“And we were left to assume, as my brother
and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly
fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”
Norman McClain- A
River Runs Through It
In his novel which was set in the 1920s, A River Runs through It, Norman McLain
clearly demonstrates the feeling of moral superiority felt by fly fisherman
over bait fisherman. In the quote above
and others, particularly the interaction between Norman and Paul with Norman’s
brother-in-law (a bait fisherman), one can clearly see the sportsman snobbery
that persists to this day. In the last
century, as hunting and fishing gradually shifted from an efficient way to
provide food for your family, to more of a leisure lifestyle choice, outdoorsmen
have become snobs. Each outdoorsman
finds some way to look down on other outdoorsmen who enjoy related outdoor pass
times.
Hunters and fishermen seem particularly prone to these types
of comparisons. You might insist that
this is simply human nature and you might be right, but when it comes to
outdoorsmen, it takes a strange twist.
For thousands of years, humans have been hunting and fishing as a means
of survival but only recently have they intentionally limited themselves in how
and when they can participate in these activities. Hunting and fishing, in many ways, are
trending back to the caveman. Montana
recently even passed a law that legalizes spear hunting! It seems the more primitive and minimalistic
your gear and techniques are, the more of a pure sportsman you are. If you look back to the cave man days, it is
hard to imagine “Grog” telling his brother “Gronk” that it is unsportsmanlike
to hunt mammoths with iron spear tips…. “Idiot!
The way of the purist, the way of the sportsman, is most certainly the
obsidian spear head, hand chipped from organic rock.” This scene is laughable because “Grog” would
most certainly have used a bazooka to kill mammoths if he could have, yet this
is exactly the kind of conversation many sportsman are having today.
If you don’t tie your own flies, reload your own shells and
make your own arrows, you, my friend, aren’t a committed outdoorsman. If your mode of transportation wasn’t your
feet, once you arrived at the trail head, you’re not “hardcore” and you may be
unsportsmanlike. If you use a crossbow
rather than a long bow, or a scoped rifle rather than a black powder rifle,
well, you’re certainly not a purist and you probably won’t be invited over for
Montana micro brews later. The reality
is that all of these judgements are subjective and relative. People enjoy their chosen niche in the
hunting and fishing world for different reasons. Additionally, with the constant influx of new
hunting related technologies it becomes difficult, even for the most principled
outdoorsman, to determine which are sportsmanlike and which are not. Who am I to assume that I am enjoying myself
more because I am using a dry fly and the guy down river is using scented bait? How did I decide that calling a bull elk in with
a fake bugle is more fair to the elk than the guy who shoots that same elk from a hay field with a bi-pod at 500 yards? And why
should fish finders be legal but not drones (as a method of finding game)?
With that said, we cannot allow a free-for-all if we want
sustainable wildlife populations for future generations of hunters and
fishermen to come. Limits and seasons
must be set for different methods and technologies for hunting and fishing. But they should be set for reasons of safety,
population management and equal opportunity to different types of sportsman
(notice I didn’t write equal access).
They should not be set against certain outdoorsmen because their means
of hunting and fishing is deemed unethical or unfair by a certain sub-set of
sportsman. So take a step back from the chain
of sportsman snobbery and get some real perspective before you badmouth the guy
across the river. That’s true Montana.
