The judgment of hunters is bad, even though, contrary to belief, they are the greatest protectors of nature and animals.
When most people hear the word hunting, they associate it with the heartless killing of poor animals, which is indeed part of hunting, but only one of its points. The hunters not only shoot, but also watch, feed and care for these animals, but also regulate the population in the absence of natural enemies.
At the same time, hunting has a huge culture in Hungary and many people are curious about it.
What hunting is really about, what needs to be done to become a good hunter and how to make those on the other side of the gun barrel more positive were discussed by the Pest Boys during a round table discussion with the owners and manager of the WB Shooting Center, who are themselves hunters. .
On the other hand, good wines go well with delicious game dishes, but how the two crafts are connected, and what good food and quality wine give us in addition to the culinary experience, was learned from Imre Héczei, the president and grand master of the Ordo Vini Venatorum Hunting Wine Order. portal.
Imre Héczei, the president of the organization, said that the wine order they founded is unique in the whole world, because it is not typical for one person to carry out two activities. They were founded more than twenty years ago and are a group of friends. Their goal is to introduce the world of hunting and winemaking, unknown to others but considered mystical, which they believe they have succeeded in achieving. Many people associate hunting with killing, although hunting is much more complex than that, it is an implementation of wildlife management, notes Héczei.
Wildlife management is taught at universities for a reason.
"I feel that people who make any statements about hunting would do better to look into things and realize that the game management we do is the same as animal husbandry, only much more extensive, since we do it on a larger area, where the animals that are later on the table live happily ever after. In contrast to the 16 pigs kept on eight square meters, which are then taken to a slaughterhouse," he said.
Héczei recommends conservationists to go to a slaughterhouse once and be guaranteed to become vegetarians in no time.
Hunting is therefore not just killing for its own sake, the Grandmaster emphasized. Returning a bit to the connection between hunting and winemaking, he said that after the hunts, in the old days, great feasts were held, which included good wine. This is what they want to reconnect with the help of their wine list.
In order to become a hunter, one must meet very serious conditions
- said Árpád Weigl, one of the owners of the WB Shooting Center in Budakesz, who has been hunting for a long time himself. The conditions include the age of majority and a clean criminal record, as well as a permanent address in Hungary. Furthermore, a hunting test must be taken, for which a multifaceted curriculum must be mastered, but a weapon knowledge and psychological test must be taken, the hunting license must be exchanged for something, and a storage space must be provided for the weapons, which is checked by the authority. After that, the police gives permission for the hunter to buy a weapon.
Péter Nyitrai, the head of the facility, noted that the shooting range is also good because even those who do not have a license can practice here, but there are a variety of weapons available. And the WB Shooting Center has created a shooting theater in a unique way in Hungary, where you can shoot at different, projected, moving animals.
This creates a situation as if one were on a wild boar hunt, said the manager of the shooting range. Attila Barla Szabó, the other owner of the shooting range, adds, however, that it depends primarily on the person whether he can shoot that game, it doesn't matter if someone shoots with a 100,000 HUF rifle or a multi-million HUF rifle, it doesn't matter if it's a medium caliber or he does it with a large-caliber weapon, if he knows where to shoot, he can shoot the animal without suffering.
In order to shoot accurately, it is therefore important that the hunters visit the shooting range from time to time and do not practice on the animals.
Weigl went on to say that hunting is becoming more and more popular, because in the nineties there were about 45,000 hunters in Hungary, now this number is around 75,000. One of the reasons for this is that in the past it was much more difficult to become a member of a hunting society and get a gun. Now, however, if someone feels an affinity and has the background, they can quickly get access to the hunting area and the necessary permits.
In the minds of people, however, hunting still lives as an aimless killing, and at the same time, people like to eat game meat when it is already on the table. According to the owner of the shooting range, the pejorative perception of hunting is because their media is very bad.
"Hungarian hunting culture is very famous in Europe, which is why foreign hunters like to come to us. In my opinion, there is only one way to endear him to people, if from preschool age the children practically no longer grow up on Vuk, in which the hunter is ugly and shoots poor little Vuk, and not on Bambi, where an unfortunate deer - which is a deer - is chased and killed by hunters " - He told.
After shooting the animal, the hunters also perform a ritual, giving the animal a kind of finality.
They give a wound to the killed game, which means covering the place of the shot with twigs and placing the last morsel in the animal's mouth. And the hunter, who shot the animal, also gets a fragment next to his hat. Then they call with a horn, since every Hungarian game species has its own signal. This is how they show their respect to the animal.
Hunters are the greatest defenders of nature and animals - notes Weigl, adding that unfortunately, the misconception about hunters is that they go out to the fort half-drunk and shoot everything that crosses their path, including each other, because this has news value.
Conservationists, on the other hand, who share the word from the couch, never go out to rescue wild animals in a flood, for example, but hunters do. At the same time, wild animals also cause damage, either in gardens or on public roads. In the case of the latter, the hunting companies pay ten percent of the damage.
Imre Héczei interjects that the hunters mainly observe the animals, see what problems they have and what their condition is like. In the absence of top predators, hunters try to regulate the capacity of an area to hold game. They also have to pay attention to diseases, because swine fever, for example, affects wild boars in the same way as domestic pigs, but wild boars can spread it over a larger area. As a result of the work of the hunters, this disease did not spread as much in Hungary.
The World Hunting and Nature Exhibition, on the other hand, was a huge success despite the fact that many people speak condemningly about hunting.
According to Árpád Weigl, this was because people are also curious. According to Péter Nyitrai, the manager of the shooting range, it is because the exhibition showed the entire arc of hunting. According to him, hunting is a cultural pastime of free time, although it cannot be denied that in the end an animal's life is taken. But all of this is preceded by an incredibly long process.
Anyone who does this normally has a very big arc, the only part of which is to take the life of an animal, emphasized Nyitrai.
Cover image: Hunting has a huge culture in Hungary
Source: pixabay.com
