What Would Jesus Hunt?
Before the blog is taken over by parsings on Rove’s departure or similar stories of real import, here is some light-hearted fare appropriate for these August days. It seems the Christian Outdoorsman company has put out a camo bible for deer hunters to take into the woods. I guess it’s so Bambi’s mom doesn’t get wise, or converted.
“Our NIV (New International Version) Bible in Realtree camo is our best selling item, followed closely by our camo Bible cover,” said David Lingner, the president of Arkansas-based Christian Outdoorsman, which sells Christian-themed hunting and angling products online.”
Then again, maybe this is more evidence of the serious, Evangelicals-from-Mars, Catholics-from-Venus problem:
“A U.S. survey of licensed hunters and anglers last year commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation found half of those polled identified themselves as evangelical Christians.”
Or perhaps I need to spend more time praying to St. Gabriel Possenti.
Dang, David! You need to get you a camper truck and come on out here to the Midwest!
The camo Bible is an indispensible part of outdoor life here.
It’s not only handy if you need to check a verse before you blast off Mr. Pheasant’s head, do some devotions in the deer blind, or need something to smack the beagle with if he runs off after a squirrel, it’s standard issue for them paintball weekends.
See, that’s when you go out and pretend to slaughter a team of your nearest and dearest buds from the Bible Believing Christian Fellowship and then haul out your Testament to celebrate hw much fun you had, praise be to your personal Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.
Extreme Pollyanna take: Um, how about that Christians are all very poor. Like it says we should be in the Bible. So we have to catch our own food for our families.
(But first we gotta gear up at the Christian Outdoorsman and the REI.)
I bet that a few trucks around where I live have a “Bear Hunting with Hounds – Our National Heritage” plate across the front bumper and a sticker along the back that says “If it ain’t King James, it ain’t Bible.”
Yup, a camo King James would be a better seller around here.
I dunno. I am still enamored of the Roadkill Recipes cookbook. Take what the land offers.
Hey, totally off-topic, but true stories about road kill:
I hit a deer in the middle of nowhere in the Upper Peninsula once, (really, I defy anybody to come to Michigan in November or December and NOT hit a deer), didn’t kill it. It was awful, and those were the days before cell phones so no one I could call. While I was praying my head off to St. Francis, a guy in a truck came out of nowhere pulled a rifle out of his trunk and dispatched it for me.
You could tell he was a gentleman because he asked me if I wanted it, he’d be glad to help me bungee it onto the hood, make some good eatin’.
I told him no, thanks, and he drove off to his local deer processor. I said thanks to St. Francis and then drove to my service station to get the front grill repaired.
Tip: If you can’t shoot the deer and make sure it’s dead, DO NOT put it in your back seat. Go to any Up North bar in Michigan and you’ll hear stories about guys who put the deer in the back seat and the thing turned out to be just stunned and the obvious commotion ensued.
David, thanks for starting such a delightful series of posts. I’ve never heard of Christian Outdoorsman company or the camo Bible but I could use a little help up here with the deer.
They roam in abundance right now. Last night as I drove down the driveway one walked across my path. On the way back momma and her Bambi fawn scattered back into the bush.
I am learning to have no love for them. Two nights ago they ate the tops off my roses, the ones I hadn’t gotten around to spraying with Coyote liquid (stinks to high heaven) because I ran out and haven’t been back to the store to get more.
Then there is the seven foot light plastic fence I had to build around the vegetable garden to keep them out of that. Meanwhile the hosta, a true deer delicacy, are each covered after they got eaten last year.
And Jean, I had a small deer hit me. The doe jumped the highway in front of me. Never touched the pavement. The fawn followed, hit the driver’s door went down and got run over by a truck which was overtaking me.
As for hitting something; on one trip to Toronto, believe it or not on my way to catch a flight to attend the Commonweal 80th Anniversary dinner, I hit a black bear dead centre. Centre of the car, on the centre of the bear. I’d planned a visit to the Commonweal offices and Grant can vouch I told them of the incident.
As for the deer, one fellow around here calls them “forest rats”. I can’t wait for the Wolves to expand to kill them off or what usually happens, a virus gets them once they get over-populated, which should give us all pause from an environmental stand-point, warming or no-warming.
Yes, John, I feel your pain about deer. They have been spreading bovine flu here in Michigan, and I’ve seen them inside the Lansing city limits. Due to lack of predators, the Michigan DNR had a scheme to put out feeding stations laced with some type of deer birth control, but not sure if that panned out.
Did you ever hit a moose up there? That’s an absolutely horrific experience. But a bear, geez! Do you have the rug to show for it or call the OPP for help or what?
I think just about every member of my husband’s family has hit a deer. If they rated the deerworthiness of cars, Ford pick-up trucks fare well but a Mazda 626 does not.
