Washington D.C.

In an online editorial entitled, “Sarah Palin-Hunting’s Dream Babe,” Bowsite founder Pat Lefemine admits not “being thrilled with McCain” prior to Palin joining the ticket.  Lefemine’s reservation, however, turned into immediate acceptance of the unknown candidate literally overnight with his support-along with tens of thousands who traffic the popular internet website-centered primarily on her supposed moose hunting prowess.

“Palin’s image has become an overnight sensation for many reasons,” Lefemine writes (while only citing only three).  “But it is her hunting and pro-gun image that keeps coming up in the media.  This image illustrates her as someone with a tough, independent, uncompromising spirit…The fact that McCain’s moose hunting VP is a woman is key.”

“So Sarah Palin killed a moose once.  Whoppie-freakin-do!” says Rodney Blankenship of the Sensible Sportsmen’s Coalition, a non-profit organization comprised of less than a dozen hunters from across the nation.

“Gay rights groups, the global-warming crowd-you name the special interest group-people all the time cast their vote for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with candidate’s political experience or qualifications.  American hunters are no different.  In fact, they’re probably one of the most gullible as evident by this whole moose hunting business.”

To back up his contention that killing a moose in Alaska is “no big deal and certainly no reason to justify voting for the woman,” Blankenship points to a recent report in The Fairbanks News-Miner.

The article cites evidence compiled by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who crunched some numbers and found that about 1/3 of licensed Alaska moose hunters between 1990 ad 2006 successfully filled their tags.

“Plenty of people kill moose in Alaska-it’s not really that hard.  Ninety-ninety-point-nine percent of them aren’t qualified to drive school bus let alone help run the country,” Blankenship says.  “The fact is-despite joining the republican ticket a month ago-Palin has still granted only three interviews.  So how do voters really knows what she thinks?”

Those who give the question any iota of thought may wonder what a hunting vice president has actually meant for the sport and the care of the natural resources in this country.

“Historically speaking,” says Blankenship, “absolutely nothing.  No vice president has ever signed into law any bill to protect public lands, wildlife, or the rights of hunters.”

In fact, according to Blankenship, there’s more evidence to suggest that having a hunter in the White House will negatively impact the sport.

Blankenship cites the 2006 incident where current vice president Dick Cheney shot a hunting companion in the face during a South Texas quail hunt.

“That poor guy managed to walk away relatively unscathed,” says Blankenship.  “But if hunters help elect McCain because his running mate is ‘a babe’ who occasionally goes hunting, they might actually be helping to shoot the whole country in the foot.”

St. Paul, MN-

“I feel downright used-like a smelly old Swedish M90 insulated parka that’s been boxed up, forgotten, and chewed on by moths,” says Bumpass.

Bumpass, a nine-year employee at the discount outdoor cataloger, is dumbfounded over the termination; however Sportsman’s Guide owner-founder Gary Olsen provided The Abaguchie evidence of Bumpass’ work. Olsen lists a litany of what he calls “patently silly” product descriptions like this one for the “Genuine U.S. Military M65 Pants,” a popular Sportsman’s Guide offering:

Gallant 6-pocket britches ready to serve Gomer and YOU!  No fakes.  These are the real thing!

Additional Bumpass-created ad copy includes this on “Wolverine® Work Boots”:

Working hard, like you’re on a chain gang?  Or just hanging out looking like you’re busy?  Either way, these Wolverine® beauties are all set for foot pampering.  From jobsite to honey-do lists, these are your best pals, next to your tools.

And this description of the “Trifold Dog Ramp”:

Doggone handy! Rin Tin Tin and Lassie approved for all dogs, big or small. Other critters welcome, too. Seems I was barking up the right tree…

Bumpass countered stating that he originated the copy used in “most” treestand ad copy:

Order ONLINE today, and make a “stand” against high prices!

“Gary was constantly ribbing us copywriters and pushing us to come up with creative and classy descriptions of whatever junk he was trying to peddle,” says Bumpass. “But it was hard… really hard. There were times when [Olsen] mocked us and berated us, but we put up with it for the greater good of the consumer.”

At this time Bumpass would like to consider gainful employment with other catalog firms, such as LL Bean or The Orvis Company, but an iron clad non-compete contract prohibits him from doing so.

