Okay, folks, my momma, whom I love dearly, emailed me me the other day....

"In response to a flood of calls from members of sportsmen's groups and the National Rifle Association, Jeep, recently pulled a commercial with a strong anti-hunting sentiment off the air.

The ad features hunters watching a man driving by in a Jeep with two deer tied
on top of the vehicle. As the hunters admire his "kills," the man drives to a spot indicating a "No Hunting" zone, exits the Jeep and releases the deer, who are indeed alive and bound away to safety.

As a result of the situation, Jeep is currently taking a public opinion poll :  YOUR VOTE COUNTS!

CALLS ARE NEEDED TO SUPPORT JEEP'S ANTI-HUNTING AD

I have called and a tape asked if I wanted to vote on the ad and then asked to press one if I wanted the ad to continue.

Call 1-800-925-JEEP TODAY and tell them that you support them and would like them to run the ad.

AGAIN I ASK:  Please pass this email and phone number along to your friends and fellow animal lovers."

Again, I reiterate, I LOVE MY MOMMA and we both are fierce defenders of animals but she knows that her and I are on polar opposites of the spectrum regarding guns, hunting and politics.  (I'm winning her over some on guns, though!)  

I emailed her back that I respected her opinion but that she should know where I stand on the issue of hunting.  

She emailed me back, "YOU MUST BE KIDDING....CAN'T AN AD RUN FOR ONCE THAT IS CONTRARY TO WHAT HAS SO LONG BEEN THE ONLY SIDE....THE HUNTER'S SIDE AND NOT THE
DEERS.    MOM

THIS IS NOT ABOUT GUNS....IT'S ABOUT ANIMALS HAVING A RIGHT............... FOR ONCE."

Again, I LOVE MY MOMMA.. but, dang, she is good with the guilt thing!  [:)]

I told her that I understand her that I was not against the animals but that I was not the one protesting to have it taken off the air and that I would not be one of those protesting to have it be shown again.

Have y'all ever been in this situation?  We've talked about stuff like this before but she's gotten so upset she's ended up in tears.  I don't like upsetting her but if she brings it up I'm not going to just nod and smile if I don't agree.  I usually opt for the "agree to disagree" end of the conversation.

It's just frustrating because SHE emailed me about this and now she's upset!  Maybe, perhaps, I dunno... I should have kept my mouth shut and just deleted the email??  I really thought she would see the humour in her sending ME that email (it was a bulk email).  ::sheepish grin::

She has her opinion and you have yours, obviously two strong women with two strong mindsets...a classic example of the irrisistable force meets the immovable object!

Tell your mom to read the Bible. Animals have no rights when it comes to people. They are on this earth for our benefit, not the other way around.

The jeep commercial must have surely been created by satanists who abhor the Bible. Ask your mom if she takes the animals side on the Jeep commercial because of her satanistic tendencies. That should win her over. [}:D]

MissMagnum,

I understand your Mom's feelings, but let her know that every deer taken cleanly and humanely by hunters is one less deer to starve to death or get hit by a car only to crawl off and die in the woods.

Perhaps a new Jeep advertisement, depicting a crippled deer flying off the fender of a Jeep, would be more realistic.

Do what you feel is right.  My experience in these matters is that what you thinkis the toughest to do is what you should do.

I think you are looking at animal rights as a legal issue... and then it all comes down to semantics.  My mother and I are both in agreement that animals should be treated decently.  She doesn't consider all hunting to be cruel... although it is the irresponsible, unskilled hunter that tends to make the animal activists argument against hunting.

Query: how many of you hunters have stepped in when you saw someone hunting irresponsibly or ignorantly?  

Ponyboy,

You will win no favor with me on that argument.  I don't want this to denegrate into a religious argument but I've found that this "look in the Bible, animals have no souls" is usually being spouted by a person who has been sadistic towards animals and is trying to assauge their own moral concience.

In addition, your advice appears to be for me to bait my mother with your satanic comment.  Do you actually have loved ones who put up with that kind of bullshit?  [rolleyes]

I've given a piece of my mind to a hunter or two that I didn't agree with about what or how they were doing something. There isn't a lot of "stepping in" you can do if nothing they are doing is illegal though.

It isn't illegal to let injured birds bleed out instead of ending it quickly or gut shoting deer because it's the only shot you've got.

I was being facetious. [rolleyes]

Sorry, then... couldn't see the "I was being facetious" sign over Goatboy's freakin' horns again... [}:D]

MM you've got mail.

Oh and another thing. No, I don't have any loved ones that put up with much of the sarcastic bullshit. Most of them just tell me to shut up [:)]

If the only shot you've got is a gut shot - [b]you don't have any shot at all.[/b]  I can't believe you'd even make a statement like that.

Tell her to go to a slaughter house. Then ask which is the more dignified way to cull animals. My quess is you will never win he argument, it is based on emotion and not reason.

