not by justifying killing, or a constitutional right to own guns, but by recognizing that hunting is a cultural activity of significant value, once deeply rooted in all peoples, and now being eroded because of a lack of understanding as to what true hunting is about.
Game and Forest Management, Conservation, Ecological Considerations, Constitutional Issues etc. are all means to this
end. They must continue to be refined and improved, but they in
themselves cannot be the end goal. The end goal is that we retain
a valuable piece of human culture which is global in scope. We
hope that in these pages we can provide information for all hunters
seeking regain those true values of hunting in the traditional
sense. You can help us by supporting and relaying our views to others, photocopying and distributing this document, submitting our articles to other publications (with our prior permission), hunting with us, providing content for these pages, and adhering to the principles we profess. Our attitudes are interlaced throughout the articles. We hope that they give you something to think about. We hope your choice of association is swayed to us.
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