“I can’t let my talent go to waste,” says Bumpass. “But through my association with Sportsman’s Guide, I’ve been branded as a cheesy copy producer. Olsen has a stranglehold my livelihood.”

Olsen was not available for further comment.

The victim in the assault claimed his brother Harlton Nesbitt, 23, intentionally fired a wad of “hot and spicy” ground venison in his eye during a dispute that arose between the two over the excessive level of cayenne pepper the victim wanted to use in the recipe.

Even though the victim admitted to starting the dispute, Nesbitt was the one sent to the Cambria County Prison in lieu of $2,500 bail on a simple assault charge.

Sherriff Bob Kolar, the officer who filed arrest papers with District Judge Stephen J. Yesenosky, said the attack occurred just before 2:30 a.m. early Tuesday morning after the two brothers returned home from drinking at a local Ebensburg bar.

Sheriff Kolar said the two brothers tried to stop on the way home from the bar to buy some Slim Jims.  But it was late and the convenience store was closed.  Returning to the victim’s home and still hankering for a salty meat snack, Nesbitt suggested the two “break out the jerky gun,” a device like a heavy duty caulk gun that when filled with ground beef or venison is used by sportsmen to produce snack sticks and jerky that can be dried in a smoker or regular household oven.

“It’s actually an amazing gadget when used responsibly,” Sheriff Kolar said. 

The victim told police that he was “quite crocked” and insisted on adding an excessive amount of cayenne pepper to the 1.5 pounds of ground venison the brothers were preparing to insert into the gun.  The victim told Sheriff Kolar that his brother asked what he, the victim, was trying to prove.  Nesbitt later told Judge Yesenosky that-while he enjoys spicy foods when the spices being used add flavor to a meat-he does not like “hot food that is so hot it’s impossible to taste anything else.”

Nesbitt managed to get the gun away from his older, inebriated brother, said Sheriff Kolar.  He knocked the victim to the ground shouting, “You like spicy!  You like it hot!  Then how’s about some of this!”

With the snack stick nozzle attached to the jerky gun, Nesbitt pulled the trigger releasing a small “turd-like nugget” of spicy ground venison that ”plopped” into the victim’s open left eye, said Sheriff Kolar.

When police arrived, Nesbitt had already fled leaving the victim collapsed and moaning on the bathroom floor with a cold washcloth over the red and severely swollen eye, Kolar said.  The jerky gun, located on the floor in the kitchen, was confiscated and taken into evidence by police.              

Representatives for both the Outdoor Channel and Ghetto Child, aka Detrick Homey, declined comment on the pending deal.  But this much is known:The USFW service has reported a steady decline in hunter participation and recruitment over the last decade.  That has the hunting industry worried along with game managers across America whose operating budgets largely depend on revenue garnered from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and taxes on outdoor related products.       

According to insiders close to the project, the new show will be titled, Hunting with Homey.  Even if reported talks with Detrick Homey fall through, sources close to the negotiations say the name of the show will not be changed as long as another “homey” can be found to take on hosting duties.    

He’s Black Y’all, And That’s A Fact Y’all

Hunting the World…Southern Style!  has gained wide acceptance among younger, outdoor television viewers thanks to the on-air antics of rapping, redneck hosts Hal Shaffer and Ken Cobb.  By adopting personas that capitalize on stereotypical black behavior and lingo, the rotund Shaffer and sidekick Cobb have found an audience of 18 to 29 year-olds while still appealing to older viewers thanks to regular appearances by professional wrestling, country music, and NASCAR celebrities.

But unlike Shaffer and Cobb who caricature men of color, Homey is a bonafide black man.  Sources say Outdoor Channel executives are hoping this element of “thuggish realism” will appeal to an even broader section of young hunters and inspire them to venture “out of da hood and into da woods.”

“It’s a sad and widely know fact that once men and women marry, the woman sets in motion a bizarre and torturous campaign to change everything about her new husband that made her fall in love with him in the first place,” says a spokesman for the Art of Marriage Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes healthy marriages through marriage education.  “If the man is a hunter, that’s typically the first thing to go.”

