Hunting Bulwinkle - Palin's Idea of Sport

Paul Theroux brought me Thoreau on hunting moose today here and I am now ashamed that on hearing about Palin's love of moose hunting, I didn't question the 'sport.' Where is the sport here?

All this talk about moose hunting! It is as though, because of the animal's enormous size and imposing antlers, bringing one down is a heroic feat of marksmanship. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in "The Maine Woods," killing these big, gentle, myopic creatures is more "like going out by night to some woodside pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses."

Thoreau's descriptions of the moose he saw in Maine are inspired and fanciful. "They made me think of great frightened rabbits," he wrote.

Theroux goes on to make a parallel between hunting style and political style. And when I understand how moose hunting involves no skill or bravery, but just brute force inflicted on something bigger yet peaceful, I fear Palin even more.