Originally Posted By: orkanOriginally Posted By: DesertRamOriginally Posted By: jcs271
I agree, I am however concerned what the 80 percent of americans who don't hunt think about hunters and the way we conduct ourselves. Thats why I try to speak accurately and respectfully about our activities and do my best not to needlessly upset generally supportive people by using terms that are inaccurate at best and inflammatory at worst. Just my 2 cents, and now I'm moving on.........
That's it right there. It's about effective communication. Words have meaning. It's up to us to clearly articulate to the fence-sitters why we do what we do. We can communicate well and hopefully convince them of the justness of our cause, or we can be crappy communicators and leave them with a bad taste in their mouths. It's all up to us. How do you want to be perceived? I find that reasonable people can be drawn to reasonable conclusions quite easily. Those people wouldn't care if we called them dogs, coyotes, coy-o-tee's, or predators. Reasonable people, however, are not the problem. Overly-sensitive, emotional, and illogical/irrational people are the problem. In my experience, there is no form of communication that will sway that person from their beliefs, other than being victimized.
I recall a neighbor lady of mine that lived about 5 miles down the road. She hated that I shot coyotes. Then one day I get a call, begging me to come and track down a coyote that grabbed her cat out of the yard. I was asked to find it, kill it, and bring the remains of the cat back... all teary eyed. Prior to that moment, I had spent countless hours, over meals, lunches, coffee's at the local diner, etc... trying to get her to understand the usefulness of my endeavors. Nothing made a dent, which saddened me because her property held lots of coyotes. Yet after she was victimized and something SHE cared about was killed... THEN it mattered. Yet the neighbor down the road from her losing 50 lambs minimum every year to coyotes didn't phase her a bit.
Language doesn't matter. Culture matters. Some people are simply not exposed to the things that would lead to them forming a certain opinion. They think they are intelligent and rational people, yet have no empathy or imagination which guides their decision making process. They lack critical thinking ability. As such, events are required to take place before they change. Talking... well, talking does absolutely nothing with those folks. I have learned this many times through hard and bitter experience.
As most of us here are capable of critical thinking, and are logical, we want to think that all folks are logical. All we need to do is talk some sense into them in the right way. This is a false belief.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't all conduct ourselves professionally while engaged in our sport. Obviously that is true. Yet having a realistic understanding of our enemy is greatly important as well.
Well said Orkan, facts will not dissuade the liberal mind because it bases everything on emotion. The only way to change the liberal mind (almost all anti's) is for them to experience a more powerful emotion which in your story was "personal" loss.