The 2006 USFW survey is the 11^th in a series of surveys conducted since 1958.  It was compiled from data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, which interviewed 85,000 households in April and May of 2006.  The 31,500 “sporting households” were selected and interviewed in detail about their participation and expenditures regarding hunting, fishing, and wildlife watching. 

When male participates where asked privately what factor most limited their involvement in hunting-related activities, census takers noted a remarkably high number of husbands citing a “nagging” or “overbearing bitch” wife.

Hence, the acronym NBW.

“The data reveal a high percentage of American husbands were essentially at the mercy of a NBW who essentially controlled every minute of their [the husband's] free time,” says a Chicago-based representative of the U.S. Census Bureau.  “NBWs were actually one of the primary causes of men cutting back or giving up on their hunting activities entirely.  This problem, and NBWs in particular, definitely deserve more attention…so to speak.”   

A woman’s propensity for squashing a man’s desire to hunt is insidious as it is irrational, say the legion of men who have experienced wifely nagging and complaining to the ultimate, mind-numbing extreme.

“I didn’t know what was happening,” says Gordon Stigfield, a self described ex-hunter and recently divorced Salisbury father of two.  “It started with little questions-Do you really have to go out again, dear?  Do you really need another shotgun?-But pretty soon the questions became declarations.  You’re not going hunting tonight!  You just went last week!  Three hundred dollars for a treestand!  We don’t have that kind of money!  Blah!  Blah!  Blah!

“It got so she would openly bitch anytime the word hunting was mentioned in our-I mean her-house,” continues Stigfield, adding that his ex-wife nearly succeeded in sapping away every ounce of joy he once felt from spending time outdoors.

“It got so the safest place for me was hiding out in the garage pretending to be doing something or putzing around out in the backyard.  But then she accused me of being a lazy, un-ambitious shell of the man I once was.”  

“My ex-wife would chew my ass out for leaving a hunting magazine on the coffee table,” echoes Fred Hubbell, a 32-year-old man who considered himself a lifelong deer hunter until his marriage three years ago.  “I still get the magazines and catalogs-they’re really my only connection to the outdoors anymore-but I have to keep them out of sight otherwise it just means trouble.”

According to Hubbell, his wife wants to start having children.

“I think if there was a kid around to distract her, she might actually stop hen-pecking the hell out of me,” he says. 

But not so fast, says the most recent USFW survey. 

“The data show that having children only complicates a bad situation,” says James Paulson, a USFW official speaking on the results of the findings.  “This final phase of the process allows the wife to essentially use the ‘needs of the children’ to justify her behavior and guilt-trip the man into never leaving the house.  We found men talked into to giving up hunting trips out of state, nagged into cutting back on their hunting-related expenses, even selling their hunting gear to buy toys and clothing all for the sake of the children.”

“I finally told my wife to get a fucking hobby,” says Stigfield, words that are rare among most hunting husbands who are browbeat, belittled, and, generally, made to feel worthless for passionately pursuing an activity the love. 

Stigfield admits that in “manning-up” and taking a stand he knew he was risking divorce.  But, according to USFW officials, he also might be onto something.

Women were told in the 50s that if they just got out of the house and got a job that they would be happy, agree U.S. Census Bureau and USFW officials.  Now women wear the pants in many American homes.  They hold some of the most powerful positions in government and business.  Yet, an increasing majority of women say they would rather be home having babies and taking care of the house.  Unfortunately, studies show this doesn’t make them happy either.

“Misery loves company, right?” says Stigfield.  “I figured out my wife’s pet project was ‘fixing’ me.  She saw me being happy when she wasn’t.  So she pretty much tried to drag me down with her.”

Stigfield’s story is familiar to many married men.  And that’s proving bad for the state of hunting in America.

Hunting is a multi-billion dollar industry at a time when the U.S. economy needs every spare penny.  The USFW is now reportedly looking deeper into the problem by dispatching experts and think-tank analysts to explore ways to help a majority of married women “get a life.”

WASHINGTON D.C. -

The number of bomb attacks in Iraq has dropped from 3,239 in March to 1,560 in November, the lowest level since September 2005.

According to sources, the primary mission of the rednecks–deployed back in February to patrol Iraq’s shared border with Iran–is to halt the smuggling of Iranian explosives and other weapons now flooding Baghdad and the hostile neighbors that surround the heavily fortified Green Zone.

