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Comment Threads

• Bellinghman commented on The latest news
  I think the right word for the Nara deer is that they are commensal with the tourists. They benefit from food, and the tourists don't suffer. Well, except that some of those deer are a bit thuggish. And some of them are definitely daft — we have a picture of one attempting to eat a sheet of cardboard that a sweeper was trying to lift into his dustcart. Anyway, tame rather than domesticated. Not at all biddable, they do what they want, and if they're lying on the steps in the sun, people will have to just step over them....
• paws4thot commented on The latest news
  My exposure to the sport is minimal (usually involving seeing warning signs); fortunately it doesn't invalidate the point that you don't go shooting "farmed deer" one by one with a rifle....
• Chrisj commented on The latest news
  It looks as though it's possible to take the hardware backdoor far beyond anything I'd imagined: you can insert trojans at the dopant level, making them practically undetectable....
• basal-surge commented on The latest news
  Give us time on the Red Deer domestication; here in NZ we've been farming them since the late nineteen sixties, and the current population is around 2 million (Compare to 10 million cattle and 40 million sheep.) We're not doing anything so silly as to try to breed out the antlers, mind - that's where most of the money is, selling deer velvet to the Chinese. We want them big. (Hence the popularity of crossbreeding with Wapiti, for the much greater weight of velvet) We're also partway into the domestication of fallow deer as well....
• basal-surge commented on The latest news
  Well under 200m, for the average shot. Hence "stalking" - getting to and staying within that 200m is the tricky bit. I seldom shoot red deer at more than 100m, and prefer my to take my shot at no more than fifty. However, I have the advantage of stalking in fairly heavy scrub and forest, so often the deer and I are basically on top of each other. I don't use sporting rifles, though, preferring peep sighted range rifles or issue infantry rifles pre-1945. Heart/lung shot is generally the most reliable, although if I'm at fifty metres or closer, I'll...