Thinking Out Loud: Periodic Editorial on the State of Hunting and the Hunting Industry Today
So I opened up my e-mail the other morning and was reading through my messages, when I came across a notification that someone named Greg Galli had sent me a message on Facebook. I read the short note: “As in you belong in the kitchen lol,” it read. I didn’t know how Greg Galli knew I loved to cook, couldn’t remember writing anything here in this blog about that, so I hit the link for the conversation thread.
The page loaded, and there I read not only the kitchen remark, but the one that had come before it and which I hadn’t viewed yet in my e-mail inbox. That one read, “I’m sorry, but MEN belong hunting, women CANNOT hunt.”
Hmmm. I was thinking I could hunt and had the proof on my wall on the order of all things taxidermied, and so I said as much in my reply to his Facebook thread. I ended my reply with “You can’t be serious, can you?” but before I could wait for his response, I cut to Greg Galli’s profile.
I shouldn’t have. His most recent post had to do with things that were better left for a very private discussion with his urologist and which alluded to the hopes that he hadn’t picked up something from a whore. Other similarly classy comments were also posted, along with a missive that said he thought he’d “pulled his head out of his ass” enough to get back with his wife (and what a lucky woman she must be!) The profile also said he had a waterfowl guiding service, something called River Valley Outfitters.
I wasn’t actually offended, per se, by his comments about women being unable to hunt. I considered that, perhaps, this bastion of intelligence named Greg Galli probably meant women shouldn’t hunt, rather than “couldn’t,” and even I can forgive what surely must have been this slight grammatical error on Facebook. Too, I was pretty impressed that this cretin was able to type as well as he had, given the condition his knuckles must have been in, after dragging the ground all his life. In fact I was so wowed by this new Facebook friend, I thought I’d tell all my other friends what a treasure had been visited upon me, and so posted the following to Facebook from my Tweetdeck:
I thought for a moment that I’d woken up to find I’d time-traveled back to 1776. Some Neanderthal named Greg Galli wrote on my wall to say that only men can hunt, women cannot, and that I belonged in the kitchen. I thought maybe he was joking, so I took a look at his profile and found comments too disgusting for a Penthouse forum. Seriously, I thought guys like this only appeared on episodes of “Cops.”
I have to say, the response I got throughout the day and evening was both hilarious and thought-provoking. Thus, a little follow-up here seems in order.
First, I’d like to thank all of you for weighing in and coming to the same conclusion I did, that this guy hasn’t evolved far from a loin-cloth-wearing, club-toting, semi-upright position. Here’s a sampling of the responses I got (and laughed my ass off over!):
I’ll put my wife’s shooting up to that idiot’s any day!
You chicks are always welcome. Most women I hunt with, mine included, are as good if not better than a lot of guys. Plus you’re better looking than most of the smelly guys I usually hunt with!
Wonder how many times he’s been married. Fool.
I haven’t seen a cave man in ages!!!!
Note the high forehead and extended brows, poor Neanderthal! That’s what using a rock for a pillow will do for you.
He’s just mad because you can out-hunt his sorry ass every day of the week and twice on Sundays…where legal of course. Nominate him for Facebook tool of the day.
Now, I’ll give more than a few points for all of you who wrote to me, extra for the guys, of which you were a majority (I’ll skip the attributes, y’all know who you are, and if you don’t, go to my wall on Facebook and read the entire thread). But I’m giving an extra gold star to a colleague of mine who’s an editor with one of the waterfowl magazines I freelance for occasionally. She was brave enough to say—out loud, in her outdoor Facebook voice—that Mr. Galli’s guide service never has to worry about appearing in the pages of her magazine. Her comment was quickly followed by another lady’s words, which said:
This hunting group we all have trended and followed can really work as a unit to push these types out. Any business person who does something this stupid doesn’t deserve to be in this circle. Push him out and spread the word.
Push this guy out? I’m on it, and here it is, folks. River Valley Outfitters of Gridley, California, Greg Galli owner and guide. I suggest to all reading this that we help him go out of business in the near future due to a lack of clientele.
It’s not that he is or is not a good guide or businessman. One, I don’t have any clue whether he’s good at guiding for ducks and geese. But given that publicizing his kind of an attitude on a wide-open public forum like Facebook pretty much disqualifies him for Business Owner of the Year status, I am sure I don’t give a flying rat’s ass, even if he is the best damn waterfowl guide in the entire world. This guy doesn’t qualify to be dirt for my dogs to squat over.
Seriously? I don’t give one wit that he apparently prefers to hunt with just men. I prefer to hunt with only men. Nothing against women, and I’ve had plenty of good times shooting and hunting with just a group of girls, too. To each his own, I say. Everyone needs their own space, and everyone needs groups with a homogenous foundation they can identify with. I’m all for guys having poker night, golf outings, and hunting adventures, where it’s just them and they can do as these please without criticism or having to worry about whether the other sex is going to be offended. Same for the women.
Frankly, I’m a little stunned that such chauvinism still exists. I’ve been doing this a long time, and while there is and always will be a good ol’ boys club in both the professional and recreational segments of the gun industry, every man I’ve ever come across has not only aided me as a hunter and shooter, but welcomed me. In fact, I’ve never had a man turn me away from a shooting event or say something derogatory about my participation in the hunting or shooting sports (golf I’ve been denied, hunting and shooting no, go figure).
So what does offend me (and apparently every one of you on Facebook, who read the thread and posted comments)? What raises my hackles is that people out there, people who are our family members in our community of hunters and shooters, have given this narrow-minded bigot money in support of our sport. You would have to have been living under a rock (or in a cave, ahem) to not know that we are shrinking in numbers, to not know that what we do is threatened every day through los of land, habitat, resources, funding, and those who would like to see dissolved forever our way of life. And yet here we have among our midst a person (I can’t call him a man—a thug, maybe, but not a man), who might as well be a member of PETA for all the good he’s doing us. This is how he repays the industry he makes his living from? I think not. It’s time for Greg Galli to find another line of work. Something on the order of wife-beater shirt designer, kennel assistant to Michael Vick (okay, I take that one back, I wouldn’t want this guy near a dog), or maybe the new head of Misogynists Anonymous—you know, something he’s really qualified for.
Note: By late afternoon of the day Galli’s posts were first put on my Facebook wall, he’d removed both his remarks and his entire profile. So not only is he a narrow-minded, bigoted misogynist, he’s a coward, too. Figures.
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