If the rumors are true, the ultra-secret deployment seems to be working.

While no one at the Pentagon or the Joint Special Operations Command will go on record confirming or denying the existence of the United States Redneck Special Forces, a high-ranking source says that if such a force did exist that the 500-members who make up the clandestine unit are all pretty much all volunteers.

“They’re all pretty much volunteers,” says a high-ranking source.

Better still, say rumors, the United States military has spent very little time and effort training them.

“There are some in Washington who believe there’s an inexhaustible supply of rednecks in America,” says one recently retired army general from the Combat Application Group (an arm of the Department of Defense). “They’re relative competent in the outdoors and in handling firearms. While they are generally lazy, rednecks are typically easy to provoke and eager to fight if given the proper motivation.”

If reports are true, the rednecks were deployed with an unlimited supply of ammunition and told only that “terrorist season” opened the next day. According to reports, they were also told that there is no bag limit (on terrorists), that they (the terrorists) taste like chicken, and that those “towel-head bastards” don’t like beer, pickups, country music, or Jesus.

HARTFORD, CT —

    “My wife has informed me that I spend way too much time thinking about myself and not enough time putting my family first.  I cannot continue to read this forum and participate in the banter when I know that I cannot go afield when I wish within reasonable limits,” says Lee Wilkins, a Florida man who announced he was “signing off for a while” this week as a frequent poster to the cyber community of longbow and recurve shooting enthusiasts. Logging over 50 posts to the message board since September and untold hours spent “lurking” on “The Wall,” Wilkins also estimates he spent exactly “115 cumulative hours away from home” on three different occasions.

    “Not in the field mind you,” he writes, “but away from my house for a total of 4.79 days on 3 occasions combined.  This apparently is way too f—ing [sic] time consuming.  This will either end with an unlikely resolution, me being reduced to a miserable sheep for the rest of my life or a divorce.  If it wasn’t [sic] for my two beautiful boys ages eight and four, I could tell you exactly where it would end.”

With the same enthusiasm posters from throughout the nation muster when answering questions ranging from how to track a wounded deer to what wood shaft/broadhead combination flies the best when shot from a particular bow, immediately, persons with handles such as “Pondscum” and “Wolf Among Dogs” rallied to offer advice to another longbow and recurve enthusiast whose marriage is on the skids. Dr. Phil could not have done better. Nearly 100 posts and an untold number of viewing before noon, Wilkins post was easily one of the most popular on Monday.

    “Have her hold your targets for you,” offered TaterSalad from Texas.

    “It won’t work,” warned Edward Carneal of Virginia, aka Foxbo.  “May as well settle it one way or the other now and get it over with.  I’ve been there.”

Some on “The Wall” were more hopeful, offering prayers while others urged Wilkins to spice up his unhappy home with a little Old Testament inspired “man law”.

    “Sounds like your wifes [sic] security blaknet [sic] is you,” said Sixby, a self-described “pastoral councelor” from Oregon.

    “Remember, You da man. [sic]  Not she da man, [sic] You da man. [sic] You cannot have authority in the home and over your life until you take possession of your manhood and take that authority and do it with love.” While some believe such message boards hurt hunters by needless exposing the general public to the mindless meanderings and disturbingly pervasive right-wing, Christian zealotry common among the ranks of the American hunter, seemingly off-topic posts on message boards like The Leatherwall remain the most popular.

    “Some sap whining about his horrible marriage is just the tip of the iceberg,” says one industry insider who declined to be named because the subject is sensitive. “Advertising dollars for websites like The Stickbow are based on the number of daily ‘hits’ to a particular website.  So if the owner of that site can regularly drum up website traffic by letting their members debate the words of Jesus, Rush Limbaugh, or bash controversial figures in the industry…all the better for them.”

To the question of relevance this and scores of other off-topic posts have to do with the subject of traditional archery, Pat Effeminate, a Connecticut bank securities and information officer for Lincoln Financial Group and founder of The Stickbow, was reportedly off on his seventh trophy whitetail hunt in Kansas (in as many years) and could not be reached for comment.

