Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: stevesurv on August 07, 2008, 06:08:45 am
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Does anyone here hunt? I'm taking my hunter's safety course in September and plan to start killin' deer and hogs in October. Depending on how successful I am, it should cut my food bill way down. It makes sense to me for one to be able to hunt there own food. Besides, given the current state of the U.S. economy, I feel much better not having to depend on someone else for sustenance.
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i don't hunt, but i would like to....i was thinking about finding birds eggs in spring time.....but that might be risky because birds may eat insects contaminated from sprays and lead in the soil
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I was just thinking about hunting this past week. I have a month off during hunting season, and was looking at places to get some deer. Where would you hunt? I would most likely go to North central Pennsylvania. Would you try to dismantle the deer yourself?
My dream is to make a fresh kill and eat the organs on the spot like our paleo ancestors. It is also one way to finally get a brain. ;D
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My dream is to make a fresh kill and eat the organs on the spot like our paleo ancestors. It is also one way to finally get a brain. ;D
That would be my dream too.
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I agree ;D
Don't think I could eat that many organs though, I would have to have some people to share with! Any takers? :D
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I don't hunt yet, but I have taken hunter safety and have a compound bow.
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What do you guys think about setting traps for squirrels in my yard?
Would that even be worth it, or are they like rabbits with not enough fat?
Do you think paleo man used traps?
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Evidence is that paleo wo/man used traps, for fish and land game.
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What do you guys think about setting traps for squirrels in my yard?
Would that even be worth it, or are they like rabbits with not enough fat?
Do you think paleo man used traps?
Unless you live in a very remote spot, I would be worried about what the animal had been eating.
Maybe you could dig a ditch in your back yard and cover it with twigs and branches and then try to coax a deer across it by playing highway noises on the other side.
;D
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i lol'd :D
Yeah, what you mentioned was a concern of mine as well.
Where I'm staying at right now (with my parents over summer) is a golf course community.
The golf course shut down maybe a year and a half ago and has been allowed to grow wild ever since.
I loved taking walks on the courses and riding my bike on the paths in all its overgrown glory.
However, they decided to reopen the course this September, so lately there's been a whole lot of mowing and cutting and digging and spraying and it's just SO not cool! >:( haha
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I was just thinking about hunting this past week. I have a month off during hunting season, and was looking at places to get some deer. Where would you hunt? I would most likely go to North central Pennsylvania. Would you try to dismantle the deer yourself?
My dream is to make a fresh kill and eat the organs on the spot like our paleo ancestors. It is also one way to finally get a brain. ;D
Yes I'm gonna get me couple of big bites out of the liver of whatever animal I kill. I will be cleaning it in the field with the help of a couple new friends of mine who's lease I'll be hunting on and load the big chest freezer I'll have with me.
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I agree ;D
Don't think I could eat that many organs though, I would have to have some people to share with! Any takers? :D
Suddenly I'm seeing organized hunting sessions 8)
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Suddenly I'm seeing organized hunting sessions 8)
That would be the bomb diggity.
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I've been looking for this topic, but I was too scared to start it!
What I've had of wild game has been excellent, except a deer that got way too warm (that was a long time ago), and wild geese that were just too ...wild... tasting. I've only ate a few things raw, but the best so far was antelope (the raw was an accident). Deer is good, and I have all sorts of birds in the freezer to try.
I haven't figured out what to do to get enough fat from deer though. All the muscular fat (at least on my last one) was very sticky, almost impossible to eat, and when cooked, practically turned into super glue that could stick a spatula to a skillet. The other fat was a giant slab over the hind part of the back. Is that what we should be eating? I wussed out on the marrow too, because of the smell. I'm not sure what's normal.
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Yeah,the fat on the back is fine to eat.
As for the marrow, I found deer marrow to be the best-tasting of all marrows(no doubt due to wild foraging enhancing nutrient-levels). Admittedly, the creamier marrow(from the lower leg, according to Stefansson) needs to be stored almost immediately in the fridge at high temperature as it deteriorates quite quickly, otherwise. The drier marrow from the humerus/femur should last a little longer before needing refrigeration(but doesn't taste as good as the former).
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It was about 20 degrees F when I cleaned it, and was only thawed at the edges when I butchered it (40 degrees). The only reason I was anywhere near the marrow was I didn't know what I was doing, but it was a more distinctive smell than the rest of the deer. I'll be sure to try it next year.
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I was wondering if anyone else has an urge to do this.
It was posted in the exercise topic.
Humans hot, sweaty, natural-born runners
Monday’s cool-weather marathon wouldn’t bring down game
By Alvin Powell
Harvard News Office
Hairless, clawless, and largely weaponless, ancient humans used the unlikely combination of sweatiness and relentlessness to gain the upper hand over their faster, stronger, generally more dangerous animal prey, Harvard Anthropology Professor Daniel Lieberman said Thursday (April 12).
http://www.physorg.com/news95954919.html (http://www.physorg.com/news95954919.html)
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That would be pretty damn cool.
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Someone commented on collecting wild bird eggs. This is likely to be highly illegal as most birds are protected. Unless you live in a heavy agricultural area, pesticides aren't much of an issue. I wouldn't want to eat city pigeons though, though with baiting, they would be easy to snare.
There used to be a lot of hunting, but costs and crowding have cut way back. Unless you can hunt on national forest land in your own state(USA at least) licenses and leases can make it a rich man's game.
In the south bag limits on deer in some counties are amazing - nearly unlimited. Wild hogs are unprotected, but very wary. Unless you are a very good hunter with good locations, it can be pretty hit and miss - mostly miss. Unless you are very experienced it can be very time consuming to scout out locations and actually find something. In some areas(Texas) feeding is allowed, which guarantees success. However, nearly all hunting is on leased land. Its not unheard of to sneak a salt block to encourage showing up.
A group effort can be useful. join a drive.
In squirrel used to be common fare in the south. They could never be hunted to scarcity. Ugh! - Rats with tails! :) If you put out bird feed and don't make it too squirrel proof you can get almost unlimited squirrels. Just don't let them see others in the traps.
If costs are your concern, I would go Neolithic and raise your own. Rabbits are quiet and can be raise in the city. Chickens are a bit noisy. Doves are pretty quiet. You could raise quail and feed them on earthworms and crickets to get away from a totally grain fed meat. I would look into aquaponics as a way to raise both fish and Veggies.
I don't think I will go this way though I could. I have deer moving through my backyard nearly every morning. Also rabbits and plenty of turtles, alligators,and fish in my pond and the nearby canal. I'm too much of a Vegetarian!
I really don't enjoy ending another life even to eat, though I have hunted and fished at times.
John
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I'm too much of a Vegetarian!
I really don't enjoy ending another life even to eat, though I have hunted and fished at times.
John,
If you are not interested in consuming animal products, then why have you joined a board whose members eat mainly raw animal foods? Is it to debate us on our choices?
If you are seriously interested in pursuing a diet with raw animal foods, yet find some ideological issues with it, I highly recommend that you read The Ethics of Eating Meat, by Charles Eisenstein. He has picked apart the usual arguments, and he was very instrumental in helping me dispel some of the vegan myths when I went back to eating animal foods after about 8 years vegetarian (almost 6 years ago).
http://www.westonaprice.org/healthissues/ethicsmeat.html
BTW, my kids are so happy to be omnivorous again; and I am so glad that I was an omnivore from before conception well into over age 5 for the yougest.
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I'm too much of a Vegetarian!
I really don't enjoy ending another life even to eat, though I have hunted and fished at times.
You do realize that the plants you eat are alive right?
And that they got their nutrition from dead animals.
I'll never understand the ethical reasonings of a vegetarian.
A life is a life is a life.
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You do realize that the plants you eat are alive right?
And that they got their nutrition from dead animals.
Keith, fruitarians eat only the fruit of a plant, which would fall off anyway. But it is true that the cycle of life is beautiful in that plants feed off of decaying animals, animals eat the plants, other animals eat them ... And don't forget about all the bacteria, yeasts and other beings. Life requires death. Period.
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And don't forget about all the bacteria, yeasts and other beings. Life requires death. Period.
I sure haven't forgotten about those little guys! How could I? They are my friends ;D
We're only as healthy as the health of the soil
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Someone commented on collecting wild bird eggs. This is likely to be highly illegal as most birds are protected. Unless you live in a heavy agricultural area, pesticides aren't much of an issue. I wouldn't want to eat city pigeons though, though with baiting, they would be easy to snare.
There used to be a lot of hunting, but costs and crowding have cut way back. Unless you can hunt on national forest land in your own state(USA at least) licenses and leases can make it a rich man's game.
In the south bag limits on deer in some counties are amazing - nearly unlimited. Wild hogs are unprotected, but very wary. Unless you are a very good hunter with good locations, it can be pretty hit and miss - mostly miss. Unless you are very experienced it can be very time consuming to scout out locations and actually find something. In some areas(Texas) feeding is allowed, which guarantees success. However, nearly all hunting is on leased land. Its not unheard of to sneak a salt block to encourage showing up.
A group effort can be useful. join a drive.
In squirrel used to be common fare in the south. They could never be hunted to scarcity. Ugh! - Rats with tails! :) If you put out bird feed and don't make it too squirrel proof you can get almost unlimited squirrels. Just don't let them see others in the traps.
If costs are your concern, I would go Neolithic and raise your own. Rabbits are quiet and can be raise in the city. Chickens are a bit noisy. Doves are pretty quiet. You could raise quail and feed them on earthworms and crickets to get away from a totally grain fed meat. I would look into aquaponics as a way to raise both fish and Veggies.
