i try not to preach

Jodi Hilton for The New York Times
Samantha Marley, 9, on a “dream hunt”for bearin Vermont this month, organized by Kevin Hoyt

or wag my finger in the face of another or think because i don't hunt i'm better than someone who does.......BUT it is VERY VERY VERY disturbing to me that someone who is nine years old thinks it is fine to kill an innocent animal with a giant (or otherwise sized) gun. i cannot fathom thinking that way or having parents that would think it is an acceptable way of life. again, i rarely say these things because i try to believe 'each to their own'. it hurts and frightens me. i have been in the green mountains and i love the green mountains, BEAR AND ALL.

Girls and Boys, Meet Nature. Bring Your Gun

By PAM BELLUCK
Published: September 18, 2005
GREEN MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, Vt. - Chomping wad after wad of Bubblicious Strawberry Splash gum and giggling as she tickled people's necks with a piece of grass she pretended was a spider, Samantha Marley could have been any 9-year-old girl.

A couple of things set her apart, though. She was cloaked in camouflage from boots to baseball cap. And propped next to her on the seat of a truck was her very own 20-gauge shotgun.
Samantha, a freckle-faced, pony-tailed fourth grader, was on a bear hunt. Not the pretend kind memorialized in picture books and summer-camp chants, but a real one for black bears that live in the woods of southwestern Vermont and can weigh 150 pounds or more.
She had won a "dream hunt" given away by a Vermont man whose goal is to get more children to hunt, and she had traveled about 200 miles from her home in Bellingham, Mass., and was missing three days of school to take him up on his offer.
"Almost everything you hunt is pretty fun," said Samantha, grinning and perfectly at home with a group of five men, the youngest of whom was nearly three times her age...........