The Progression of a Hunter :: Hunting Sports Nature Papers

The Progression of a Hunter It's three o'clock in the morning. I've been sleeping since eight p.m., and now my alarm clock is telling me that it's time to wake up. Most people are sleeping at this hour of the night, but I'm just now waking up to pack up my gear and head into the forest for the morning. Last night I packed my .30-06, tree stand, a small cooler full of food and a rucksack full of hunting equipment including deer scent, camouflage paint and a flashlight. I've been planning a hunt for two weeks, and the weekend has finally come. I get up from bed, shake off the cold of the morning and get ready to leave by four. It's five a.m. when I get to the dirt road winding into Ocala National Forest. I park my car in a clearing gather my gear and head into the forest with my eyes to the trees. By five-thirty I'm set up in a tree, my rifle is loaded and I'm quietly sipping hot coffee from my plastic thermos cup. I'm well concealed by tree limbs, and I have a clear shot at the ground below within my line of sight. My camouflage pants and jacket keep me hidden from the poor eyesight of the deer below, and my height above the ground keeps the smell of a human away from the sensitive noses of animals on the ground. Six a.m. and the sky is turning a light blue. The night's shade is dissipating slowly, and I can begin to see my surroundings a little better. A shot rings out from the west, and that signals nearby hunters. I hope they drove some game my way. Within a few minutes, there is rustling in the brush below me. A young buck is coming within range. He's a big one too; I can see about eight points from where I am. He is cautious and sniffs at the air and flicks out his tongue often. His coat is a light brown color like khaki. There are white markings along his flank, and he has a stubby little white fluff of fur for a tail. I disengage the safety on my rifle. The bolt is forward on the gun, and I know there's a round in the chamber. I steady myself. I turn ever so slightly to get a better angle.

Key Functions of Education from a Functionalist Perspective

What are the key functions of education from a Functionalist Perspective? Ever since the education system was invented, there have been a lot of ideas and criticisms of how it should work. The most famous sociological groups, functionalists and Marxists, were part of this and still are today. They both think that their views are best for society. Talcott Parsons believes that the education system has three main functions. Firstly it socializes young people into key cultural values such as equality of opportunity, competition and religious morality.Education is said by functionalists (especially Durkheim) to emphasize moral responsibilities in society that people should have towards each other. If these norms were not passed down through generations then there would be a tendency for individualism (where people believe that they are more important than social groups). Citizenship and religious education were introduced as compulsory subjects in schools to see that young people did thi ngs with thought for the society. The second function is to do with the skills that education teaches children, from literacy and numeracy to more job-specific skills.Occupational jobs are becoming more specialized and this in turn will lead to more years in education. The final function of education, according to functionalists is the allocating of roles of young people in society. Examinations and qualifications are said to allocate people for their most suited job. The equality of opportunity took place and so higher talented people are given the most functionally important jobs for the society. Parsons was criticized as he failed to consider that the values transmitted by the educational system may be those of a ruling minority rather than society as a whole.Like parsons, functionalists Davis and Moore saw education as a means of selecting or shifting people for different levels of the jobs market and ensuring that the most talented and qualified individuals are allocated to the most important jobs with high rewards. Society is therefore meritocracy in which people are rewarded for intelligence, ability and effort. They where criticized because the relationship between academic credentials and occupational reward is not close. Income is only weakly linked to educational attainment. There is doubt about the proposition that the educational system grades people in terms of ability.It has been argued that intelligence is so difficult to pin down that school achievement can never equal ‘intelligence’. While Marxists do share many ideas of functionalists e. g. the fact that education prepares us for out acceptance of the values of society they also see how the education system is alienating children. Functionalists, on the other hand, seem unable to see this and believe that the education system can only do well to children by teaching them norms and values. Functionalists where criticized because as Marxists say, education system is not meritocrat ic as there are the influence of class, ethnicity and gender.