I don't think I will go this way though I could. I have deer moving through my backyard nearly every morning. Also rabbits and plenty of turtles, alligators,and fish in my pond and the nearby canal. I'm too much of a Vegetarian!
I really don't enjoy ending another life even to eat, though I have hunted and fished at times.
John
It is getting harder to find places to hunt these days, but you can still do it a lot cheaper than buying meat outright. Licenses aren't too bad, if you go for that type of stuff (I'm just trying to be realistic here), and to be affordable, you'll have to do something other than leases. Homegrown veggies and some meat might be an option with older folks, things like that.
If you learn how to shoot well, and have even the foggiest clue about where things like deer are in you area, it's almost impossible to miss, provided you're not trophy hunting or something.
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It's especially cheaper if you hook up with some very kind folks who already have a lease and a rifle to borrow. From what I hear about their lease, that land hadn't been hunted on for about five years, so it's prime right now. Yippee! Meat on the table, baby.
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My most recent hunting mission involved diving for shellfish, I loved it. I paid for a licence it wasn't too expensive. I loved the diving, gathering part of it I got a few cuts and a few waves got me but that was part of the fun. I would eat then straight away for breakfast!
I got singled out on my way out of the water by a couple who told me they were disgusted with what 'people like me were doing!' ...I wonder what would the have thought of me eating about half a cow a week!
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Did they mean what you were eating or did they have a problem with the collection of the animals itself?
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The collection of the shellfish is what they had the problem with, naive vegetarians/environmentalists.
I know a lot of environmentalists/vegetarians and the hypocrisy is rife! I got told that my shellfish collection was raping the earth by a girl who had been on two international holidays in a year.
anyway if people really want to save the environment don't have any kids!:)
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I see that I've recently acquired the rank of Deer Hunter and it couldn't come at a better time because I've just completed my hunter's safety course! They gave me a temporary permit till I get my license in the mail...my license to KILL, KILL, KILL! Yeah baby. I'm gonna kill me some foodstuffs.
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I see that I've recently acquired the rank of Deer Hunter and it couldn't come at a better time because I've just completed my hunter's safety course! They gave me a temporary permit till I get my license in the mail...my license to KILL, KILL, KILL! Yeah baby. I'm gonna kill me some foodstuffs.
Cool Steve. What's your weapon of choice? I passed hunter safety 2 or 3 years ago (which is valid all over North America apparently) and have yet to hunt. I use a Hoyt Sierratek compound bow.
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I plan to bow hunt also but have no bow right now. I don't have a rifle either but plan to get either a Savage or a Beretta 30:06. I think that'll provide enough power for most large game. Duck hunting is in my sights(pun intended) So I'm probably going to buy a 12 gauge of some sort.
I'm fortunate enough to have a friend with a lease who hunts a lot and has a weapon for me to borrow until I get my own.
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Oh, now I'm a Boar Hunter. That's fine because those are second on my hit list. ;)
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The most hunting I have ever done is fishing. Not those catch and release stuff, I just fish what me and my family can eat.
Wow, I envy you guys. Eventually you can organize a raw paleo hunting get together, that would be awesome. Eat on the spot. Share the liver, guys.
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Yes. It just seems appropriate to include actual hunting in a lifestyle that uses paleolithic wisdom.
I understand, though, that many folks don't share the same opportunities re hunting like those in the UK and Australia due to despicable gun laws. I really feel for you. I just hope the same doesn't happen here in the States. That's for another topic.
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yeah well that is a loaded topic (excuse me :)) and the Australian situation is connected to one my fave conspiracy theories.
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=79 (http://www.nexusmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=79)
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Yes. It just seems appropriate to include actual hunting in a lifestyle that uses paleolithic wisdom.
I understand, though, that many folks don't share the same opportunities re hunting like those in the UK and Australia due to despicable gun laws. I really feel for you. I just hope the same doesn't happen here in the States. That's for another topic.
Yes, it's now so difficult to get handguns that the British Olympic shooting team has to travel to Switzerland, apparently, in order to practice - our chances of getting gold in shooting are therefore pretty much nil.
Farmers can still get shotguns, but, unless you're a farmer, or one of those American millionaires who shoot at the big country-estates, you're unlikely to be able to get hold of guns.
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I'm going to hunt rabbits, chipmunks, birds, and maybe squirrels. If I find a nest I'll be eating eggs too.
In my back yard :o and around my neighborhood.
I have to be very secretive. Haven't killed anything yet, but I almost got a rabbit.
I'm hunting with a spear, rocks & throwing sticks. And maybe a bee-bee gun soon
I have a metal dish in my room. My plan is to kill them, bring them home, then gut and skin them. Can you eat the intestines?
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Sounds like years ago when to get some blue whale fat under the cover of darkness armed with a saw and a bucket!
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a beached hale?
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yeah beached, I had no access to fat and I had heard of aborigines feasting for weeks on beached whales. The fat is supposed to be like hazelnut icecream! I find that hard to believe...but anyway it was too dangerous in the end there were great whites and I could of crushed a leg as it was moving with the waves against rocks.
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I'm going to hunt rabbits, chipmunks, birds, and maybe squirrels. If I find a nest I'll be eating eggs too.
In my back yard :o and around my neighborhood.
Do you have to be careful of rabbit fever and rabies while doing backyard hunting? Something to think about anyway.
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Do you have to be careful of rabbit fever and rabies while doing backyard hunting? Something to think about anyway.
Yeah, I'll be sure it looks very healthy. I will definitley inspect the meat and carcass after killing it.
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yeah beached, I had no access to fat and I had heard of aborigines feasting for weeks on beached whales. The fat is supposed to be like hazelnut icecream! I find that hard to believe...but anyway it was too dangerous in the end there were great whites and I could of crushed a leg as it was moving with the waves against rocks.
I did hear that dolphin meat is sweet.
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This is what I am hunting rabbits with
(http://i36.tinypic.com/2dv8oif.jpg)
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(http://i34.tinypic.com/2uzt3sx.jpg)
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(http://i36.tinypic.com/14kigkp.jpg)
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Cool effect in the last photo. It looks like a magic staff that might belong to Gandalf. Have you caught any rabbits?
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Nope, -[
they are so quick and zig zag, they are around very early in the morning,
even the robins are catching on to what i'm doing, when they see me they all fly away and start cattering at me, i got close to spearing a spearow twice, i will keep on hunting anyway, its too darn fun, especially sprinting after rabbits, I might set up traps, homemade traps, not bear claws :o
I see plenty of squirrels, should I hunt them?? they look healthy... -\
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Cool effect in the last photo. It looks like a magic staff that might belong to Gandalf.
Oh, the shine is not an effect I did. It happened becaus of the sun glimmering across the tip. Unedited one is my profile photo.
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Dude, you could hunt mammoths with that thing.
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That last photo should be an ad for the paleo lifestyle, looks almost as polished as a Nike ad picture.
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Yeah, it's a good shot for sure!
Sully, maybe you could take one where you're in the woods or something?
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Mammoths, haha ;) I would need some more people to take down one of those. Unless, I get lucky. -d
Yeah I did think about getting some taken in a more woodzy setting. I will get some soon.
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I see plenty of squirrels, should I hunt them?? they look healthy... -\
Squirrels have been listed in recipes for ages. I probably would not eat raccoons or possums raw, as they are omnivorous (if not carnivorous) and might harbor nasty things in their flesh.
Speaking of possums. When they kill a chicken, they eat the head and guts only. That's how you know that a possum killed your chicken, by the headless, gutless carcass left behind.
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Soon, I will kill me a squirrel. ;D
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I read about some hillbillies who caught some rare disease from eating squirrel brains. It's not recent, but something to think about.
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I once killed a seagull and ate it. In hindsight, this was probably not such a good idea, since seagulls often eat junk food
that's thrown out by humans.
I once found a dead squirrel, that was not yet rotten. I brought it home, and prepared it for eating. There was very little meat, and barely any fat.
I ended up throwing the squirrel out, because I didn't know how it died, and I was worried about rabies.
I once caught a baby canada goose. There wasn't much meat or fat either. I've been eyeing adult canada geese or swans and planning
on catching one, but never got around to it.
-Mike
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so i read through this thread... im still a little unclear though. is it safe to eat any wild animal raw? i know that there is rabbit fever that i have to be aware of, but other than that, is it pretty safe? also, is it generally ok to eat reptiles raw too or is that a no no. also also, how about freshwater fish? any insight would be greatly appreciated. im hoping to go spend a few days in the wild within the week, so wanted to get a few things straight.
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Well, I've eaten wild hare, wild mallard duck etc. etc. for years now, with never any issues. So, I'm generally of the view that the whole issue of parasites/bacteria is way overhyped. I might be more concerned if I was in a tropical environment and faced with easily -contaminated meats, if in a particularly unhygienic area(eg:- post-monsoon), but, otherwise, it's just not something I could ever worry about.
A few people have claimed that parasites are more of an issue if you eat the raw meat of carnivores/omnivores, and thet raw herbivore meat is fine(I suppose the theory goes that the higher up the food-chain , the more predators have the opportunity of picking up parasites from eating other species, or some such nonsense.Make of it what you will.)
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here are some pics of mine, rabbit and squirrel
(http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r85/Junts2005/Hunting-Gathering/4.jpg)
(http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r85/Junts2005/Hunting-Gathering/1.jpg)
(http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r85/Junts2005/Hunting-Gathering/2.jpg)
(http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r85/Junts2005/Hunting-Gathering/3.jpg)
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very cool. did you eat all that raw? how were the eyeballs? is there enough meat on a squirrel to bother? also, how'd you kill them?
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The rabbit was killed in this past spring. My friend shot it in the neck with his bb gun. I ate some raw but didn't finish it all and shared some cooked with my friend. The eye balls were salty and easy to chew. Very tasty.
