Friday, January 9, 2015

We Can Fix It

From the pen (or keyboard) of a hard core hunter. I am that guy.... the deer hunter.... who lives it and breathes it. When I go to bed I think about deer and when I get up, I think about deer. I have 8 children with various age ranges and I have kept them in the outdoors. I do that for a lot of reasons but mainly because I can't imagine life not spent in nature. My kids though do not go to bed thinking of deer or wake up thinking of deer. Granted some are small like my little Madason in the picture here but some are not. So I wonder why is that? It is actually the one thing in the world that does bother me. I wonder why  the numbers of hunters across the country are dwindling each and every year. I have spoken with the State of Alabama wildlife guys and they say, it is hard to compete with the instant gratification generation and the PS3. What? That is your answer...you sound so defeated. You are our....leaders? I just can't go along with this thinking. In fact, I'm against it. I'm no genius but something is wrong. Something has happened. What was it and how do we fix it? While I go over this stuff in my head and beat myself up over the answer to a vital question, a man down the street by the name of Bill Blanton offered to take my 10 year old son on a coon hunt. I wasn't sure about it. I'm no dog hunter. Everybody is always complaining about the dogs running all over. But it was May, no harm in it, y'all have fun. Bill picked Luke up and they headed down the road.  I waited up on Luke hoping he was having a good time. Bill is older and has Parkinson's disease.  I just didn't know how it would go. When Luke got home, I saw something.....a huge smile. His eyes were bright, his face lit up. He had been on a coon hunt and he loved it. Bill thanked me for letting Luke go and he drove away. Luke talked for the next two hours. Over the next few weeks Luke kept asking to coon hunt. Bill knew he could not hunt much longer and began to give his hunting things to Luke. A light, a harness, some waders and then his prized dog. I began to hunt with Luke and by the time September rolled around our hunting party had grown to 11. Usually we had two adults and 9 kids. My pregnant daughter and wife went with the son in law one night with Luke's dog and low and behold they treed a coon! Our ranks continued to grow until it hit me at a tree one night. It was just before Christmas. The dogs were treed on the top of a ridge. The moon was full and the stars were bright. Our hunting party reached the place. The bawling of the dogs echoed out through the cold night. Surrounding the tree with lights shinning towards the sky in search of the coon were 9 kids and the 2 adults. I stood back and looked at all the lights, I heard the kids yelling, "I see him! I see him!" Luke had the gun and was zeroed in on a mission. As the lights lit the single tree and the two coon eyes shown bright I thought to myself.... this is my Christmas tree. This is the answer to my question. It is not the PS3 or the instant gratification generation. It is the treestand. We have vilified dog hunting in general. The casualties and collateral  damage has been beyond our ability to define it. We haven't cared to define it because the Trophy Buck is the only thing that matters. We have done this to the demise of us all and those in power cow down to the self serving trophy hunter. My hunting party went from one person....me.... to me and 9 kids, who blow my phone up every night wanting to know when we can go again. You want to know why the numbers are dwindling...ask me...I'll tell you. You want to know how to fix it...ask my friend Bill Blanton.