Paul Rogers had a good piece in the Mercury News over the weekend about the "cultural shift" in California as evidenced by the uproar over a Fish and Game official's killing of a mountain lion in Idaho.
Rogers writes that the shift is a "profound change involving urban and rural, old and young, red and blue -- in which the traditional political power of hunters and fishermen is in steady decline while environmentalists and animal rights groups have grown in influence."
Rogers talked to Bill Gaines, president of the California Outdoor Heritage Alliance, a hunting advocacy group in Sacramento. "Today 80 percent of Californians live in urban areas," said Gaines. "When I grew up north of Stockton in the 1960s and 70s, I was literally born with a BB gun in one hand and a fishing pole in another. All my friends were like that. Today, through no fault of their own, people are not raised in that lifestyle."
If you're looking for one illustration of the attitudinal difference between hunters and those made squeamish by their activities, take a look at this promotional video from the Flying B Ranch, where Fish and Game Commission President Dan Richards' killing of a cougar has landed him in hot water with Democratic legislators and animal advocates. The Chronicle's Politics Blog posted the video last week.
Animal lovers will most likely not appreciate the images of a treed mountain lion being shot and falling to the ground, where its teeth are displayed for the camera -- all to the sounds of thrashing guitar music. Nor would they enjoy the next segment, in which three hunters excitedly discuss, in subtitles, their impending kill of a black bear, culminating with a "Shoot it now! Shoot it now!" Cut to the shot bear tumbling over, cut to vigorous handshakes among the men, and cut to the obligatory trophy photo.