“What a sad generation. In the olden days, we used to learn from our mistakes. These days you get cancelled for your mistakes.” De Philosopher DJ Kyos
For the last three or four months, I’ve been watching a Great Blue Herron feast on my minnow pond. I can’t bring myself to shoot this tall bird, even if folks on the East coast of North Carolina call it the “poor man’s turkey.”
Eating one of these tall and majestic minnow decimating machines just doesn’t seem right to me.
Maybe if I was a tad more hungry; but I can’t quite seem to pull the tigger. Bet you they taste a little on the fishy side.
So the other day when it was good and warm, I forced myself to make a call on my minnow dealer. I suddenly found myself completely without my own signature minnows. It seemed to me to be a good day to drown a few minnows and after a quick survey of my empty minnow pond, compliments of the bony, gray bird, I grudgingly visited with my local minnow dealer.
This is the sort of thing that I’m not particularly proud of, but it happens from time to time especially when it feels like it’s time to drown a minnow or two in the February hunt for fresh fish to fry.
I knew I was in deep trouble when my minnow dealer asked if I wanted water added to the minnow bucket. For a short second I wanted to ask what she thought dead minnows, in a dry bucket, would actually be good for. But I wisely held my tongue. Times have changed. Maybe there is some weird cult out there that uses dried out minnows in some strange or “new” worship ceremony I’m not familiar with.
Over the years of buying minnows by the dozen, I’ve realized that making any decent minnow dealer look stupid is just that; stupid. I immediately asked my minnow dealer to add a little water to the bucket before she added the three dozen, I had just requested.
As we finished this laborious and confounding transaction at the minnow dealers cash register, I was completely and suddenly shocked with the realization that three dozen minnows, in today’s highly inflated economic environment, suddenly cost $8.00 and change! Either I had managed somehow to make her mad, or over the long winter, or somehow, the price of minnows had spiraled out of control. The price of minnows was now added to all the other necessities that have soared, sky high, with pandemic driven inflation.
I tried to imagine millions of Chinese minnows stuck in some huge tank on some gigantic container ship in Savannah harbor as the problem. Some weird supply chain issue must be afoot. Maybe it was minnow feed that had spiraled out of control, or the pandemic has somehow inexplicably affected minnow dealers world wide.
Just what in #%#$^&$ could be going on here to raise the price of three dozen minnows to new astronomical heights?
I didn’t argue, or try to negotiate, what I considered to be a more reasonable price for three dozen minnows. One gold standard in dealing with minnow dealers is never make them mad. They can be as vindictive as any Mexican drug cartel when they cop an attitude.
I just sucked it up, and paid the going price for the little fish. I sucked it up like this was some sort of new normal. $8.00 and change?
Messing around with a good minnow dealer is a pretty tricky business after a long winter, especially when you get the strong urge that it’s time to drown minnows.
I left the minnow dealer with a renewed desire to actually become an assassin of a Great Blue Herron and consider slapping it on the grill.
That’s when it hit me. I need to cancel something. Something has to go. I was about to enter the wild and holy world of the cancel culture.
I immediately dove into the rather enormous pile of my financial encumbrances and decided that some form of entertainment, other than drowning minnows, had to be sacrificed.
These are the kinds of important things you find yourself thinking about when you find out three dozen minnows suddenly cost better than $8.00.
I don’t keep count of the times I’ve given up tobacco for the sake of saving disposable income. I even tried a time or two to quit “cheap aiming fluid” in an attempt to save what was left of the bank account. Both attempts can be scored as pathetic failures. Nice try. No cigar. One time I bought a bicycle in protest over gas prices. The bike is rusting in the barn as we speak. One time I actually sold a pump shotgun. I’ll never do something that stupid again.
But faced with the price per minnow, it was time to tighten the old belt one more time.
So, I turned to the obvious. The Outdoor Channel had to go. Early on, the Outdoor Channel garnered much of my attention. It was almost addictive for a while, until it dawned on me how many re-runs they were shoving down my throat. The more I watched the shows that required a fee, the more it became obvious that the sponsors of the majority of these shows were trying to brainwash us. The more I devoured the content the more jaded the experience.
I’d sit spell bound in front of the boob tube with my handy Google search machine and research every ranch, outfitter, and guide service listed on each show. This was my feeble attempt to figure out how much disposable income one of these enormously successful TV “stars/heroes” had to pay to get their enormously successful trophies on film.
And I was stunned. The money these so called “hunting and fishing experts” paid to get their hunts on film just blew me away. The best way I can describe it is that only the elite of the outdoor culture can afford such routine success. The normal Joe Six Pack who is shocked to find out that three dozen minnows cost better than $8.00 could never afford 95% of these hunting or fishing expeditions sold on the Outdoor Channel.
Then there are the typical “stars/heroes” of these shows to contend with. Ladies first. Most of the female hunters seem to think that eye makeup is imperative for filming their trophy quest. Don’t get me wrong, there was a time when I considered good eye makeup on a woman with blue eyes, or any other eye color for that matter, trophy material. But, I never considered eye makeup to be a necessity for taking a date on any of my fishing or hunting expeditions.
