For one, I understand the angst that some folks including Article 4 and Joseph Von Benedict are expressing. My initial reaction was much the same. Even after starting to test and adopt some of the things espoused and seeing immediate benefits, I still am not drinking coolaid and I still am skeptical.
I think it's important to remember that most of what Form and Formies are espousing flies directly in the face of what most hunters have been taught from the time they first picked up a gun. Some of us have been hunting for many decades with great passion and success. Many of us have spent an enormous amount of time, energy, passion and money trying to be better marksmen, with better gear and with more affective humane results. In some cases those who were in the military were taught certain practices and told that their lives depended on following those practices. Many of us have also diligently read from other deeply experienced hunting experts and have followed their advice in depth. And after all of that, many of us think we're pretty darned good.
Then one night you fumble across a Form podcast or a Rokslide thread and you are smashed in the proverbial nose by a bunch of younger, hipper, more enlightened super-hunters who are preaching from the book of Forman.
I am here to tell you that that experience is just as shocking, and not nearly as much fun, as walking into a sauna packed with the (naked) Norwegian women's ski team.
Let's examine the Five Demandments
- Thou shalt never clean thy firearm, lest it lose its sacred patina.
- Thou shalt smite the moose only with the .223 caliber, for it is decreed sufficient.
- Thou shalt hold match bullets as the greatest hunting projectiles, even though their makers proclaim otherwise.
- Thou shalt proclaim the Tikka as the one true consistent and reliable cheap production firearm.
- Thou shall shun Leupold and Vortex, for they are deemed untrustworthy in the eyes of the Formidiliocous.
Compare these five statements against what the main stream advice and practice has been from almost every other expert hunting source for one hundred years.
In short, it feels like blashemous heresey. And for many of us it causes us to want to lash out in frustration and fear. For many of us, it is painful to contemplate that the path we thought was the correct one, is not the right one.
It hurts to discover that at best; you've been following a bunch of donkeys for the last 40 years: and at worst; you have been activey lied to for a generation.
I'd just ask that you who have already crossed-over to the good path remember to treat the rest of us with the respect, grace and patience that I am sure you don't feel we deserve!
That about sums it up. Sigh
