It's buck season, and once again I'm surrounded by orange-hatted hunters and the constant reverberations of bullets.
       Because many of my friends are life-long hunters, we have come to an understanding. They don't tell me how much fun it is to wake up at 3 a.m., spend an hour getting into combat gear a size too small, grab a 17-course breakfast, then slosh through snow, mud, and sleet in the middle of the night to spend the next dozen hours catching pneumonia in below-freezing weather trying to find anything larger than a chipmunk. In turn, I promise neither to invoke the memory of Bambi nor to laugh hysterically when they return from the hunt looking as if they had lost a mud wrestling bout with Tonya Harding.
      But, I am getting weary of hearing all their reasons why they think killing animals can be justified.
       My friends say hunting is a sport--just like tennis apparently. So far, I've failed to see the "sport"in being able to use a high-power telescope rifle to shoot 50 million mourning doves from the skies each year, or to pluck off the ground 30 million squirrels which are usually shot from less than 50 yards while standing and looking at their killers. Some hunters just admit they like the "sport"of shooting pigeons; others claim they kill pigeons because they have diseases. Of course, none of these socially-conscious hunters check the medical condition of the pigeons before they shoot them. It's somewhat like trying to eliminate the flu by randomly shooting as many humans as possible.
      My friends say they hunt for the meat; it cuts down on their grocery bill. But, they readily pay thousands of dollars for guns and shot, clothes, cabins, and 4-wheel drives, then donate or sell the meat to friends and friends of friends. Unlike a couple of decades ago, we now have supermarkets so we no longer have to rely upon our hunting skills to survive. And, certainly, unlike our forefathers, most hunters don't use the hides for clothing or shelter; as yet, no one has proposed donating 30 million gallons of squirrel stew to help feed the starving masses of homeless.
      My friends say they hunt because "it's tradition,"that it's "a bonding experience."At one time, the majority culture used leeches to suck bad blood out of sickly patients, but we no longer have that "tradition."And if it's bonding they want, they can still drink beer around a poker table sheltered by a ramshackle cabin while discussing how close they got to that 600-pound black bear they almost captured on Kodachrome, and the great 8-point buck they're pretty sure they got a clean shot at on Kodacolor.
      The state's Fish and Game Commission claims we need to kill off--they use the euphemism "thin the herd"--about a half-million 4 million nationally white-tailed deer each year and 1,500 of the state's 7,500 black bear so that the populations won't increase and the animals won't starve to death. That's real humanitarian of them. We're just killing off the mothers and fathers so their children can have a better dinner. I sure hope no one figures out a similar strategy to rid the earth of its burgeoning human population problem. Besides, say hunters, there's more deer now than ever before. It's a similar argument 19th century hunters used to justify killing buffalo which soon became an endangered species.
       But, many of the practices of the nation's fish and game commissions are designed to artifically inflate the herds so there will be sufficient numbers of deer to kill. In Michigan, for example, the state is near the end of a 20 year plan that will have resulted in increasing the number of deer from 1.3 million to two million. The program is so successful that the state has been exporting deer to other states where residents can claim we need to kill deer to prevent them from running into Chevrolets.
      Even if we accept their "population control"nonsense, and assume that raising and "harvesting"deer for meat is no worse than raising sheep, hogs, turkeys, and steers to be slaughtered for the dinner plate, deer kill represents only two percent of all animal killings by hunters, and no one argues we need to "thin out"the squirrel population. Further, most hunters will admit they'd still go out in November and December even if there were no need to "thin the herds,"and many admit they enjoy the "thrill of the kill."Maybe, it's their way of releasing excess energy or an abundance of testosterone.
       Finally, farmers say deer and bear are pests that eat their crops. Black bears, which almost always stay away from humans, are good foragers, and believe that food is food; after all, those unfenced cornfields were planted to feed the hungry. Nevertheless, it seems, we justifying the killing of animals for economic reasons. But, if mankind didn't try to asphalt every piece of land that showed even one blade of grass, then it would be possible there would be sufficient land for farmers, and vegetation for the animals. More importantly, if we hadn't killed off the natural predators, almost all of whom do not kill for "sport,"it is quite possible that the balance of nature would take care of the problem without mankind's interference.
       Fishermen are now practicing "catch-and-release,"an intelligent and sportsman-like way to enjoy the outdoors. They can still pursue the prey, then having proven superiority over a wily or tough opponent, allow it to live. For those trophies, there's always cameras; a 16-by-20 print of a living fish certainly seems to be more impressive than a stuffed one hanging on a mantel. If the fisherman want a stuffed fish, taxidermists now have the ability to take a prize photo and create a match.
       In the balance of nature, and in whatever God's scheme of things is, the intelligence and ability to share the earth's environment peacefully and allow life to continue is far more powerful than the license to kill.

Copyright 2001 Walter M. Brasch