I said it wasn't illegal. I didn't say that I agree with it, or that I would ever take a gut shot, which I wouldn't. There is nothing you can do to someone who thinks that way however, other than call em a few names and go on.

The point I was trying to make is that there is no "stepping in" to unethical hunting.

Scott,

You've got mail.

And, Dale.. you're the closest to my position.  Truth be told, she's not against hunting... and I'm glad that there are people in the world who so vociferously defend animals... I do what I can myself.  

As for slaughter houses, that's always been a problem for me.  I believe in quality, not quantity of life.  If their lives are to be short, at least let them live in decent conditions.

There is an autistic woman who actually does consults at meat packing plants.  She has helped to redesign the operations to make the experience less stressful for the animals.  Case in point, the chutes used to be very straight or angular.  She found that by making the aisles ascend in spirals that the animals calmly walked through as opposed to getting stuck in corners and panicking the herd.  

Anyway.. I could go on and on... LOL

I'm sorry - you're 100% correct.  Misunderstood ya - that's all.  ::sits back down::  [:D]

There's no way in winning this one, IMHO. Woulda, shoulda, coulda's, won't help either, but from now on, "Yes, Momma."  just just like I do [:D]

The 60's clearly had a mind bending effect on everyone that passed through them. That's the only way I can figure that a worldly wise mother would fall for that kind of crap, while her 20something daughter has adopted a realistic view of the world. I bet the teenage years in that household were "interesting". Nature has a strange way of getting the young to leave the nest.

Cook your mom a nice venison dinner.....[^]

I just called Jeep and told them I support their PULLING the ad.

I thanked them and told them that as a hunter I could now consider buying a Jeep.

Have you called yet?

Hunters have a real interest in protecting game animal populations, providing and protecting habitat, creating and enforcing reasonable hunting regulations, etc.  If there were no hunting, many species of game animals would be endangered, if not extinct. Most states get the major portion of the budgest for their department of wildlife FROM HUNTERS and shooters of all sorts.  And all the weasels that talk about protecting deer and ducks from hunters have spent not one DIME to feed a duck or deer, never mind provide wetlands and feeding areas or decent cover for large game.

Another case of do as I say, not as I do, I suppose.

If hunting were outlawed, the game populations would dwindle, and the remaining animals would be disease-raddled and pathetic examples of the species.  Over time, the habitat would become the site of more tract homes.

Save the animals indeed.  Buy a gun and go hunting!

I wouldn't buy  a Jeep even if they made an annual $100K contribution to NRA-ILA.

Mostly cuz their products are CRAP. No offense to crappy Jeep owners. [}:D]

But to MMagnum's question -

Ask yer Mom -

"Where does she get the idea that animals have rights?"

And if ya want a  well rounded Biblical answer, e-mail me.

Nor do I.

There is no glory in seeing an animal starve to death and that's what would happen to some of our animals (ex. deer) except for controlled hunting.

Personally I do not hunt....animals.

"In Ancient Rome, There was a Poem,
About a Dog, Who Found Two Bones,
He Picked Up One, Then Licked the Other,
Then Ran in Circles 'til he Dropped Dead."  
-DEVO

It's like marketing a Jeep product.

Ask your mom how she'd like to see deer that look like Dachau (sp?) inmates.  I've seen deer that looked like walking skeletons and it was one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

The hunting regs here in MO have been relaxed in the last 10 yrs and as a result fewer crops are lost, the deer that are taken are healthier, and the deer popluation isn't starving.

Well, back to the quandry.  This situation only has to do with your relationship with your mom.  Not really what anyone else's belifs on hunting are.

Your mom knows your stance on treating animals decently.  That's why she included you in the bulk e-mail.  Consider that as a compliment from her in the first place that she thought of including you in this.  Frankly it would have been better to avoid the problem in the first place.  Since you didn't do that, just leave it in her court.  Hopefully the subject will die the lonely death it deserves.  

If she brings it up again, I would just point out again that you aren't for or against the ad, so you don't feel comfortable voting for either side.  Try to avoid taking a position directly oposite of her's.  She knows you have strong opinions on the subject.  There's no reason to throw that "quality"[;)] in her face.  Stick to the mantra of not feeling comfortable on either side of the issue, and DON'T DEBATE HER!  She'll probably sqwak about it some, but in the end she'll drop it.  You know that there are things not to get into with your mom, and this is one of them.  She knows that as well.

Ross

Well, Ross.. that's exactly what I did... LOL  My mom got pretty mean and hostile in a subsequent email... in fact I ended up in tears.  [:(]

I told her that I didn't protest taking the ad down and I didn't feel like I should have to protest putting it back on.  Blah, blah... in the end she said I shouldn't have emailed her to start off with, I agreed and told her the subject was now off limits.  ::shrug::

Thanks to y'all, though, for letting me vent. [:D]