The squirrel was killed this past spring. I shot it from my window in my backyard. Very illegal. I shot it with my pellet pump rifle. When I gutted it, the heart had a hole in it. The pellet entered the heart put didn't exit it. I discarded the heart because the pellet was lead. I also discarded the rib cage were the pellet entered.
Its not worth killing a squirrel for food unless your starving. Its about 1-2 meals including the organs and brains (depending on how big the squirrel is). Squirrels have a habit to go in garbage cans too, but they rarely do this in my side of town because of all the black walnut trees and acorns. A rabbit however is definitely worth it, much meat and organs and they eat from gardens and dandelion greens etc in my neighborhood. Very rare for them to eat human garbage because of their food is very plentiful and they don't climb. Squirrels are very hard to skin and the hair is a mess and sticks all over the meat. Not worth the trouble.
Next year I will get a hunting license to hopefully tag a white tailed deer. I will buy a freezer for the basement to store all the meat and organs.
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Killing a wild animal yourself is much better. You got blood, all the organs, and cuts of meat to choose from.
Its definitely the best in nutrition too.
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awesome. im actually trying to get a compound bow off craigslist so i can go hunt deer on my parents land. wonder if i need a permit for that... actually i dont really care, im gonna do it anyway. does anyone here hunt with bows? any suggestions on bow makes? i've seen browning, fred bear, matthews, and pse bows listed but don't really know which is a good starter bow...
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Best take a look at the bow-hunting (archery) forums, they can answer all your questions. I'm not even a hunter; benchrest is my hobby.
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awesome. im actually trying to get a compound bow off craigslist so i can go hunt deer on my parents land. wonder if i need a permit for that... actually i dont really care, im gonna do it anyway. does anyone here hunt with bows? any suggestions on bow makes? i've seen browning, fred bear, matthews, and pse bows listed but don't really know which is a good starter bow...
I would get a cross bow. In my state you can only use a cross bow legally if your elderly or handicap. I would do it anyway if I had land.
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I am not against hunting whatsoever, as long you intend to eat most of the animal. I do know of those who have wounded a deer to only have it run away to die? some where. My advice, get real good at hitting targets dead on every time before you try to take another life. I think you'll suffer mentally, not to mention the animal, if you know it got away and has to suffer. I watched this guy go on 'safari' to shoot a lion with a cross bow. It took about three arrows. All the while his guides were only feet away with high powered rifles. What a jerk, if you ask me. But for food, totally different. Trust me I am not negative on shooting animals for food, it's just the needless suffering that pains me.
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So true. I have a few hunter freinds. One of them was telling me a story how he went hunting with a 1st timer(a co-worker of his). After hours of tracking they found it to be a doe & her fawn. The 1st timer took aim & killed the doe. My friend was mad & started cursing his co-worker off & was yelling hunting etiquette.
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I haven't tried hunting yet, but there are pluses and minuses to both rifle and bow hunting and hunters debate it.
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More good pictures Sully.
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Kill something for a reason, for food, cloths, and to survive. That's how i go about that.
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I hunt, bow and rifle although I've only been successful with rifle. I killed my first deer this past November on opening day of rifle season here in Vermont (see my Avatar for the picture).
In my opinion hunting requires that we take on some pretty serious ethical responsibilities. I've been hunting for four years with a hand-made (by me) wood bow, and only this year invested in a rifle.
There is a debate, both among hunters and between hunters and non- and anti-hunters regarding how it should be done. Bow vs. rifle vs. muzzleloader vs. shotgun vs. crossbow vs. not at all. An archer who keeps themselves in shape, practices regularly and is familiar with their equipment can put sequential arrows into a paper plate at 30 yards, and will have no problem making a clean, ethical kill. I meet very few people like this, though. Studies show that most (over 50%) deer hit with an arrow by hunters are never recovered, and therefore run off to die an agonizing death due to an infected wound or blood loss within hours to weeks of when they were initially shot. Choosing to be a bow hunter is a big commitment, unless you leave your soul at home and don't mind killing two deer for each you bring home.
Gun-hunted deer are also shot and never recovered, but the proportion is much lower. You still need to practice with your tool before opening day, though. You'll never perform as well when there's a deer in your sights as you do on the range, because the deer being there raises your heart rate, your breathing rate, and does all sorts of other crazy things to your ability to concentrate and keep your hands steady. If you haven't learned this first hand yet, I'm sure you will.
In deciding on bow versus rifle, both have pros and cons. The pros of a bow are that they're quiet and that they're safe for the hunter and for other people in the area. It's very unlikely a hunter will shoot him or herself, and you have to be close enough to whatever you're shooting that you aren't likely to mistake, say, a golden lab or a horse for a deer. Arrows also don't travel far, so you're not likely to kill the person hanging their laundry the next ridge over if you take a shot without a good backstop. THIS IS NOT, however, an excuse to take a shot without a good backstop (something immediately behind your target that will stop your arrow or bullet in the event you miss).
The cons of a bow are that you have to get a lot closer to take a lethal shot, which is HARD. You also have to practice A LOT more with a bow to get good enough to put the arrow where you want it to go. Risk of lost game, as I noted above, is a lot higher. You also need to have finely tuned arrows and razor sharp broadheads, because you're depending on cutting a lot of blood vessels and perhaps puncturing lungs to kill the animal, and if your broadhead isn't sharp any hole it makes can seal up fast and the animal will dash off wounded to die later of an infection.
The pros of a firearm are that you can take a longer-range shot, so your field craft doesn't have to be as good. Bullets rely on doing massive tissue damage rather than cutting vessels or puncturing lungs, so it's more likely that a shot--any shot--will be more lethal when made with a gun than with a bow.
The cons of firearms is that they're loud, and non-hunters and admittedly many hunters don't like to be in the woods near where a firearm is discharged. From personal experience I can say that hearing a rifle go off a few hundred yards from you when you didn't even know a hunter was there is very unsettling. And that says nothing about watching a bullet tear into a tree a few feet from your head, shot by someone a mile+ away who pulled the trigger without a backstop. Which brings up the issue of safety. Guns are freaking dangerous. They just are. They represent a danger to the person carrying them (unless unloaded), and they represent a danger to anyone within a few miles when one is discharged. People, including hunters and non-hunters, are killed by hunting accidents (including errant bullets) every year, without fail. A couple years ago, maybe fall of 2008, a toddler was killed in his bed here in Vermont when a rifle bullet poked through the house wall after being shot by a hunter in a forest hundreds of yards away. He obviously didn't have a backstop. Amazingly enough the hunter was caught, and gets to spend the next several years of his life in a state-sponsored cage, which suits me just fine. And the other danger of firearms related to their range is that you can take a shot at something far away and kill it, which means people are tempted to take longer shots at targets they can't always see. A few years back in Vermont someone was killed during turkey season, and this past spring at two hunters were shot during turkey season, although I think they both survived. And this says nothing of the many livestock, dogs, and other deer-look-a-likes that roam forest and field that get shot because they're in range of the firearm but are too far for the hunter to clearly see what they actually are.
I hope you do get to go hunting, but I also hope you are aware of the ethical responsibilities you're taking on when you carry gun or bow into the forest intent on tagging game. If I can be of any help, feel free to email or PM me.
Be safe!
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Studies show that most (over 50%) deer hit with an arrow by hunters are never recovered, and therefore run off to die an agonizing death due to an infected wound or blood loss within hours to weeks of when they were initially shot. Choosing to be a bow hunter is a big commitment, unless you leave your soul at home and don't mind killing two deer for each you bring home.
Some dogs (bloodhound) are trained to track injured animals. Hunters should use them more often !
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You know, I have at times wanted to do a little hunting with a rifle(deer only because they're in large numbers and breed back their numbers very easily by comparison to many other hunted species), but Eric's post mentioning toddlers being shot has really put me off the whole business. I'm not sure I would be careful enough to always have a backstop etc..
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You know, I have at times wanted to do a little hunting with a rifle(deer only because they're in large numbers and breed back their numbers very easily by comparison to many other hunted species), but Eric's post mentioning toddlers being shot has really put me off the whole business. I'm not sure I would be careful enough to always have a backstop etc..
Probably a better chance of being struck with lightning than shooting another person, and it makes sense to use a relatively short range weapon such as a 12 gauge with slugs.
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Well, the main problem comes from fairly densely populated areas as in many regions here in Europe. Even a shotgun with slugs has a range usually as large as one mile not to speak of rifles whose ranges may be typically 3 or 4 miles. Maybe less powerful firearms might do the job too.
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What about spears? this is more like my cup of tea. I'm pretty quick and I've gotten very close before (spear less though) I'm still a little freaked by killing animals though. Not hungry enough.
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Yes, I also think that we cannot be really comfortable with the fact that in the act of hunting modern firearms make us so tremendously superior to our preys.
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What I should have said regarding the use of firearms for hunting is that they're freaking dangerous the way hunters currently use them. They don't have to be. Here in Vermont, and in most states in the US, you have to take some kind of hunter safety course before you can buy your hunting license. These hunter safety courses are usually de facto firearm safety courses. Most include a few common elements:
1. Always make sure you have a solid backstop before you pull the trigger or release your arrow,
2. Always make sure you can clearly see what you are shooting at,
3. Never walk around with a cartridge in your firearm's chamber or a nocked arrow.
If all hunters followed these three rules, particularly those hunters who choose to use firearms, there would be no hunting accidents. No toddlers shot in their homes, no hunters shot by other hunters, no hunters shot by themselves. Firearms don't have to be dangerous, but hunters choose to make them dangerous because of they way they choose to handle and use them.