HARRISBURG, PA —

The move follows a black eye the commission received back in March after reports of rampant bear and deer poachings in Perry County.  Incidents poaching and game violations appear to be on the rise and many have charged that the Game Commission is either unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

    “Not so,” says Game Commission Press Secretary Jerry Pleaser. “Game violations of any type—no matter how small—makes us really, really mad.  Having Jack Bauer on our team could change all that.  We see this as a unique opportunity to end poaching in Pennsylvania once and for all.

Pleaser says the Game Commission hopes to use Sutherland’s secret-agent skills to nab would be poachers and game law violators “before news of the event would ever have a chance to hit the news.”  The use of undercover wildlife enforcement agents is not a new concept. US Fish and Wildlife Service used an undercover agent to thwart the widely publicized case of the Japanese butterfly smuggler.

    “If you’ve ever seen Jack Bauer in action, you’ll know that poachers and game law violators will suffer grave consequences,” says Pleaser.  “His interrogation techniques are down right scary.  I hear they are so effective, even the U.S. military and the CIA is using them in Iraq.”

Pleaser noted that as an undercover WCO, Sutherland would have an unspecified operating budget and a complete arsenal of super-secret gadgets at his disposal to help fight acts of poaching that seem to be on the rise in the state.

    “Bauer will have all sorts of neat gadgets to store in his ‘Bauer Bag‘”, said Pleaser. “Bauer will have access to a robotic deer decoy, night-vision goggles, a fully functional sidearm.  And we will try to get one of those really cool mobile phones that seem to work anywhere, just like on the show. The Game Commission won’t be able to compensate Bauer like the Fox Network.  But we are hoping he will at least consider our offer. We have already begun looking into license fee hikes as an option to help cover his salary expense”.

To further strengthen the counter poaching operation, the Game Commission is considering making a similar offer to actress Mary Lynn Rajskub who plays CTU Senior Analyst/computer guru Chloe O’Brian on the series.

    ” Without Rajskub’s back-end tech support”, said Pleaser, “Sutherland would screwed”.

When asked if Pleaser realized that Sutherland was merely playing a character on a television show and that he was not an actual CTU agent, Pleaser responded that was “classified information.”

“I’m shocked,” said Preston Dalls, 34, a turkey hunter from Jackson and loyal Primos customer. “I haven’t felt this confused—maybe even a little betrayed—since I saw Bill Jordan celebrate killing a big buck by doing the Cabbage Patch dance in his treestand on ESPN.”

Hunters like Lee are definitely talking. But whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seen.

By joining the ranks of the clean-shaven Primos appears 20 years younger. He looks trim and healthy. Many industry insiders are saying that he finally looks like the smart and savvy businessman he’s always been. But when the average hunter (male, age 46) is an overweight, Skoal sucking, blue-collar stiff, it also means that now Primos now looks like everything his clientele is not. Marketing experts also agree that hunters, as a consumer group, notoriously abhor change.

“From a marketing standpoint, it presents a real gamble,” says Bob Steddum VP of Marketing for WildernessPros, a Raleigh, North Carolina, firm specializing in niche marketing and advertising for the outdoor marketplace. Take away that beard, according to another industry expert, and a lot of that “good-old-fashion-hardworking-down-home-pickup-driving-country-boy shtick” goes away with it.

The skull and antlers of the now infamous “Bowser Buck” have since been verified as authentic by impartial experts from the Safari Club International, Boone and Crockett, and the Pope and Young Club. Bowser seemed vindicated with a rack, scoring 218¼, almost five points larger than Milo Hanson’s Saskatchewan monster.

In a move potentially worth millions, Bowser—a Hoyt pro-staff member and paid consultant for hunting products manufacturers too numerous to mention—was set to go ahead with licensing the sale of replica antlers, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and “Bowser Buck” memorabilia.

But Bowser ran into trouble again this month when he tried to trademark for himself the seemingly innocuous title of “Supreme Maha Master Whitetail Hunter” and “The Bowser Buck: The Undisputed World Record Whitetail By Any Measure.”

Following the lead of legendary Chuck “The World’s Most Successful Bowhunter” Adams, Bowser trademarked the name “The World’s Ultimate Whitetail Bowhunter” in 1997.
Like Adams, Bowser wants to use the self-proclaimed title for product endorsements and promotional material for his annual speaking tour at hunting shows and whitetail exhibits throughout the country.

