Wild Boar

This may well reduce those looking at my journal, and although I personally don't have any desire to hunt, it is part of our world, and it serves a purpose - none of us would be here today if mankind had not hunted. OK today we don't need to: we can get in our SUVs and drive over to Tesco to get our pre-baked frozen lasagne and return home to warm it up on the gas stove. Then relaxed, we drive on the motorway, out into the countryside to get away from the asphalt jungle, noise and stress, park our SUV on a well maintained car park, quickly go to the nice new brick loo and then set out on gravelled & mown paths to experience "nature".

A hunter destroys our view of a happy, natural, harmonious, all things bright & beautiful world. A deer being shot in Newton-on-the-Wherry will cause more outrage than 20 innocent children being blown up by a car bomb in downtown Baghdad. As in all walks of life and all hobbies, there are those that misuse it, but the vast majority manage to go about their business in a responsible, sensible manner.

No amount of waffle from me will help to reduce the outrage, and I indeed thought long before posting this Blip. In the boot of the car is a white tub holding a gutted wild boar shot last night near Regensburg by a friend of MrB's who was on his way home & dropped off the carcass as MrB has all the equipment & necessary certificates/training to store and process it. I happened to be there as MrB was giving me a training course on how to prepare bee combs: building the frame, wiring it and melting in preformed wax comb sheets.

The boar weighed 31kg without innards, was 1 year old. For those interested, 2 further close up photos on Flickr. The hunter doesn't have a 4WD and so recently invested in the Quad (nice J??) to get to the hunting areas, and he needed it last night as the area around Regensburg suffered badly in last week's floods. He showed me a photo taken by his movement triggered hunters camera at 5:30 this morning - a herd of about 20 wild boars as though in a zoo - he had just fallen asleep in the hide and missed the scene himself!

I mentioned to MrB and his friend how "cowardly" I was in holding chickens but not being capable of  slaughtering them, but they both made the point that there is a very big difference between a house pet with which one has built up a relationship and a wild animal or agricultural livestock. As the friend said, the boar had had a good life better than most domesticated animals, and was dead within milliseconds and was not transported alive by truck and ship over thousands of miles across Europe with little or no respect for life or limb.

I fully respect the view of those who totally reject killing any animal or insect, although I can't accept it, alone on the basis of how "brutal" nature is, starting from plants that eat insects. I am strictly against killing & destroying the habitat of endangered animals. My love of a warm house in winter and a full stomach leads to forests being harvested, monoculture agriculture and this leads to things like the extinction of some breeds and the explosion in others numbers, such as the wild boar which is winning back territory & numbers at an alarming rate. However, if one does hunt, then with due respect and dignity and a worthwhile use of the "bounty", not simply as a trophy of unequal macho egotism.

Very finally and to cheer us all up, here is a photo of my personal hunter on the lookout for honey loving bears.