I have just as little patience for the disrespectful, gun-totin', hootin', hollerin', indiscriminately shootin', whiskey-sodden, mouth-breathin' Bubba hunter type as you do, kat.

But as with all stereotypes, it's untrue in general, and true only of those who fit it either because a) they're the type whose behavior inspired the stereotype in the first place, or b) for perverse reasons, they revel in the stereotype (which explains the continuing popularity of Dukes of Hazzard reruns). It's an image foisted unfairly on all hunters because of the excessive behavior of a few. I know lots of hunters, and the stereotype just doesn't stick.

As the inheritor of I don't even really know how many generations of hunting tradition, I know better. When I was growing up, a considerable majority of the adult males of both my mother's and father's families hunted. I don't hunt myself, and have fired guns only a few times in my life. But I'm married to a hunter (impressed the hell out of maternal grandpere that my fiance had her own shotgun and hunting dog), one who unfortunately hasn't really had the opportunity to hunt since we were married. But in the tumult of my parents' divorce, I was given my father's .308 deer rifle, and when aforementioned grandfather died, I was given his old Browning Auto-5 12-guage shotgun, which has returned home to Dakota where he used it so many times to hunt pheasant.

I am troubled by the conditions of the meat industry, as much for how they mistreat animals as for how unclean and unsafe they are for our consumption (especially in the area of poultry). But I have no moral compunctions about eating meat per se. I realize it's impossible in this day and age to hunt for all your meat, but I intend, if opportunity allows, to learn how to properly shoot my guns, and try my hand at bringing home some meat that was more cleanly and honestly killed, and whose sanitary processing I have personally guaranteed. I guess I don't quite get the logic that opposes commercial meat precisely for the reasons mentioned above, but also seeks to ban people from getting their meat in a way that is cleaner and that forces them to take more responsibility for the fact that eating meat can't happen without the death of another animal.

Now, these above words probably draw a picture of me as some sort of right-wing, pro-hunting, Dakota Drugstore Truck Drivin' Man. But in point of fact, I'm a bearded, Jerry-Brown-votin', Earth-day-attendin', braid-down-to-my-waist hippie. But I've done a 180 on gun control for two simple reason: 1) I own guns and know that I'm responsible about them, and know it would be hypocritical of me to feel that I should be able to own them, but others shouldn't; and more importantly, 2) living in a part of the country where some people did get sucked into the Militia movement, I don't want Nazi outlaws like the ones who bombed the OKC Federal Building to be the only people in my countryside who are armed. My guns are never loaded inside the house, and never will be unless those yahoos try to unleash their Turner-Diaries-inspired apocalypse on us.

Which is a big digression from what I was originally talking about, which is huntin'. Just seems to me that shooting and dressing one's own deer is a heck of a lot closer to the natural circle of life than eating feedlot beef that comes from an animal you've never seen. Mind you, I'm a hypocrite on that score right now, as I don't hunt. Yet. But trust me, deer are not in any way endangered where I live.

Oh, yeah: as a fellow low-carber, my hat's off to ya, kat, for doing it without meat. Not easy at all to do low-carbing that way. So just how vegetarian are ya? Ovo-lacto, vegan, etc.? Fish?

Chris