Why there are still animals to hunt

Sometimes I think animal right activists underestimate the skill, cunning and what some would call "genetic intelligence" of the supposedly dumb creatures they are trying so hard to protect from humans.

What prompts this observation is a hunting trip I took last week to a private lease in Okeechobee County with some acquaintances.  One was determined to shoot a hog with bow-and-arrow and a wild turkey with a shotgun; the other bow-hunted for turkey, which is one of the most difficult things in the world to do.

Neither was successful.

The would-be hog killer and I sat quietly in a tree-stand for nearly three hours in late afternoon, hoping a wild hog would be drawn in by the corn scattered by a mechanical feeder.  Just before dusk, a sow approached from an open field, accompanied by three piglets.  But they didn't come rushing in all pig-like to scarf up the corn.  Instead, they circled around behind our tree-stand, stayed close to the safety of the palmettos directly behind us and looked around.

The piglets could clearly see (and smell) the corn on the ground directly in front of them, and started to move toward it.  But the sow grunted at them and they stayed put, warily circling the clearing and using the cabbage trees for cover.

My hunting buddy could see that these supposedly dumb wild pigs were not about to just run out into the open.  So he stood up, drew back his bow, and let an arrow fly at the sow standing under a cabbage tree. 

She oinked in a panic, jumped, and kicked up a dirt cloud in her haste to get away.  It was a clean miss.  The arrow was embedded low on the tree trunk where it had passed under the sow's belly.

The next morning before dawn, my friend and I concealed ourselves in a camouflage tent blind at a crossroads where several gobblers had been spotted milling and scratching the previous afternoon.  My friend made some good imitation gobbler and hen calls with his wooden box call and even got a gobbler to answer him more than a half-dozen times.  He readied his shotgun for the approaching bird.

But the alpha-male turkey never came close to shooting range.  In between the human-turkey dialogue, I heard the unmistakable cluck of a hen.  After that, we never heard the gobbler again, despite repeated calling.  Small wonder.  He was obviously getting busy with the real thing.

On the other side of the lease, my other friend had somewhat better luck.  He managed to call a gobbler to within 15 feet of his blind -- easy shooting range for a bow. But when he shot, the arrow whistled between the strutting bird's puffed-up feathers, scattering a few of them, then embedded itself harmlessly in the ground.  The gobbler quickly escaped.

If hunting were the massacre animal rights activists claim, this lease would be littered with the bodies of turkey and hog. 

Thank goodness we provisioned ourselves from Costco before the hunt.

The reasons for hunting

For a non-hunter, I have probably been on more South Florida hunts than many enthusiasts of the sport.  I have hunted:   turkey, hog, deer, alligator, quail, dove, duck, coyote, and even snipe, even though I own no weapons.  For me, it's not about killing something with a gun, bow, or pole spear  -- nor, do I suspect, is killing the prime objective of many people who actually hunt.  I -- and the many REAL hunters I know -- simply enjoy going out into the fields,forests, marshes, and lakes and watching wildlife when the wildlife doesn't know it is being watched.   It is orders of magnitude more fun than going to a zoo. 

This past weekend, I went with friends Cliff and Janet Kunde to their hunting lease in Kenansville.  We sat in deer blinds, rode around in swamp buggies, and hiked through woods and pastures for two days, and the Kundes never once fired their weapons.  It was a blast -- pun intended.

Sitting in a blind at dawn, Janet and I watched  two does feeding for about 45 minutes until a boisterous flock of sandhill cranes flew in and shooed them away.  In a short walk from the hunting camp, I encountered a large flock of turkeys pecking in the shade beneath some Australian pines.  I also was confronted by a large fox squirrel (sometimes mistaken for an orangutan in  North Florida) that scampered to within ten feet of me, decided I was not a tree, and then detoured wide around me.   We also interacted with gopher tortoises, cottontails, and quail.

The difference between hunters and the people who complain about them is that hunters are directly connected to their food supply, while their antagonists are not.  A person who criticizes another for killing and dressing a deer to make steaks and sausage and who then buys from the Publix meat department is ignoring the big picture.  Whether the butcher killed the cow or the hunter shot the buck, the animal still died so that a person could have a meal.  The deer's death probably was a lot more humane than the cow's demise.

Last night, I served venison -- the proceeds of one of Janet's previous hunts -- to five neighbors.  I enjoyed it much more than steak, which I haven't bought from the supermarket in more than 15 years.  I also could appreciate the hours spent in the woods, listening and observing, that Janet expended before she ever killed her first deer.  If that doesn't show a respect for nature, I am not sure what does.