...so earlier this week I was in Santa Fe, and as usual I made an homage to the Lucchese Boots. I believe Lucchese are the best boots in the world, and over the years I've spent a good bit of money with them. I go to the store, talk to the boot-fitters who ask how this or that boot is working, and if I'm having an exceptional year, buy another pair.
This year I wasn't buying. On the way out of the store I saw an exceptional bolo tie with carved skulls...good taste is indeed timeless! I asked the clerk whether the carving was bone, synthetic or ivory. She lit up on me..."it's not ivory!" she snapped. "We woudn't have anything made of elephant ivory in the store."
Why, I asked mildly? Any commercial ivory would be legal.
"It diesn't matter to the elephant whether it's legal or not," she snapped again.
Okay, here's the punch line...I'd been looking at a belt in the back of the store. It was a great belt...elephant, of course, to match Lucchese's elephant skin boots...but I'm never going to be plopping down $320 for a belt, sans buckle. hey, it wasn't even a gun belt! Another guy was trying on a pair of crocodile leather boots, and as near as I can tell the crocodile was dead. Dead, I tell you! Ostrich leather? Dead ostrich. Lizard leather? Dead lizard. Bison leather? Dead tatonka. Hey, even just plain ole boots (like mine)? Dead cow.
How does one process that level of hypocrisy? Smugly lecturing me about ivory while selling a huge selection of dead animal skins?
No, I didn't go all Michael Bane on the clerk...I was with my Sweetie and it was her birthday. C'mon...but I will let Lucchese know.
I wouldn't have been buying either after that exchange.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the proprietor needs to have a long talk with his employee...
Silly Michael...
ReplyDeleteThose skins are donated by painless skin grafts traded for an extra apple at mealtime.
Sucks for the croc though.
They want extra chicken.
About as dumb as thinking words on a piece of paper (laws) will stop crime.
I wish the libtard idiots would just stop breathing. Think how much of an impact they could have on reducing the human carbon footprint.
ReplyDeleteI was reading about the Greenpeace bunch arrested in Russia for protesting the drilling of oil. I didn't see any sails on their boat.
ReplyDeleteBill Jordan had a Border Patrol rig - Jordan Holster in elephant from Don Hume - with a hide he had taken in Africa. For a pure quill elephant leather - not just a split hide onlay layer - I gather the ears work; most of the elephant it's said doesn't.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me I heard Ross Seyfried say that getting good hides locally tanned in Africa for belts and holsters was difficult to impossible - at least in his time - as the industry was set up for fashion and for furniture.
More significant to notice that Santa Fe - home to Matt Helm and other such - is a stronghold of such thinking - if not New Mexico where?
Well, you can complain all you want, but you are swimming upstream. Michael lives in the world where all animals are created equally. In that regard, he's living a lonely existence. This planet has hundreds of thousands of years of "modern humans" valuing certain animals more than others for varied purposes; food, shelter, servant to man, friend, etc. For just one example, humans living with dogs as friends goes back over 30,000 years according to the fossil evidence. If all animals are equal, killing a dog for fur or food would be no big deal for humans, similar to killing a cow, right? Well, it is a big deal. Because humans have a several hundred thousand year history of valuing certain animals more than others for varied purposes. You're swimming upstream, Michael, on the elephant thing. Americans, and civilized humans throughout the world value Pandas, Elephants, and certain other animals, such as your dog, as "special". How special? Special enough to not kill them even though the same humans are perfectly fine with killing of cows and buffalo and crocodiles, etc.
ReplyDeleteLet me just sum this up a bit more bluntly and specifically: The VAST majority of HUNTERS in this country do not condone hunting elephants any more than they would condone hunting domestic dogs or Giant Pandas. Michael, I have immense respect for you, but this crusade of your about elephant hunting is a wild tangent that is going nowhere. Nobody wants to see Babar the Elephant killed. Really.
About that comment from ursavus, all I can say is WOW! I am sure he believes sincerely in his comments, and they make perfect sense to him and his kind. However it is yet another blatant display of the realities of the animal kingdom (including the human animal)rather than the imagined, perfect, rose colored world of fantasy they live in. Comparing apples to oranges, and having absolutely no idea of the actual situation relating to those animals. They are unable to comprehend that animals are not really cute little humans wrapped in a precious animal hide, or more especially, that people who raise and care for animals, or who hunt, can love those same animals as much or more than they do. But they are still animals and not little humans.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the airhead, during the occupy wall street silliness, who claimed (on national TV) that she didn't need fossil fuels, because she rode the bus.
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much a crusade as it has been a reminder to me that "logical" debate is off the table! For years I have said that while hunters & shooters are often different beasties, we share the same goals. Am I not obligated to stand up for them as I have asked, be..linsisted..,they stand up for us?
ReplyDeleteAnd I friggin' hated Babar!
mb
Re: Ursavus Elemensis' comments;
ReplyDeleteI have listened and I have learned.
Life Member
ReplyDeleteUrsavus Elemensis' comments remind me of that great line from Orwell's Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Except that in reality they aren't.
Animals that are not endangered and that are legal to hunt are equal in my eyes with regard to the morality of killing them. Once you've come to grips with the killing aspect morally - and I believe it is a moral thing to do - then it doesn't matter if it is an elephant or a feral hog.
The fact that the elephant like the feral hog is creating environmental damage through unchecked populations just adds to the morality of including them as game animals.
Does it really matter to the elephant if it is killed by a conservation officer in a cull or by a hunter on safari who has paid big bucks for the privilege? No, it doesn't. However, it does matter to the community that benefits economically from the safari hunter as well as the meat of the elephant. Moreover, it engenders a more lawful society as it discourages the poacher.
As to the Luchese boots, there are other boot makers in this world who do a good job and who don't have hypocrites representing them before their customers.
I have a good-ol' pair of Justin mule-hides. I didn't hear the clerk at Dunn's in Grand Junction Tennessee tell me that sellin' 'em would be detrimental to the Democrat Party.
ReplyDeleteLife Member
You should have leaned close and whispered sweetly in her ear " Miss, everything in here is dead animals " smiled and left.
ReplyDeleteMarc-Wi
Please visit Infowars.com A.S.A.P. !
ReplyDeleteLiving on a farm that was started by my grandfather a long time ago, I am all about real leather, eating meat, and using the labor of animals I own and care for. However the ivory trade is a long way from the trade in most animal products. Very hard to tell legal ivory from illegal ivory once it hits the market. Much higher profit potential, easier to handle, store, and transport. Doesn't spoil, quicker to harvest from the animal once that animal is killed. A lot of cruelty and suffering involved in taking ivory illegally. Unlike culling, legal hunting or destroying "problem" elephants, no regulation to protect the specie. Unchecked, ivory poaching could very easily wipe out wild elephants all together. With a portion of "legal" ivory for sale often found to actually come from illegal sources, why not just pick something else to decorate your body or surroundings with?
ReplyDelete'