Personally, I prefer bowhunting over using firearms. You have to practice a lot more, and you have to be far pickier regarding what shot you take, but to me that's a small price to pay. Besides, I make my own bows out of wood staves and I enjoy shooting them, so the practice part is a pleasure. And if you can develop good field craft, it becomes relatively easy to get close enough to take a clean shot. This past season I got within 3 yards of a fawn and 5 of a spike that I'd guess weighed 160 pounds, although I let them both walk by. I wasn't hungry enough to kill a fawn and here in Vermont we have peculiar rules regarding how large a buck's antlers need to be to make him legal and I don't think the spike's antlers were quite big enough.
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most of my friends hunt with bows, and my family used to use that method, however the men in my family(they are the drunk rednecks of the woods) had often shot an animal and watched it run away with an arrow in its neck! totally unacceptable. if and when i hunt i will be taking a riffle, although i have no problem learning to shoot with a bow, i wouldnt use that method until i was entirely certain that i had an excellent shot. i would honestly shoot a dear, chase it and shoot its brains out. i know that sounds cruel but i would want it dead as quickly and throughly as possible to insure the least bit of suffering! we have wild turkeys up here too...they are pretty large and i have found some feather recently where i have no seen birds before(YUM!)
i always think in a survival situation i would spear a deer, but youd probably have to have a few hunters, stalk and corner an animal unless you were preying on a smaller deer because they are extremely strong and fast
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Guns have always freaked me out. I've never felt comfortable with that much power in my hands and won't be going hunting anytime soon. When I was in college, several of my fraternity brothers would go hunting and it seemed for the most part to be an excuse to drink. They even have camoflauged beer cans now.
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I've thought on a few occasions about making a really sturdy spear and finding a remote place to try and kill a deer with it. I've certainly been successful at getting close enough. Heck, about 6 years ago I got close enough to touch a wild fawn, although it was just a fawn and they're not as attentive as older deer. And this year I got within 3 yards of another fawn, close enough to jump out and slap it before it could run away. I could easily have speared it.
One aspect of using a longer range weapon to kill an animal is that you don't have to watch what happens between the impact of your projectile and when the animal finally stops moving. When you take a hunter safety, or hunter "education", class, they generally recommend that you stay where you were when you made the shot for at least 30 minutes before you try to find the animal. They recommend this to prevent an animal from running further than it normally would before expiring so that it's easier to find, but I think it serves a double purpose. I think another important reason they recommend this is to protect hunters who still have some semblance of a soul from having to watch an animal die.
When I shot my deer this past fall I saw it fall within 10 feet of where I'd shot it. So rather than waiting I hustled down from the cliff I was perched on to tag my deer. I got down to it in about five minutes and still got to watch a couple minutes worth of agonized writhing before the deer went still. Before this experience I had this idealized vision that a deer gets shot and just plops down dead. NOT! Even when you shoot a deer with a rifle and hit the vitals, unless you get the perfect shot the animal suffers for at least a couple minutes and often several minutes before it finally goes still. While watching the deer writhe part of me wanted to load another cartridge and end its suffering with a close-range head shot, but I was carrying a 0.308 so if I did that I could well have blown its head wide open. Maybe next year I'll carry a 0.22 pistol with me during rifle season, although they don't let us carry firearms into the woods during archery season here in Vermont.
Perhaps it sounds strange, but being able to experience the above is a large part of the reason why I choose to hunt. It's painful to participate in the process of killing an animal (unless you've successfully buried your soul beneath years of modern pragmatism), but I think it's important to go through that if you're going to eat meat. I think it's easy for people to glorify meat eating when they're able to slough the duty of killing onto someone else and just get the end product. When the duty of killing is on your own shoulders, the whole process is far more demanding and powerful, at least for me.
I think I read on this thread about someone who wanted to eat liver and kidneys of a fresh kill right after field dressing. By the time I got to field dressing after having shot the deer and watched it die I was in tears and I didn't eat anything for three days. Not because I was grossed out, as I've butchered deer before and butchering mine wasn't any different, but just because the process of putting a living, breathing, walking, browsing animal in the crosshairs of my rifle and then intentionally making it dead was a very powerful experience. I hope that it never becomes any less powerful, and while I will certainly continue to eat meat my desire to abandon omnivory in favor of carnivory has certainly been tempered.
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Interesting and nice comments. I agree, there is basically something wrong when people who eat meat never have to kill the animals their meat comes from. They can't get an appropriate perception of the reality and sense of responsibility IMHO.
As to carnivory versus omnivory, I'm rather omnivore because I've not yet encountered any serious reason to adopt such simplistic views as "plant foods or carbs are bad and animal foods are good" for homo sapiens. The only thing i'm pretty sure of is that we can't be healthy over many generations without a good deal of food from animal origin and I was never a vegan.
As to the firearms use and manipulation safety rules, you recall in your post, Eric, in order to get a hunting license here in France one has to pass an exam that includes tests in theory and practise. Nevertheless there are accidents almost every year, one reason being that alcohol and hunting are probably still too often mixed....
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I'm guessing that no farmers are here. I've seen lots of chickens killed, and the killers did not emote all over the place about it. Same for other livestock, and some are killed with a rifle at close range, for example penned hogs.
The trick is to see the prey as mobile food until it is dead, then do the spiritual thing for the sake of your soul as all traditional hunters did.
It might be a good idea for the nice girls of both sexes among us to buy a live chicken or 9, whack its head off with an ax, and watch it do the dance of death. Deer are less entertaining.
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I've killed a lot of domestic chickens exactly as you describe it, William. A wild deer is fairly different, it's a mighty wonderful most elegant land mammal much closer to our species than chicken. I never killed one but for sure I'll do it if I'll have to do it.
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I'm guessing that no farmers are here. I've seen lots of chickens killed, and the killers did not emote all over the place about it. Same for other livestock, and some are killed with a rifle at close range, for example penned hogs.
Thanks for your comments William and alphagruis. No offense to you, William, but the above statement perfectly captures my idea of burying one's soul beneath years of modern pragmatism. A farmer who sells meat from his livestock can't afford to emote all over the place. After all, he (or she) has pigs, cows, chickens to kill, and a bottom line to worry about if he's to keep his business afloat.
It is this pragmatic approach to viewing animals as economic products to be bought and sold that, I believe, steals some of our humanity and robs us of our philosophical links to our ancestors. It's difficult if not impossible to escape, to be sure. I won't need to buy meat this year on account of my deer, but will probably buy eggs now and then and perhaps a grass-fed cow liver or other organs to supplement. And, of course, I'll buy vegetables, which don't want to die any more than the deer did.
So I guess I'm left with a question: How should I live so as to maintain as much of my humanity as I can while still eating the diet my body is designed for?
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And alphagruis, you are certainly right about the dangers in combining alcohol and the use of firearms. As someone who's never drank I forget about that. Strange, since all of the other relatives I have who hunt also happen to be alcoholics...
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So I guess I'm left with a question: How should I live so as to maintain as much of my humanity as I can while still eating the diet my body is designed for?
Do just what you are doing. The larger the animal the less of them you need to kill to continue your existence. This is the way of the wild, why fight it? I don't see an issue with reverence to the prey but it must be secondary to survival.
Supplement with intelligent fruit choices if you are looking to minimize your "ethical/moral footprint" as they are produced by the plant to propagate and spread it's progeny. Just make sure you get a good amount of good quality raw fat and meat as it's our healthiest/best source of nutrition. :)
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So I guess I'm left with a question: How should I live so as to maintain as much of my humanity as I can while still eating the diet my body is designed for?
Paleoman was at least as human as we IMHO, and pragmatically killed to feed his loved ones. It might be possible to see oneself as part of the ecological balance, now that there are not enough wolves to cull the herd.
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As Eric knows, Randall Eaton has written and lectured extensively on the ethics of hunting. Lierre Keith has done the same on the ethics of eating meat. No matter what we eat, animals will be killed. When land is razed and plowed for crops and planted with monocrops, a host of animals are slaughtered as a result--even if no pesticides are used--many dying slowly and cruelly through starvation or dehydration. This is why the only areas in the world that are biodiverse are those that have no large-scale crop agriculture or urban development (ex: what remains of the Amazon forest). Because they don't see the animals they kill, vegetarians, vegans and PETA activists fool themselves into believing that no animals suffer or die as a result of their behavior. It's a lie.
See also: "A More Dangerous Game Bears On The Golf Course, Deer On The Windshield, Wolves On The Walk Back Home: How the decline of hunting is changing the natural order of predator and prey (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1148866/index.htm)," by MATTHEW TEAGUE, November 24, 2008, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1148866/index.htm. We have become further and further distanced from nature, with disastrous consequences in many ways beyond those described here.
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I agree PaleoPhil, of course vegans or other anti-hunting activists are plain wrong. Most of the vegans are actually living in urban areas and so have indeed become completely distanced from nature. They don't really know what they talk about or what ecology actually is or means.
But we cannot escape from what is in my opinion the central (and unfortunately hot) issue in the present discussion. Almost 7 billions homo sapiens exceeds by far the carrying capacity of this biosphere. This is a clear cut conspicuous sign that much too much biomass is by now in our human bodies and much too little remains in other wild (or domestic) healthy animals we are designed to live off. The mere existence of this forum clearly demonstrates that it becomes more and more difficult to keep healthy as an individual in this situation precisely because of this definite loss or lack of balance that obviously implies a "sick biosphere".
That's what makes me (and should make everybody IMHO) at least somewhat uncomfortable when we have to kill wild animals, not of course the mere fact or law of Nature that we have to kill for survival. We unfortunately no more live in paleotimes but after a 10000 years long neolithic disaster.
