It is about that time again- time for me to get schizophrenic about one of my favorite pastimes: deer hunting.
I love deer hunting. I hate deer hunting.
Both regular readers know about my outlook on the annual fall ritual. I simply love the fall woods, the preparation, the chase, the camaraderie and, every once in a while, success. From mid-October until January, most of this writer’s spare time is spent outdoors chasing the wily whitetail…and ducks, quail, salmon, geese, squirrels, et al.
However, deer season has a dark side. This year I plan to use this column as my application for full professional membership in the Curmudgeon Newspaper Columnist Guild by bluntly saying: I hate the majority of deer hunters.
Every year I spend many sentences imploring hunters to spend time learning their weapon and its limitations, then to use judgment and ethics when hunting. Most important, I ask that hunters honor others, their landowners and the game itself by treating it all with respect. However, the first week of gun season always gets me fuming about the poor behavior among deer hunters and I write a diatribe about the abysmal deeds of what seems like a sizable minority of deer hunters, including several friends. This year I am getting an early start.
The reason for all this poison newsprint is a letter received this week from a reader who requested to not have their name used (for obvious reason):
“Dear Brent,
While you are on the topics of the legalities of deer hunting and good relations of hunters with the non-hunting public, I wish you would address something that makes my blood boil. We live on a country road on which we like to walk, and every year I dread what I might find during deer season.
I have put on my boots to fish plastic bags of deer guts out of a marsh, held my nose until I could stand it no longer and hauled out my shovel to bury deer remains so that I could again enjoy a walk down my road. Once on the way the creek, my four-year-old and I found a child’s wading pool filled with the severed heads of two does and other unwanted deer parts.
PLEASE! Although I don’t hunt, I respect hunters and the necessary role they play in the balance of nature now that other large predators are gone. I don’t know what law that might cover dumping of deer remains, but common courtesy-decency-would dictate something other than what I see each year.
Signed- XXXX”
The part that really caught my eye was in the third paragraph where the writer mentions that he or she doesn’t hunt but does respect hunters. How many more times can this otherwise rational letter writer find a carelessly dumped pile of guts before becoming a vocal anti-hunter? What kind of impression will a four-year-old have of deer hunters upon remembering a wading pool full of rotting Bambi heads? What if the four-year-old grows up to become an important journalist or movie star?
What if our letter writer happens to be a state legislator or someone of high economic status who could use their position to push an anti-hunting agenda? Hunters are constantly complaining about restrictive laws and attacks on the sport but then a few of them go outside and act as if the outdoors was a big cheap motel room in which they can do as they please.
I also find discarded deer parts on a regular basis. Two years ago, I found a nice buck in the 200-pound class that had been field dressed, antlers removed and the interior tenderloins taken before it was illegally dumped near the local fairgrounds. I reported this find to the local conservation officer because I could only imagine that this was the work of a poacher, not a real hunter, even though the gun season had been in force for a week. I won’t even talk about the deer carcasses that I find every spring when fishing along nearby creeks.
What is the point of all this irate rambling? I just ask for a tiny bit of self-control from those participating in the blood sports this fall. Your acts of thoughtlessness or stupidity hurt my hunting opportunities and those of my children. I realize that many illegal or immoral acts are committed by poachers and other such scum but there are also too many other otherwise respectable men and women who simply look over their shoulder and shrug when seeing or committing a dissolute act. To repeat a favorite quote: “We have seen the enemy and it is us”
The point is simple- if you don’t care about illegal dumping or trespassing or tasteless displays of dead game or terrible marksmanship, you’re not a hunter.
You’re a pig
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The deer hunting pigs
Posted by Brent on 9/13/09 • Categorized as Fish/Hunt,Out in the Open columns
I love deer hunting. I hate deer hunting.
Both regular readers know about my outlook on the annual fall ritual. I simply love the fall woods, the preparation, the chase, the camaraderie and, every once in a while, success. From mid-October until January, most of this writer’s spare time is spent outdoors chasing the wily whitetail…and ducks, quail, salmon, geese, squirrels, et al.
However, deer season has a dark side. This year I plan to use this column as my application for full professional membership in the Curmudgeon Newspaper Columnist Guild by bluntly saying: I hate the majority of deer hunters.
Every year I spend many sentences imploring hunters to spend time learning their weapon and its limitations, then to use judgment and ethics when hunting. Most important, I ask that hunters honor others, their landowners and the game itself by treating it all with respect. However, the first week of gun season always gets me fuming about the poor behavior among deer hunters and I write a diatribe about the abysmal deeds of what seems like a sizable minority of deer hunters, including several friends. This year I am getting an early start.
The reason for all this poison newsprint is a letter received this week from a reader who requested to not have their name used (for obvious reason):
“Dear Brent,
While you are on the topics of the legalities of deer hunting and good relations of hunters with the non-hunting public, I wish you would address something that makes my blood boil. We live on a country road on which we like to walk, and every year I dread what I might find during deer season.
I have put on my boots to fish plastic bags of deer guts out of a marsh, held my nose until I could stand it no longer and hauled out my shovel to bury deer remains so that I could again enjoy a walk down my road. Once on the way the creek, my four-year-old and I found a child’s wading pool filled with the severed heads of two does and other unwanted deer parts.
PLEASE! Although I don’t hunt, I respect hunters and the necessary role they play in the balance of nature now that other large predators are gone. I don’t know what law that might cover dumping of deer remains, but common courtesy-decency-would dictate something other than what I see each year.
Signed- XXXX”
The part that really caught my eye was in the third paragraph where the writer mentions that he or she doesn’t hunt but does respect hunters. How many more times can this otherwise rational letter writer find a carelessly dumped pile of guts before becoming a vocal anti-hunter? What kind of impression will a four-year-old have of deer hunters upon remembering a wading pool full of rotting Bambi heads? What if the four-year-old grows up to become an important journalist or movie star?
What if our letter writer happens to be a state legislator or someone of high economic status who could use their position to push an anti-hunting agenda? Hunters are constantly complaining about restrictive laws and attacks on the sport but then a few of them go outside and act as if the outdoors was a big cheap motel room in which they can do as they please.
I also find discarded deer parts on a regular basis. Two years ago, I found a nice buck in the 200-pound class that had been field dressed, antlers removed and the interior tenderloins taken before it was illegally dumped near the local fairgrounds. I reported this find to the local conservation officer because I could only imagine that this was the work of a poacher, not a real hunter, even though the gun season had been in force for a week. I won’t even talk about the deer carcasses that I find every spring when fishing along nearby creeks.
What is the point of all this irate rambling? I just ask for a tiny bit of self-control from those participating in the blood sports this fall. Your acts of thoughtlessness or stupidity hurt my hunting opportunities and those of my children. I realize that many illegal or immoral acts are committed by poachers and other such scum but there are also too many other otherwise respectable men and women who simply look over their shoulder and shrug when seeing or committing a dissolute act. To repeat a favorite quote: “We have seen the enemy and it is us”
The point is simple- if you don’t care about illegal dumping or trespassing or tasteless displays of dead game or terrible marksmanship, you’re not a hunter.
You’re a pig
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