Deer hunters

Silvio Berlusconi's friendship with Vladimir Putin could be costly. The Italians forgive their prime minister for the endless hunt for skirts, because in their hearts they themselves consider this the bright side of life. But not a single underage prostitute will cause such damage to Berlusconi's reputation as participation in a deer hunt on one of his visits to Russia has already done. This is the same hunt that Valentino Valentini, Berlusconi’s confidant and personal translator, told the Stampa newspaper not so long ago: Putin killed a deer with the first shot, cut open his chest with a knife, tore out his heart and held it out as a sign of Berlusconi’s friendship. “Italy was horrified by this scene in the Russian forest: Putin brought Berlusconi back to the Middle Ages,” Giacomo, a fellow journalist from Modena, assures me. But Berlusconi, according to Valentini, did not have time to accept the gift - did he faint? It does not matter, he managed to become an accomplice in the murder - retorts Giacomo.
In 1993, Boris Yeltsin invited Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to hunt, after which the Yeltsin photographer offered to take a collective photo as a souvenir - next to the carcass of a freshly killed bear. Mulroney couldn't refuse. This posing (and even with a smile on his face) cost him a severe censure from Canadian public opinion, brought down his ratings and hastened the decline of his political career. In Canada, a public politician or high-ranking official cannot afford to participate in a "hunt for slaughter", as they say here, fellow taxpayers expect high moral impulses from him, and not brutal male excitement. If you like to kill animals, and even more rare, and endangered without you, do not poke your head into politics. „

If you like to kill animals, and even more rare, and endangered without you, do not poke your head into politics

“In Russia, they don’t think so. Our elite "burns" on the hunt. The dismissed deputy director of the FSB, Vyacheslav Ushakov, is said to have loved hunting white rhinos in Africa most of all. Somewhere in the same place, in Kenya and Tanzania, other high-ranking officials, united by the elite "Safari Club", "shoot off" vacation days. And at this time, in the far Russian North, the speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov rides and rushes in the early morning after deer ... What VIP Russian does not like a well-aimed bullet!
But hunting is not a luxury, it requires sacrifice. During a night hunt for protected bears, a helicopter crashed with the Irkutsk governor Igor Esipovsky. Gazprom trade union leader Vladimir Babkin shot Konstantin Pavlov, deputy general director of Gazprom dobycha Nadym, while hunting in the Perm Territory, confusing him with a wild boar ... Rus', where are you rushing to?
Deputy Prime Minister Vyacheslav Volodin prefers to hunt predators - a wolf, a fox: they say, a deer or an elk is not good. In fact, there is no big difference between a deer and a wolf (or even a tiger). Why? “If a person decides to kill a tiger, this is called a sport; and if a tiger decides to kill a man, it is called bloodlust,” Bernard Shaw was perplexed. That's why.
In Michael Cimino's famous film The Deer Hunter, Robert de Niro's character Michael Vronsky meets this animal on screen twice. For the first time, Michael is chasing a deer on a hunt with the conviction that everything in life must be decided with one single sure shot. The second time, having already taken a sip of this life in Vietnam, Michael, getting close to the deer and looking into the eyes of the beast, shoots higher: live, OK? Michael decided that he would no longer bring death - never to anyone.
It is useful for our politicians and officials to watch this film again. Because the main issue with hunting is not whether you love it or not. And not in whether it is or is not part of the national tradition. It is whether or not you are able to take someone's little life.
What do you think?