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...That's what makes me (and should make everybody IMHO) at least somewhat uncomfortable when we have to kill wild animals, not of course the mere fact or law of Nature that we have to kill for survival. We unfortunately no more live in paleotimes but after a 10000 years long neolithic disaster.
Yes, people can go too far to extremes in either direction--both anti-hunting fanaticism and careless hunting that results in extermination. Achieving balance is more nuanced and more difficult, but also more responsible. One of the long-term keys toward achieving balance is of course voluntary reduction of human overpopulation through birth control, as well as breastfeeding and improved diets and exercise that results in greater spacing between children, and any other good ideas people can come up with. Since I doubt anyone is ever going to have any success promoting killing humans instead of animals or re-introducing predators into heavily populated areas (but feel free to give it a try if you doubt me), conscientious hunting for food is not only sacred, healthy and enjoyable, it appears to be necessary to avoid overconcentration of certain prey species leading to environmental devastation plus rampant disease and starvation among those same species.
My parents used to have a cottage on Lake Ontario in New York state. The deer population there became so overpopulated that every small tree was stripped of all its low branches and deer-reachable greenery (it was rare to see any tree so stripped when my parents first moved there)--every single young tree that I saw! Gardening became nearly impossible, even with wire fencing, because the deer and other prey animals ate everything.
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What about spears? this is more like my cup of tea. I'm pretty quick and I've gotten very close before (spear less though) I'm still a little freaked by killing animals though. Not hungry enough.
I would like to do spear hunting too. Hers a nice video of modern spear hunting.
I don't get freaked out by killing animals necessarily, I just make sure some potentially dangerous ones are dead. I got pretty aggressive with the squirrel I killed. Shot it. Then smashed its head with a bat. Yeah I know, its just a small squirrel lol, but have you ever seen how those things fight? Wow, gray tree squirrels are no joke, huge fangs too. I was also in a hurry to snag and bag it so no one saw me. I didn't even expect to kill a squirrel that morning.
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oldest form of hunting here...a baboon demonstrates
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Wow, amazingly easy pickins in both cases (though a herd of stampeding buffalo can be scary, of course). Good vids, thanks.
Why/how did you have a bat with you when you shot the squirrel?
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Why/how did you have a bat with you when you shot the squirrel?
Well, I shot the squirrel from my bedroom aiming out the window. I had a miniature wooden bat in my room. Hoping no neighbors or my landlord wouldn't see me, I went outside with the bat and a bag, put it out of its misery and assured the fang tooth gremlin was dead and I bagged it. It was an unexpected kill, I acted fast and was excited.
I knew people would think I was crazy. It might be better to have a hunting licenses next time and go to the woods. :) I would like to go hunting squirrels and small game with something like a small solid stick or a boomerang. Stun it then finish it off with a bat or a spear to the organs. I enjoy physical hunts much more than just pointing a gun (although that takes skill too, its just not my cup of tea).
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Hi Sully, from your posts it seems to me a tool that would suit you better than a boomerang, bat and spear for squirrels and similar-sized game would be a throwing stick. You can join PaleoPlanet and learn about how to make them. A boomerang is a throwing stick designed so that it comes back, but most throwing sticks don't come back. A throwing stick is a hard, usually stout stick that's about the length of your arm or just a bit shorter. There are all sorts of different designs.
If you're going to take a finishing shot or stab on something small like a squirrel, you should go for the head rather than the organs. Organs are too valuable as food to destroy.
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If you're going to take a finishing shot or stab on something small like a squirrel, you should go for the head rather than the organs. Organs are too valuable as food to destroy.
Better to shoot it in the brain in the first place, then you don't have to see it suffer and do something as crude as beating it to death. (been there, done that)
An accurate .22lr rifle, using sub-sonic match quality ammunition so as not to alarm the neighbours would be the answer.
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Hi Sully, from your posts it seems to me a tool that would suit you better than a boomerang, bat and spear for squirrels and similar-sized game would be a throwing stick. A throwing stick is a hard, usually stout stick that's about the length of your arm or just a bit shorter. There are all sorts of different designs.
If you're going to take a finishing shot or stab on something small like a squirrel, you should go for the head rather than the organs. Organs are too valuable as food to destroy.
That's what I would use, a solid stick for throwing, simple and effective. As for finishing it off, I finished the squirrel by hitting it in the head with the bat. If I had a long stick or spear. A stab to the organs would work and would still preserve them for eating, but bashing in the head like you said would be easier for smaller animals. Which is what I did with the bat. I did an up and down motion, as if thrusting a pole in the ground.
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Whether an "up-and-down" motion is ideal depends on how the animal is oriented on the ground. You don't need to crush an animals head to kill it. In my experience, which primarily comes from killing rabbits, a killing blow is best executed by hitting the animal on the back of the head. So if the animal were sitting on the ground the way a squirrel or rabbit would normally sit, you aren't striking straight down but are striking a little from its rear, making sure to impact at the back of its head at the base of its skull. This separates the skull from the first or second cervical vertebrae and usually shatters at least a couple of the vertebrae in the process, insuring an instant kill. The animal might shudder a little, but it's dead.
Killing an animal is never as clean as we would like it to be, so I'm just trying to offer some ideas as to how to make it as clean as possible. I mentored a college guy this summer in dispatching a rabbit he'd been raising, and he was understandably hesitant to take the swing. I got him to do it finally and it was a perfect shot, the animal was dead right after impact. But he saw the animal shudder and started to panic, and before I could stop him he started hammering at the rabbit's head. He cracked it six more times before I was able to get the stick out of his hand, although most of his blows hit it in the head so damaged meat was minimal.
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Truthfully I don't care. Bloody, messy, dirty, whatever whatever etc etc. I don't give a damn.
Your putting way to much thought behind how to kill something for my liking. Its simple, JUST DO IT.
I kill to eat it, and I happen to enjoy killing it as well. Sometimes it may suffer a hard death sometimes not. I just don't care.
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Unless you live in a very remote spot, I would be worried about what the animal had been eating.
Maybe you could dig a ditch in your back yard and cover it with twigs and branches and then try to coax a deer across it by playing highway noises on the other side.
;D
Yeah.. I think I heard that's the reason why Islam forbids the consumption of pigs; because they used to be 'used' as 'cleaners', foraging the streets, so they would be bad to eat *shrug*. I also heard that the best mussels are found at sewer out-lets, but then they're 'filter-feeders' so I suppose they can dodge the bad stuff.
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...and I happen to enjoy killing it as well. Sometimes it may suffer a hard death sometimes not. I just don't care.
When people say things like this it scares the crap out of me. Not sure what else to say...
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...and I happen to enjoy killing it as well. Sometimes it may suffer a hard death sometimes not. I just don't care.
When people say things like this it scares the crap out of me. Not sure what else to say...
Killing it is part of the hunt. So for me to say I enjoy killing it means I simply enjoy hunting, cause that's what hunting involves. Saying I don't care if it has a hard death or not, means if it happens it happens, if it doesn't it doesn't.
It's not like I am saying I like to torture animals and watch them suffer.
:)
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I wish I had a hunters mentality. I've been presented with animals as lovable for my whole life.
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When people say things like this it scares the crap out of me. Not sure what else to say...
Do you think there is another animal that eats flesh in existence that doesn't enjoy the hunt as well as the meal? I see my cat kill things for fun all the time. It would be quite strange in my opinion that an animal would be adapted to eating flesh yet not adapted to find the hunt and killing enjoyable. Much like an animal not finding sex enjoyable, but being compelled to raise children, or feeling very hungry but not enjoying the process of eating.
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I glad you agree Kyle. Nice input too. :D
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When people say things like this it scares the crap out of me. Not sure what else to say...
i agree this statement is pretty harsh, but i think the part about "not caring" about anothers well being, be it an animal, is the most scary because its the apathy and greed of the majority to choose their happiness(or what they assume is happiness, i call it laziness) over that which may be more beneficial to the health of our species and environment...it feels like the same sentiment to me atleast whenever i read something that seems so jaded
i also agree with the hunters mentality and the joy of the chase being just that. it is thrilling to outsmart and animal, you get adrenaline to hunt, to be at the point where you are about to feast as well! but even when clubbing a fish there is still that second of hesitation where i feel this huge emapthy for the soul and the life of the fish, because as was said, animals can feel joy as well and in this moment i am choosing my own happiness over theirs, so there is where i see it all tie in :/
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I care about myself (also loved ones) and my survival before another animal's well being or so called respect.
No one here would think twice if they were starving and going days without food. No bear or lion would think twice about killing you if it was starving. Granted are minds and emotions are at a more complex level.
In order for something to live, something must die, whether it be plant or animal or micro organism etc. That's just the way it is.
Its not that the animals doesn't matter, it is my food, I want to live, I must kill for food. Enjoy killing and hunting it kind of helps don't you think?
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yeah i could get into a huge philosphocal debate about how that mindset and TAKING FOR GRANTED that our minds can question and we can choose to be self-sacraficing is what is needed now for EVOLUTION, health and mentality wise....
i think having chose (chosen?) to go back to a more primal form of dieting, albeit just one step on the way towards excellent health physically and mentally, is what defines people who have evolved over those who are stuck at this instinctual level, who are starving and do not question the urge to hunt down a big mac...there are so many ramification of this act alone, eating a big mac, acting on impluse, that i would have to write a typical annotated rawpaleoforum reply to explain an justify ! which is way beyond my attention spans capability
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There is no big game to hunt in my country.
How about a trappers mentality? I think trapping is more efficient in the jungle / forest. Good for wild pigs.
How about fishing? I absolutely love fishing. The tranquility, peace of mind...