Penguin Facts

Penguins (Aptenodytes, Eudyptes, Eudyptula Pygoscelis, Spheniscus, and Megadyptes species, all in the Spheniscidae family) are perennially popular birds: chubby, tuxedo-clad creatures that waddle charmingly across the rocks and ice floes and belly flop into the sea. They are native to oceans in the southern hemisphere and in the Galapagos Islands. Fast Facts: Penguins Scientific Name: Aptenodytes, Eudyptes, Eudyptula Pygoscelis, Spheniscus, MegadyptesCommon Name: PenguinBasic Animal Group: Bird  Ã‚  Size: range from 17–48 inchesWeight: 3.3–30 poundsLifespan: 6–30 yearsDiet:  CarnivoreHabitat: Oceans in the southern hemisphere and the Galapagos IslandsConservation Status: Five species are listed as Endangered, five are Vulnerable, three are Near Threatened. Description Penguins are birds, and although they may not look like our other feathered friends, they are, indeed, feathered. Because they spend so much of their lives in the water, they keep their feathers slicked down and waterproofed. Penguins have a special oil gland, called a preen gland, that produces a steady supply of waterproofing oil. A penguin uses its beak to apply the substance to its feathers regularly. Their oiled feathers help keep them warm in the frigid waters, and also reduce drag when theyre swimming. Although penguins have wings, they cant fly at all. Their wings are flattened and tapered and look and function more like dolphin fins than bird wings. Penguins are efficient divers and swimmers, built like torpedoes, with wings designed for propelling their bodies through the water instead of air. Of all the recognized species of penguins, the largest is the Emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri), which can grow to four feet in height and 50–100 pounds in weight. The smallest is the little penguin (Eudyptula minor) which grows to an average 17 inches in length and weighs about 3.3 pounds. Jurgen Christine Sohns/Getty Images Habitat Dont travel to Alaska if youre looking for penguins. There are 19 described species of penguins on the planet, and all but one of them lives below the equator. Despite the common misconception that all penguins live among the icebergs of the Antarctic, thats not true, either. Penguins live on every continent in the Southern Hemisphere, including Africa, South America, and Australia. Most inhabit islands where they arent threatened by large predators. The only species that lives north of the equator is the Galapagos penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus), which, in line with its name, resides in the Galapagos Islands. Diet Most penguins feed on whatever they manage to catch while swimming and diving. Theyll eat any marine creature they can catch and swallow: fish, crabs, shrimp, squid, octopus, or krill. Like other birds, penguins dont have teeth and cant chew their food. Instead, they have fleshy, backward-pointing spines inside their mouths, and they use these to guide their prey down their throats. An average-sized penguin eats two pounds of seafood per day during the summer months. Krill, a small marine crustacean, is a particularly important part of the diet for young penguin chicks. One long-term study of the diet of gentoo penguins found that breeding success was directly related to how much krill they ate. Penguin parents forage for krill and fish at sea and then travel back to their chicks on land to regurgitate the food into their mouths. Macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolphus) are specialist feeders; they depend on krill alone for their nutrition. Ger Bosma/Getty Images Behavior Most penguins swim between 4–7 mph underwater, but the zippy gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) can propel itself through the water at 22 mph. Penguins can dive hundreds of feet deep, and stay submerged for as long as 20 minutes. And they can launch themselves out of the water like porpoises to avoid predators below the surface or to return to the surface of the ice. Birds have hollow bones so theyre lighter in the air, but a penguins bones are thicker and heavier. Just as a SCUBA divers use weights to control their buoyancy, a penguin relies on its beefier bones to counteract its tendency to float. When they need to make a quick escape from the water, penguins release air bubbles trapped between their feathers to instantly decrease drag and increase speed. Their bodies are streamlined for speed in the water. Reproduction and Offspring Nearly all penguin species practice monogamy, meaning a male and female mate exclusively with each other for the breeding season. Some even remain partners for life. The male penguin usually finds itself a nice nesting site before attempting to court a female. Most species produce two eggs at a time, but emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri, the largest of all the penguins) raise just one chick at a time. The emperor penguin male takes sole responsibility for keeping their egg warm by holding it on his feet and under his folds of fat, while the female journeys to the sea for food. Penguin eggs are incubated between 65 and 75 days, and when they are ready to hatch, the chicks use their beaks to break the shell, a process which can take up to three days. Chicks  weigh about 5–7 ounces at birth.  When chicks are small, one adult remains with the nest while the other forages. The parent tends to the chicks, keeping them warm until their feathers develop in about 2 months, and feeding them regurgitated food, a period which varies between 55 and 120 days. Penguins reach sexual maturity between three and eight years of age. Sylvain Cordie/Getty Images Conservation Status Five species of penguins are already classified as endangered (Yellow-eyed, Galapagos, Erect Crested, African, and Northern Rockhopper), and most of the remaining species are vulnerable or near threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Natures Red List. The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is the most endangered species on the list.   Threats Scientists warn that penguins worldwide are threatened by climate change, and some species may soon disappear. Penguins rely on food sources that are sensitive to changes in ocean temperatures, and dependent on polar ice. As the planet warms, the sea ice melting season lasts longer, impacting krill populations and penguin habitat. Sources Barbraud, Christophe, and Henri Weimerskirch. Emperor Penguins and Climate Change. Nature 411.6834 (2001): 183–86. Print.BirdLife International. Spheniscus demersus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: e.T22697810A132604504, 2018.Bradford, Alina. Penguin Facts: Species Habitat. Live Science, September 22, 2014.Cole, Theresa L., et al. Ancient DNA of Crested Penguins: Testing for Temporal Genetic Shifts in the World’s Most Diverse Penguin Clade. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 131 (2019): 72–79. Print.Davis, Lloyd S. and John T. Darby (eds.). Penguin Biology. London: Elsevier, 2012.  Elliott, Kyle H., et al. High Flight Costs, but Low Dive Costs, in Auks Support the Biomechanical Hypothesis for Flightlessness in Penguins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.23 (2013): 9380–84. Print.Lynch, Heather J., William F. Fagan, and Ron Naveen. Population Trends and Reproductive Success at a Frequently Visited Penguin Colony on the Weste rn Antarctic Peninsula. Polar Biology 33.4 (2010): 493–503. Print.Lynch, H. J., and M. A. LaRue. First Global Census of the Adà ©lie Penguin. The Auk: Ornithological Advances 131.4 (2014): 457–66. Print.Species Profile for African penguin (Spheniscus demersus). ECOS Environmental Conservation Online System, 2010.Threats to Penguins, Defenders of Wildlife.Waluda, Claire M., et al. Long-Term Variability in the Diet and Reproductive Performance of Penguins at Bird Island, South Georgia. Marine Biology 164.3 (2017): 39. Print.Waters, Hannah. 14 Fun Facts About Penguins. Smithsonian, April 25, 2013.