Anti-hunting lobby needs to get a grip

Unless you are vegan, you are a hypocrite.

ANTI-hunting people need to get a grip.

Teaching a child how to hunt, fish and cook is a good thing; it offers them a skill to be able to feed their family in the future.

Growing up with five brothers, getting over the queasiness of de-furring a possum, gutting a pig or deer, then learning how to cook it was a life-saving skill we were taught as kids.

Our parents were forward thinkers: offering us a skill for the future if the need ever arose to find our own food supply.

But every time we run photographs of a hunting competition in the newspaper, the anti-hunting brigade come out in force, letters roll in telling us all how horrid it is to see kids with dead animals.

Get a grip! Let's face it, the meat we all eat was once an animal walking around in a paddock.

Looking at it from a parent's point of view, I believe we should be getting our children into the wild as much as possible.

We are quick to moan that Kiwi kids are facing an epidemic of obesity and are stuck inside in front of computers and game consoles yet we begrudge them running through the bush doing something productive to support their families.

Hunting is not just a sport; many people take part by necessity. Yes, there is a skill in humanely tracking and culling these wild animals in our bush areas but, in most cases, it is to replenish the freezer, not the thrill of the chase and killing, as some seem to believe.

Unless you are vegan, you are a hypocrite.

Just because your steak comes packaged in vacuum-packed plastic doesn't take away the fact it was once a live animal, killed for your needs. Many of those animals lived in small spaces and were dosed with chemicals of some type, until they were grown enough to kill - never given the chance to live a normal, social life among their own. Some people will always be disgusted with hunting but the reality is those who do, have no need to be ashamed. Happy hunting.