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Surely you have wild pigs/wild boars in the Phillipinnes? That counts as big wild game. And I'm sure the fishing-industry isn't as damaged as elsewhere in the world.
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That would be my dream too.
Um..... ;)
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The only reason people are even questioning enjoying hunting, or people that think hunters are evil, is because of the neolithic agricultural revolution. It allows us to sit around and type on computers and get food from the grocery store. And hence become sensitized to natural processes (death, causing death).
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The only reason people are even questioning enjoying hunting, or people that think hunters are evil, is because of the neolithic agricultural revolution. It allows us to sit around and type on computers and get food from the grocery store. And hence become sensitized to natural processes (death, causing death).
I don't think that's it at all with the group of people on here.
...and I happen to enjoy killing it as well. Sometimes it may suffer a hard death sometimes not. I just don't care.
The part that bothers me is the not caring.
I understand that some kills will be more brutal than others but whether it was the way it was worded or the true sentiment behind the comment I found it too callous for my liking.
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The thing is, if I am hungry and starving, the last thing on my mind is whether the animal had a peaceful death.
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I'm not a hunter, so I won't criticize, but I like Eric's and Djr's thinking on this myself, and that's the sort of hunter I hope to become some day. It's a similar mindset to that of all the traditional hunters I've seen in documentaries, articles, books, etc., such as the Bushmen of southern and central Africa and the Chukchi of eastern Russia. Interestingly, the hunters of both these cultures, separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years, stroke a large animal after killing it and thank it for giving its life so that they and their children and tribe can live. I don't know if I'll necessarily do that, but I hope I'll maintain that sort of respect for the animal.
Traditional peoples tend to see prey animals as not just food, but as relatives with spirits. As equals or near-equals. It is only neolithic civilization that demeans animals into mere food products. For some reason, it baffles most vegans that traditional people would eat spiritual relatives like American bison, but it doesn't baffle the vegans that wolves would eat bison--even though the bison is more the wolf's equal than the human's. One comment that a Native American made was that modern people seem to think too much with their brains (such as when vegans say we shouldn't eat meat because we have brains enough to know it's wrong and unhealthy--both falsehoods) and not enough with their hearts/spirits.
One great evolutionary advantage to the traditional way of hunting and respecting animals is that it encourages tribes to only kill the minimum number of animals they need to survive and thrive. This probably became an important adaptation after Homo erectus and other proto-humans likely exterminated many of the megafauna and the megafauna started becoming relatively scarce (though no-where near as scarce as today--which is why we should be even more respectful and careful today, rather than less so).
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This probably became an important adaptation after Homo erectus and other proto-humans likely exterminated many of the megafauna and the megafauna started becoming relatively scarce (though no-where near as scarce as today--which is why we should be even more respectful and careful today, rather than less so).
That's a theory. It's more likely that the megafauna were done in by one or more of the cataclysms described by McCanney, Velikovsky et al., and we should be more respectful of the astronomical lore of our ancestors.
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Anybody tried hunting with an axlotl? There's a hang out with the archeologists at my local college every so often to try your hand a it. Very few people hit their very large, mammoth-sized target, LOL.
I've always been interested in weapons, spears and javelins especially. My dad was a great shot, could have been in the Olympics if he wanted to, but hates hunting (because he kills too easily--for his friends, it wasn't truly about hunting for meat, but shooting off a couple of rifles and joking around) and my grandfather had his hand at javelin throwing. I ought to find a place to practice. Although, I could just set up a target in my backyard to throw. I live on the water, so no worry about accidentally spearing anybody. I used to practice shooting pistols there with my dad (at the time, I was too small to handle a rifle--I was a teenager, but I'm a small person, haha).
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That's a theory. It's more likely that the megafauna were done in by one or more of the cataclysms described by McCanney, Velikovsky et al., and we should be more respectful of the astronomical lore of our ancestors.
William, where do you hear of this obscure people? I've never heard of most of the people you cite.
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William, where do you hear of this obscure people? I've never heard of most of the people you cite.
They are not obscure. They are the ones I keep harping about in the Catastrophism thread, Quantavolution and electric universe.
Velikovsky had the #1 best selling book in 1951. He is famous. Of course the new guys on the block have refined his works, improved on it.
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/hot-topics/human-creation-evolution-quantavolution-alien-origins-etc/
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William, where do you hear of this obscure people? I've never heard of most of the people you cite.
Velikovsky is a nut who in the 60s/70s reinvented the whole catastrophism theory of evolution with claims that the planets used to bump into each other re changing orbits and other unscientific stuff. It's all very new-Age and in the von-daniken-mold re scientific rigorousness(ie none at all).
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That's what history tells us...
And civilizations around the world said so.
Unless they were all smoking the same drugs.
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William, where do you hear of this obscure people? I've never heard of most of the people you cite.
Its sort of similar to how most of us found raw paleo. Everything else mainstream did not work so we gradually started looking for answers elsewhere along the fringe and came up with a solution that made perfect brilliant sense and worked wonders for us. Yet almost nobody knows that raw paleo exists and almost no main stream doctors, nutritionists think we are all that sane.
A similar sort of phenomenon I think happens when we look at the creation of our universe. There is no actual evidence that black holes, event horizons or dark matter exists. String theory is untestable. The large Hadron collider isn't working as well we thought. There is no complete unified theory of physics. But physics is substantially different than diet in that general relativity is testable and makes remarkable predictions and we have yet to have a counter-example proving it wrong. But when there is so much controversy we look elsewhere and find others with different, possibly extreme views that claim to explain the universe much better than the current theories.
The electric universe (thunderbolts.info),is perhaps the leading candidate right now from the alternative sites. I don't know much about it but the forum is fascinating and will lead you to the writings of Velikovsky, Halton Arp and others that are highly critical of the big bang. I suggest you read some of the threads over there if you are curious. Everything is questioned over there and anything is possible.
I am also reading Cosmos, by Carl Sagan one of most popular physicists of our time so I can feed myself information from both sides. Sagan even writes about Velikovsky briefly and even gives his theories a fair chance. Velikovsky thought Venus was spun out from Jupiter not too long ago and passed closely by Earth. Sagan gave him a fair review and mentioned that it was possible just highly unlikely.
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If Velikovsky & McCanney are obscure (and my text editor says they are) then so are we paleofoodies.
This is a comforting thought. I like it. :)
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One great evolutionary advantage to the traditional way of hunting and respecting animals is that it encourages tribes to only kill the minimum number of animals they need to survive and thrive. This probably became an important adaptation after Homo erectus and other proto-humans likely exterminated many of the megafauna and the megafauna started becoming relatively scarce (though no-where near as scarce as today--which is why we should be even more respectful and careful today, rather than less so).
Thanks for offering this PaleoPhil. This is exactly what I was getting at with my earlier comment. Not in the mood to write a long post now though, as I'm recuperating from my first attempt at eating raw chicken (salmonella). Figured the bird would be fine, pasture raised on herbs and bugs, no crowding, butchered on-site by the farmer and not in an industrial slaughterhouse. I must say a bout with salmonella raises a lot of questions in me regarding this raw omnivory thing, not sure anymore if I'm game to stick with it.
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Thanks for offering this PaleoPhil. This is exactly what I was getting at with my earlier comment. Not in the mood to write a long post now though, as I'm recuperating from my first attempt at eating raw chicken (salmonella). Figured the bird would be fine, pasture raised on herbs and bugs, no crowding, butchered on-site by the farmer and not in an industrial slaughterhouse. I must say a bout with salmonella raises a lot of questions in me regarding this raw omnivory thing, not sure anymore if I'm game to stick with it.
Hmm, that's unfortunate. I've eaten some raw beef and eggs for going on 3 or 4 years now, and have been nearly all-raw for about 6 months. I only had one mild case of diarrhea that lasted half a day. I rarely eat chicken, though, so I don't have much input there. After I developed a taste for pasture-fed venison, bison, beef and raw tallow, chicken didn't appeal to me much any more. I used to eat chicken more than any other meat but now it tastes too bland and too lean. The brown meat is OK, but not as good as red meat. My own decision was to not let a single incident sour me, especially since every time I eat raw meat and fat I get a feeling of well being and most of my symptoms continue to improve. Salmonella wouldn't scare me, but botulism would (though that would more likely have to do with poor storage on my part, rather than raw meat in and of itself).
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Thanks for offering this PaleoPhil. This is exactly what I was getting at with my earlier comment. Not in the mood to write a long post now though, as I'm recuperating from my first attempt at eating raw chicken (salmonella). Figured the bird would be fine, pasture raised on herbs and bugs, no crowding, butchered on-site by the farmer and not in an industrial slaughterhouse. I must say a bout with salmonella raises a lot of questions in me regarding this raw omnivory thing, not sure anymore if I'm game to stick with it.
I once ate bad raw chicken liver. In 30 minutes I vomitted it out. My tummy knows.
I ate red tide / polluted oysters but I was ready with tree iodine, herbal colon cleanser. by 9pm I felt totally awful. I pooped and puked my way out. What a ride.
I've pinned down my safe sources and it is nothing but smooth sailing.
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Eric, only had chicken once, not really a fan either. You're in the east coast, so at this time of the year there really isn't much green and bugs for chickens, so I am not sure if I am reading an earlier post or not. If not, you can be sure their calories are from grains. Chickens routinely have samonela in and around them, their poop, water, and feed all gets contaminated. I had a goat die because a chicken got in the goat yard and samonela got into the goats digestion and spread. They can be sensitive. Point is, I wouldn't compare a chickens health to that of wild meat or domesticated grass fed beef. Not ever had samonela I can't emphathise, but hope this doesn't derail your efforts at other raw foods.