As far as women that catch fish on this channel go, I have keenly noted that most producers seem to require rather short shorts and a good deal of cleavage, in addition to the mandatory eye makeup. Let me set the record straight. Some of these stars/heroes, if I had a shot, would result in me selling the ranch just to make the down payment necessary to get in the same boat with them. I have a pretty vivid fantasy life when it comes to fishing trips with long legged women. Enough said about eye makeup.
Then the Outdoor Channel is full of down home, Good Old Boy “experts”. My wife, “Bubbles” sat through about the first hour of watching this channel, and she refers to these Good Old Boys as “The Whispering Tree Goobers.”
“Why do these Goobers look at the camera and whisper?” “Why do they whisper even after they show the animal drop dead as a hammer next to that pile of corn?” “Why is that Goobers pumping his fist in the air like he just shot a hole in one at the Phoenix Open?” “Why is the Goober crying for joy?” She asks. So many questions, with no good answers.
Most of the time I struggle to answer her simplest questions as she flees from the couch in disgust.
Then there are the shows where the host “hero” stops at a gas station after ten minutes of dialogue when he is driving in the dark talking about what we are going to see at the end of the show. Then he stops at where he is eventually going and shoots his bow or gun to show us how he is going to shoot his bow or gun later in the show. Then we get to see him get dressed or eat before he is going to show us something incredible after he gets dressed and eats. All this for a one minute shot of what we actually tuned in to watch. It is simply mind boggling what some sponsors put these poor Goobers through to sell their stuff. And, miraculously, it sells!
There are the guides that want you to book your “hunt of a lifetime” with them. Go to the most exotic locations in the world and hunt animals that you’ve never even heard of. Spend all of your money and all of the money you can borrow or steal; and they’ll guarantee you success even if you can’t shoot straight. For a nominal fee, they’ll make the long shots for you, even if you can’t hit a bull in the butt with a ball bat. By the way, these folks will edit the film so it looks like you actually made the shot yourself. If you’ve watched some of these shows real closely you’ve seen those episodes unfold more than once. Don’t forget this dear reader, many of the trophies are harvested in a high fenced enclosure. Watch real intently; and it’s not too hard to pick up the fences in many of the more poorly edited films.
Waterfowl hunting shows are unique in that there does not appear to be any need to whisper. Some Goober in a group of five to ten, pay-to-be-a-wannabe duck hunter, is always the shot caller. Instead of whispering to the shooters, the shot caller screams at the top of his lungs, “KILL ‘EM.”
Not; “shoot," or “take 'em," or “NOW," but “KILL ‘EM.” It seems to me that this form of blood lust is the very sort of thing that sets the growing legion of anti-hunters hair on fire every time they hear this sort of behavior. That is of course dependent upon the anti-hunting community paying to watch this channel and the duck hunting Goobers that delight in being filmed, and screaming “KILL ‘EM.”
My bride asks, “Why do those waterfowl Goobers not whisper 'KILL ‘EM?” as she flees the couch.
Bubbles is also rather famous for asking the one question I dare not honestly answer; “I’ll bet you’d like to go fishing with that little power packed blonde in that boat wouldn’t you sport?” At that point, I flee the couch in terror.
I could go to greater lengths about the strange things on this channel, but I’ll leave it with a few thoughts. Is there an entire generation of would be hunters and fishermen that are being fed some pretty bizarre expectations about what is, or should be a good, or successful experience? Have we allowed the outdoor industry to brainwash an entire generation for the sake of selling their products? There seems to be an entire generation of youth that missed the lessons of old Elmer Fudd, who famously taught us older hunters, to be “very, very quiet.” It’s a sad generation indeed.
Should we pull our sponsorship from the Outdoor Channel like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and others who pulled out of Spotify over Joe Rogan’s idea of comedy?
I don’t know much about Rogan other than watching him try vainly to “ham it up” on re-runs the “Eatmeater” show on the Outdoor Channel. This show is where the often goofy host attempted to introduce Rogan to the art and science of hunting. Maybe you’ve seen this one. “Eat what you kill” is another theme that’s pretty popular these days on this channel. Very little whispering, not too much hooray, but heavy on mule mouth grins and commentary. I left that hero when they cooked up Coyotes and tried to sell me on eating dogs.
I canceled the Outdoor Channel. It was time. I’m still on the fence about wasting the Herron and trying to barbecue what scant meat is apparently available.
Maybe I’ll call the mule mouthed, grinning and cooking goober on TV that eats what he shoots. Maybe he’ll bring his film crew to the ranch and shoot, and cook, the minnow eating machine. And maybe he’ll save me from having to deal with inflated minnow dealers. It might make a good film about how conservationists save minnows from the ravages of deadly predators.
If you pay better than $8.00 for three dozen minnows, how much is that per minnow? I cancelled the calculator when I bought the bicycle and gas prices soared over $3.00 a gallon.