So here’s a story that ties these two things together: There is a man who lives in the more rural parts of my metro area who has a two-way radio or whatever the set-up is that lets you follow police reports and the like. Whenever there is a deer hit within 30 minutes driving distance he jumps in his truck and gets over there, then (he’s a butcher) butchers the deer and offers the meat to not for profit groups. I could never figure out how he gets past health codes, but he’s a hunter committed to serving the poor.
Just thinking about Fr. Shawn’s post as a possible money-making idea somebody should jump on:
Why not develop a camo Bible COVER? You could make it out of that stretch nylon stuff to fit any size, and just put “Holy Bible” or just a plain cross in gold on the front.
There is always an ecumenical solution.
Jean, you do seem fairly worked up about the ‘paintball’ crowd (you’ve mentioned it before, I recall, as ‘scary’) — I’m not sure I see it as quite as menacing or even as silly as you seem to. I daresay it’s certainly very little to do with ‘pretending to slaughter’ people. I think you’re reading a lot more into it than it merits.
I do however find the idea of selling ‘camo-covered Bibles’ to the ‘Christian outdoorsman’ — or indeed, even the very idea of the ‘Christian outdoorsman’ as a market niche — to be pretty amusing.
Robert M
In my neck of the woods, paintball is a favorite game of the various militia groups who fly Confederate flags and use paintball as “drills.” I find them scary, you bet, because they’re improving their “aim” on human targets.
Maybe for some people it’s just a “guy” thing and as harmless as water balloon fights.
Jean,
Re: Moose, very fortunately the answer is no. Came close though. One dark evening the only thing that prevented my from hitting it was seeing the reflection of the headlights off his eyeball, at which point I hit the breaks.
I have had a colleague get killed when he hit one with a pick-up. It bounced up and landed on top of the cab and crushed his skull. In another case a woman hit one just west of here. It went through the windshield lengthwise from from front to back, demolished the car. Remarkably, she walked away from it without so much as a scratch, but she was terribly messy as you can imagine.
As for the bear I hit. He came off a rock cut out of nowhere. From the time I saw him to the time I hit him my foot moved half way to the break so I hit him at 110 km. The force knocked him across the road passed the graveled shoulder and the last I saw of him he was dropping down the cliff on the other side of the road.
By the time I got stopped I was well down the road as you can imagine. When I looked at the bumper the only damage was minor. The cover behind which the tow hook exists was gone and there were stress marks in the plastic from the impact.
The bear clearly didn’t live because in the air-intake opening I found Mountain Ash berries which means he must have had his stomach punctured.
Up here the police do nothing. The vultures, crows and eagles are God’s hunters and clean up the mess we leave.
Fair enough, if self-styled ‘militias’ are actually doing ‘drills’ with them, then I understand where you’re coming from.. I’ve not seen that myself, though I don’t doubt it happens. In my own (limited) experience, out here anyway, it’s usually more of a ‘water balloon fight’ experience reserved for bachelor parties or general ‘guys’ day out’ stuff. I’ve certainly not seen it approached as ‘training’ or practicing to kill humans — while as I say I’m sure there are those who do, I think (hope?) they’re not the norm.
RM
And incidentally, if the nutters are using paintball to refine their ‘aim’, they’re going to be quite safe. It’s pretty useless as a marksmanship trainer.
I do enjoy where this thread has gone. And I must say, despite my seemingly citified disdain of the Camo Christian Crowd, I am deeply in love with all things wilderness. I am this close to posting the foto of the moose we saw on the way up to Lake Memphremagog (Google it) this summer, my first moose, remarkably, in all these many summers driving through Vermont and Quebec. The natives, of course, understandably hurled curses at us flatlanders (fortunately Stella was napping) parked on the shoulder staring dumbly at the beasts. I must also add that, much as I have come to despise the Canada geese and white-tailed deer that have gone unchecked–I cannot shoot them, but I would pay someone else to do so, or import small wolves–Stella has become enamored of “Bambi,” and the anti-hunter propaganda of the thing is creeping into my soul.
Confederate flags on the Upper Peninsula? What would my godfather from Travers City (one of the few guys lucky enough to be drafted in both world wars) have said? He was the guy that taught me to sing “Hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.”
Perhaps our neo-Confederates wouldn’t know Jeff Davis if they saw him in a dress.
Yeah, there are a few, but you mosty find them in the thumb and rural pockets in Southeast Michigan.
One of our neighbors used to fly one right above a statue of a black child fishing between two frogs playing banjos.
One day, the weekly newspaper ran one of those “I hope you’re happy now” letters bemoaning the fact that the rebel flag tableaux had been dismanted and destroyed one night.
And, no, it wasn’t me, but I’d donate $50 to the charity of choice if I knew who did.