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I eat raw chicken. Never got sick from it. It feels soothing too. I tried chicken ceviche and my body felt like the chicken was almost heat cooked, even though it wasn't. I have had reactions to heat cooked chicken. I had lots of health problems (acne, backaches, sore throats the list never ended) before I gave up cooked chicken. Once I was cooked vegetarian, if cooked chicken juice was put in my food, I got sick (swollen and sore). I tried eating cooked chicken one meal since I've started eating meat. I got sick (a cold massive). I tried cooking chicken one time. The smell in my opinion was horrible. The fats go rancid from cooking etc. Cooked chicken is not for me. I think I would prefer hunted meat over raw chicken, but that's not in the cards, so I'll stick with raw chicken.
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I once ate bad raw chicken liver. In 30 minutes I vomitted it out. My tummy knows.
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Interesting coincidence. The only different thing I did when I had my one diarrhea episode was eat chicken liver the night before. I started feeling mildly ill about 4 am the next morning.
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the chicken i have had makes me itchy, although no digestive disruption, so i have only tried a few times and given up. i am sure its grain fed, if i can find a grass fed source this spring i will report back.......really wanting rabbits right now though!!
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Its sort of similar to how most of us found raw paleo. Everything else mainstream did not work so we gradually started looking for answers elsewhere along the fringe and came up with a solution that made perfect brilliant sense and worked wonders for us. Yet almost nobody knows that raw paleo exists and almost no main stream doctors, nutritionists think we are all that sane.
A similar sort of phenomenon I think happens when we look at the creation of our universe. There is no actual evidence that black holes, event horizons or dark matter exists. String theory is untestable. The large Hadron collider isn't working as well we thought. There is no complete unified theory of physics. But physics is substantially different than diet in that general relativity is testable and makes remarkable predictions and we have yet to have a counter-example proving it wrong. But when there is so much controversy we look elsewhere and find others with different, possibly extreme views that claim to explain the universe much better than the current theories.
Maybe an important difference between physics and science of nutrition is also that there is less cultural, political and religious bias in physics. Our culture is a tremendous barrier that prevents basically nutrition scientists from systematically questioning an ubiquitous practice such as cooking our food, for instance. Scientists are people who ate cooked food for 2 or 3 decades when beginning their creative work. They are addicted to it as everybody else and so are those people (group of scientists and politicians) who are in charge of making the decision to fund or not a given research. Even if (highly unlikely event) a single scientist (as Dr. Seignalet here in France) overcomes his personnal relunctance or addiction and asks for funding this kind of research his application is almost certainly rejected.
Were it not for this formidable barrier, the example of the strongly adverse effects of cooking and the need to abandon it would have been clearly demonstrated in the 1960's or even earlier. There is little doubt about this because technically it is a fairly simple question to settle. So a minority of poeple such as we had to discover this along the fringe and by experimenting on themselves and ackowledge that mainstream science has failed. With the entailing natural tendency for them to reject all mainstream science.
Physics is in principle a more objective science since even black holes, whether they exist or not has little influence on our everyday activities and life. The question of universe's origin has however obviously a strong philosophical and religious resonance and so it is also highly disputed and controversial.
It is in contrast highly amusing to note that condensed matter physics and quantum mechanics, the theories behind the invention of the transistor, computers, lasers, medical imaging and the GPS are much much less disputed. ;)
Though quantum mechanics is in principle at least as disturbing and controversial as general relativity.
The GPS uses also general relativity corrections. General relativity has undergone a few successful tests but it remains yet just a speculative theory of gravity with at least a very annoying fundamental problem. In constrast, the so-called special theory of relativity (equivalence of mass and energy, constancy of the speed of light etc...) is rather a law verified routinely in all laboratories all over the world in many ways.
The search for a unified theory of everything such as sting theory is most likely vain. This is at least the opinion of an increasing number of physicists. But this is by no means the end of physics, it just means that reductionism has reached its limits or that we definitely cannot hope to infer seriously most remarkable higher levels properties from elementary constituants. This view is contended for instance by Nobel Price of Physics winners Robert B. Laughlin or P.W. Anderson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Universe:_Reinventing_Physics_from_the_Bottom_Down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Warren_Anderson
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Sorry for the tangent from the hunting topic, but the philosophy of science is one of my interests and I'm enjoying the juicy bits this discussion is generating.
Its sort of similar to how most of us found raw paleo. Everything else mainstream did not work so we gradually started looking for answers elsewhere along the fringe and came up with a solution that made perfect brilliant sense and worked wonders for us. Yet almost nobody knows that raw paleo exists and almost no main stream doctors, nutritionists think we are all that sane.
Thanks for the explanation, that has the ring of truth. It's still fairly baffling to me, because I came to raw Paleo dieting via Boyd Eaton's theoretical model of Darwinian evolutionary dietary adaptation, which made instant sense to me in a "Eureka!" moment because of my past intensive study of biological evolution. To me the theory of evolution supports RPD and the mainstream scientists are not sufficiently taking evolution into account, rather than RPD leading me to abandon Darwinian evolution for unusual alternative views. Instead of persuading me to throw out all scientific models, RPD for me reinforces the generally-accepted model of biological evolution. So for me the problem is not so much with science as it is with the scientists.
I think we should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
A similar sort of phenomenon I think happens when we look at the creation of our universe. There is no actual evidence that black holes, event horizons or dark matter exists. String theory is untestable. The large Hadron collider isn't working as well we thought. There is no complete unified theory of physics.
Humans tend to want simple, absolute solutions that answer questions for all time, which may be why dogmatic religions have great appeal. Science is not about final solutions and perfect answers--it never gets things completely right. It's more a series of conjectures and refutations, as Popper pointed out (although even that is viewed by many as oversimplified and there is still not agreement on what the scientific method is). The hope is that science will be a gradual improvement in imperfect knowledge, not a search for final truths. When scientists get some big things hugely wrong, such as diet, I see that as an opportunity for improvement in scientific rigor and an indication that we should look with a more skeptical eye at currently accepted models in other scientific fields, rather than as an opportunity to throw out all current scientific models and adopt a host of New-Agey-type views without thorough investigation. That doesn't mean I don't think the alternative views shouldn't be investigated and can't possibly be true, I just don't think we should make the same mistake of embracing these views with an uncritical eye, for this is part of what got many of us into trouble with diet in the first place--accepting the standard American diet or the standard views on "healthy" diet or the extreme views on raw veganism, etc. with little skeptical questioning of their assumptions. We shouldn't correct lack of critical inquiry of standard dogma in one area with uncritical acceptance of fringe views in other areas.
But physics is substantially different than diet in that general relativity is testable and makes remarkable predictions
This is what is remarkable about the Paleolithic model of nutrition with its mechanism of evolutionary biological adaptation. It's the first dietary model founded on a basic principle of biology rather than ad-hoc collection of hit-or-miss guesses and the first dietary model that enables us to make testable predictions.
But when there is so much controversy we look elsewhere and find others with different, possibly extreme views that claim to explain the universe much better than the current theories.
I would hope that the gross errors in the field of nutrition would make us more skeptical of these extreme views and all views in general, rather than less skeptical. In sum, lack of skepticism, critical thinking and scientific rigor should encourage us to be more skeptical, use more critical thinking, and apply science more rigorously, rather than the opposite.
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Though quantum mechanics is in principle at least as disturbing and controversial as general relativity.
Indeed, Feynman even said, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics," and it was too disturbing for Einstein to ever fully accept it.
The search for a unified theory of everything such as sting theory is most likely vain. This is at least the opinion of an increasing number of physicists. But this is by no means the end of physics, it just means that reductionism has reached its limits or that we definitely cannot hope to infer seriously most remarkable higher levels properties from elementary constituants. This view is contended for instance by Nobel Price of Physics winners Robert B. Laughlin or P.W. Anderson.
I tend to agree. I'm fairly ignorant in these matters, but seeking a single unified theory smacks a little bit too much to me of seeking a final, perfectly complete answer, which is more the realm of dogmatic religion (but not all religion) than skeptical science. If they do hit upon a grand unified theory, rather than answer every significant question in the field completely, I think that it will reveal a host of new questions, just as every scientific model before it has.
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The GPS uses also general relativity corrections.
How about: GPS uses fudge factors in order to fit a failed hypothesis to a false shape of the planet?
But there is no (grant) money in that, so it will not be considered.
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I don't think that's it at all with the group of people on here.
Are you suggesting the group of people on this board weren't brought up in the neolithic age and with computers?
I don't want to be offensive, but all of the talk and concern about animals and their deaths during hunting seems to me to be only possible coming out of the mouth or typing fingers of someone who has never been hungry in the wild their whole life. I am also one of those people, and can only imagine how ridiculous these notions would seem to someone who spent any amount of time surviving in the wild, or from one of those tribes that people on here seem so eager to research and quote and learn about.
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How about: GPS uses fudge factors in order to fit a failed hypothesis to a false shape of the planet?
But there is no (grant) money in that, so it will not be considered.
William, why are your emotions so caught up in all of this?
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William, why are your emotions so caught up in all of this?
Scientific propositions are criticized, and alternate ideas, if any, are proposed.
This is the scientific method, as I understand it. alphagruis could give a better definition.
What emotions?
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How about: GPS uses fudge factors in order to fit a failed hypothesis to a false shape of the planet?
But there is no (grant) money in that, so it will not be considered.
The people who developped the GPS just want it to work with highest possible accuracy. To this end the correction they have to apply to the time read on clocks in orbit and on earth happens to be in line with predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity or general relativity. It works but wrong theories may give a fairly good ansver in a few specific instances.