But is the “Bowser Buck” really the “undisputed” world record “by any measure”?

“Right now, I have the top spot in every record book except one,” says Bowser.

At issue is the scoring method used by the newest big game record club for bowhunters. Early in 2006, officials from the Lansing-based trophy organization Hunters Ultra-Extreme, or Club HU-E as it is more commonly known, announced in a press release that the Bowser Buck was not #1 in their book.
Said HU-E president Rolland Chambers, “Our members are the most serious hunters in the world…the kind of bowhunters who judge a true trophy not merely by the size of the rack but by the story behind the hunt and the methods by which the animal was taken.”

Right now, the number one spot in the HU-E record book happens to be a six point taken by Chambers himself.

While the buck’s rack in the accompanying picture appears slightly larger than average, the listing says Chambers “harvested” the deer wearing handmade moccasins and a loincloth. In the picture, Chambers is smiling through a dark mask he points out is not commercial face paint but rather smeared on mud. He was shooting a flinthead and a sinew-backed hickory selfbow of his own design.

“They’re not bowhunters. They’re a bunch of traditional zealots,” insists Bowser. “A bunch of rich white guys running around playing Indian. It’s a real freak show down there, but unfortunately traditional bowhunting is growing in popularity and now controls over ten percent of the bowhunting market.”

Bowser claims that HU-E’s scoring system—which in a phone interview he repeatedly referred to as “seriously whacked”—is unrealistic, biased, and stands to cost him millions.

Under HU-E club rules, the cumulative score of a big game animal—in this case a typical whitetail buck—is taking by adding the total number of inches from the antlers’ main beams, spread, each individual tine length, etc. Just like the now standard Boone and Crocket Club scoring system, points are then deducted for any lack of symmetry or non-typical points—of which the Bowser rack has none.

But unlike other clubs, HU-E also makes deductions for a litany of factors—from equipment choices to overall hunting method—most modern hunters like Bowser have denounced as superfluous.

The concept is not new. Up until recently, the Pope & Young Club refused to acknowledge trophies entered into their record book by hunters who were using a bow of more than 50 percent let-off. They have since up the minimum let-off requirement to 65-percent.

Another club, the Colorado-based Compton Traditional Bowhunters of which HU-E president Chambers was once a low-level member, formed their own criteria for recording big game animals with a system that included “equipment and method-of-hunting point awards.”

It works like this: Under Compton’s system, hunters who use self-made wood arrows, longbows, ground blinds instead of treestands, and refuse the services of a guide are eligible for more points and potentially higher standing after they pay $25 to enter an animal into the archive.

According to Chambers, Club HU-E takes this concept to the next level by deducting points for things the HU-E board views as “not corresponding to HU-E’s stringent standards of fair chase.”

“Mr. Bowser has gone public stating that he killed that buck on private ground over bait and with a modern compound bow with eighty-five percent let-off. Right there he loses fifteen points under our system,” says Chambers.

But there’s more. Under HU-E’s rules, if Bowser had used wood arrows and a cut-on-contact broadhead (i.e. a Bear Razorhead or Zwickey Eskimo), he would not have been subjected to any further deductions.

But Bowser is product representative known for shooting only Easton “Axis” shafts and Rocky Mountain “Assassin” mechanical broadheads, which spring open and cut on contact. That’s another 10-point deduction, combined. Factoring in that Bowser was quoted and pictured with his 12-point buck in numerous magazine advertisements for Big Jon tree stands and his own signature camouflage Scent-Loc suit and, according to Chambers, “Bowser’s buck starts dropping points like brown needles off a dead old Christmas tree.”

“Our system of measure is about respecting the animal by rewarding hunters who practice fair chase, not those who rely on technology to do the work for them,” says Chambers.

“We’re also a private club and we can make our own rules. If Mr. Bowser doesn’t like the rules he’s at liberty not to try to enter his deer in our archive.”

“That’s a bunch of baloney,” says Bowser. “I’m doing this to honor the animal. I’m doing this for every hunter out there whose every dreamed of taking a world-class animal and then seeing their accomplishment recognized in its rightful place in the record book.”