General relativity (as string theory) is certainly a nice mathematical construction that unfortunately fascinates too many scientists. However the only thing that counts is that it remains a largely untested and untestable speculation with "an horrible skeleton in the closet namely the cosmological constant" as Laughlin puts it.
I take this with much less emotion than you , William, but I agree that this situation has been and still is highly detrimental to the developement of alternative views and creativity.
Yet I won't dwell on this since it is completely out of topic in this thread devoted to hunting.
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Not completely off topic, as it concerns the perception that we can be and are deceived by accepted notions, such as that general relativity works, as does chasing a deer.
We are deceived because both are true, but not all true - general relativity needs fudge factors, so does chasing.
People addicted to running present the image of the lone hunter - I object!
Man is a pack hunter, and the language deceives us in English because we don't hunt, we know where the animal will be. In America, the animal is baited, so we just sit in wait. In Europe, I read that the animal is driven by beaters towards the guns/spears.
Wolves and coyotes use neither method, the pack sends one out to frighten the prey towards the lurkers.
As for the concerns about morality, an empty stomach has no morals.
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First off, thanks for posting such detailed repsonses. Its great and very lucky that this board has an actual physicist who furthermore actually wants to participate and discuss alternative theories. What I have to say is off the top of my head with little to back it up so likely filled with erroneous thoughts but its what I think for now.
Maybe an important difference between physics and science of nutrition is also that there is less cultural, political and religious bias in physics. Our culture is a tremendous barrier that prevents basically nutrition scientists from systematically questioning an ubiquitous practice such as cooking our food, for instance. Scientists are people who ate cooked food for 2 or 3 decades when beginning their creative work. They are addicted to it as everybody else and so are those people (group of scientists and politicians) who are in charge of making the decision to fund or not a given research. Even if (highly unlikely event) a single scientist (as Dr. Seignalet here in France) overcomes his personnal relunctance or addiction and asks for funding this kind of research his application is almost certainly rejected.
I'm not so sure there is less cultural bias in physics than in nutrition. Well, perhaps there is just about zero outside influence of human culture on mainstream physics but mainstream physics is a culture in of itself. I wonder if its even possible to publish anything critiquing general relativity. There is little(no?) money for experimenters who have completely different alternative theories. I keep pondering how Tesla, a man who had his own theory of the universe until the day he died (and presumably many other scientists at the time of Einstein) would fare in today's world.
Were it not for this formidable barrier, the example of the strongly adverse effects of cooking and the need to abandon it would have been clearly demonstrated in the 1960's or even earlier. There is little doubt about this because technically it is a fairly simple question to settle. So a minority of poeple such as we had to discover this along the fringe and by experimenting on themselves and ackowledge that mainstream science has failed. With the entailing natural tendency for them to reject all mainstream science.
Physics is in principle a more objective science since even black holes, whether they exist or not has little influence on our everyday activities and life. The question of universe's origin has however obviously a strong philosophical and religious resonance and so it is also highly disputed and controversial.
You are absolutely correct that I tend to naturally want to reject all of mainstream science. I am very emotionally attached to my diet though I try to speak of it objectively. I grew up trusting everything I read and everything any adult or doctor ever said to me. I never questioned anything. After suffering from many minor ailments and thankfully stumbling upon Good Calories, Bad Calories I changed my diet and found much relief. I was subsequently dumbfounded about the vast amount of misinterpretation of evidence there was on nutrition.
But I don't think nutrition is an outlier in the mess that science is. In almost every facet of life I see the enormous spread of misinformation. Its like a disease that has plagued scientific reasoning. In baseball for instance, statisticians have basically solved the game mathematically and can easily give you the best strategy. Yet we have managers that are making horrible decisions weekly that cost their team wins. Same with all other sports. The math is so simple and the decisoin making so obvious yet nearly no one employs these statisticians that would instantly make the francise better. The same goes with economics or people that think they know what they are doing trading in the market. I feel life is run so entirely suboptimally.I don't see why physics would be any different.
There is a large part of me that really WANTS mainstream phyiscs to be wrong. I am angry at hbeing decieved but at the same time take pride that I am loooking for truth or at least what I think is the truth. it makes me feel more worthwhile, unique. I also have this internal gut feeling that some time in my lifetime the truth will come out and it won't be what it is now.
It is in contrast highly amusing to note that condensed matter physics and quantum mechanics, the theories behind the invention of the transistor, computers, lasers, medical imaging and the GPS are much much less disputed. ;)
Though quantum mechanics is in principle at least as disturbing and controversial as general relativity.
The GPS uses also general relativity corrections. General relativity has undergone a few successful tests but it remains yet just a speculative theory of gravity with at least a very annoying fundamental problem. In constrast, the so-called special theory of relativity (equivalence of mass and energy, constancy of the speed of light etc...) is rather a law verified routinely in all laboratories all over the world in many ways.
I dont get the GPS corrections. Mean satellite distance is about 10k miles and so the speed of light takes about 1/10 of a second to go to the satellite and then back again. Do they really correct for this small increment of time? Has it really been proven?
But aren't there better examples that show GR to be correct such as the Mercury's hyperion shift or the orbits of jupiters moons? But these were shown in Tesla's time so he surely must have had an alternative explanation for all this evidence.
The search for a unified theory of everything such as sting theory is most likely vain. This is at least the opinion of an increasing number of physicists. But this is by no means the end of physics, it just means that reductionism has reached its limits or that we definitely cannot hope to infer seriously most remarkable higher levels properties from elementary constituants. This view is contended for instance by Nobel Price of Physics winners Robert B. Laughlin or P.W. Anderson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Universe:_Reinventing_Physics_from_the_Bottom_Down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Warren_Anderson
Have you seen any of the electric universe's youtube videos that GS has posted? For someone untrained like me they can say almost anything to convince me that they are right. There predictions on comets and further explanation for instance was pretty evident to me that they indeed have something worth looking into. The video is about 35 minutes is well done and might be worth taking a look at.
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Humans tend to want simple, absolute solutions that answer questions for all time, which may be why dogmatic religions have great appeal. Science is not about final solutions and perfect answers--it never gets things completely right. It's more a series of conjectures and refutations, as Popper pointed out (although even that is viewed by many as oversimplified and there is still not agreement on what the scientific method is). The hope is that science will be a gradual improvement in imperfect knowledge, not a search for final truths.
Though I agree that science can technically never get anything completely right we can get pretty close. We know almost exactly what the correct diet is for lions but are very far away for Humans. I think the exactness of Physics and the ability to perform good experiments should eventually lead us to a simple theory of the universe. If mathematics is the only field where a proof can be had and say economics is a field where almost no experiments can be duplicated then physics must be very close to math in terms of being able to come up with absolute theories. I suppose we almost have and it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult but yet there is still so much controversy. The physical world seems so easily testable. Newtons simple equations of motions work extremely well.
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I'm not so sure there is less cultural bias in physics than in nutrition. Well, perhaps there is just about zero outside influence of human culture on mainstream physics but mainstream physics is a culture in of itself. I wonder if its even possible to publish anything critiquing general relativity. There is little(no?) money for experimenters who have completely different alternative theories. I keep pondering how Tesla, a man who had his own theory of the universe until the day he died (and presumably many other scientists at the time of Einstein) would fare in today's world.
Physics is undoubtedly a culture in of itself as all of human creative work, I guess. There is too little work on alternative theories of gravitation because of the string theorist's hegemony. This present situation and "mess", as you put it, is very well described and analysed in a book by Lee Smolin, a physicist working on alternative theories, entitled "The trouble with Physics"
http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com/
I dont get the GPS corrections. Mean satellite distance is about 10k miles and so the speed of light takes about 1/10 of a second to go to the satellite and then back again. Do they really correct for this small increment of time? Has it really been proven?
But aren't there better examples that show GR to be correct such as the Mercury's hyperion shift or the orbits of jupiters moons? But these were shown in Tesla's time so he surely must have had an alternative explanation for all this evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Basic_concept_of_GPS
A GPS receiver calculates its position by precisely timing the signals sent by the GPS satellites high above the Earth. Each satellite continually transmits messages which include
the time the message was sent
precise orbital information (the ephemeris)
the general system health and rough orbits of all GPS satellites (the almanac).
The receiver utilizes the messages it receives to determine the transit time of each message and computes the distances to each satellite. These distances along with the satellites' locations are used with the possible aid of trilateration to compute the position of the receiver...
As you can see the calculation in based on the signal transit time between satellite and receiver. To this end the time of arrival measured with a clock in receiver is compared to the time of departure from satellite measured with a clock in satellite and encoded in the emitted signal itself. To get meaningful results this supposes obviously that the two clocks are first perfectly synchronized (or their offset precisely known) and then run at exactly the same pace. Experiment shows that this is not the case and the clock's actual pace or reading depends mainly on local gravity (which is a bit lower in satellite than at usual receiver's location on ground or in airplanes) and relative speed. Typically the clock in satellite ticks more rapidly than the same clock on ground by about 38 microseconds/day. Since radio signals travel about 12 km during this time it must be taken into account.
Have you seen any of the electric universe's youtube videos that GS has posted? For someone untrained like me they can say almost anything to convince me that they are right. There predictions on comets and further explanation for instance was pretty evident to me that they indeed have something worth looking into. The video is about 35 minutes is well done and might be worth taking a look at.
I've not yet seen them seriously. I'll try do it.
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Got a trout at the park. Well sort of. Someone caught one, it was hooked bad, but he wasn't keeping it and threw it near shore. He knew that was what I was after and offered it to me.
[img alt=]http://hotlink.myspacecdn.com/images02/128/6571b36dd7bd4381b8d7a3e1d4f98668/m.jpg[/img] (http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=124824754&albumID=2645297&imageID=45469023)