Run, Bambi, Run!
Man is in the woods
It’s hunting season up here in the north woods, and my feelings aren’t mixed. I dread this time of year. We live in a ‘neighborhood’, a small pocket of dwellings where hunting isn’t allowed, but I hear guns going off in the woods around us.
I know the deer numbers are growing because I see it happening in our own yard, in our surrounding woods. No driving fast around here. They’re everywhere and, since deer have little depth perception and can’t gauge the distance between them and our car, we have to look out for them. I can’t tell you how many close calls we’ve had, with only one deer-car accident, ever.
Still, I love seeing them, and, since they’re supposed to be protected here, I throw out scraps, hoping to lure them to a place where I can watch them. I love watching the new fawns grow, not wanting to think about their fate when one of us humans decides, a couple of years from now, that they’re prey, fine specimens worthy of killing.
I wrote this piece a few years ago and it still holds true. As always, I would love to know what you think.
Tomorrow marks the opening of hunting season here in Michigan’s north woods. The schools will be closed in most upper state communities, including ours.
Opening Day is an annual holiday for the kids, even though only a small percentage of them will be out in the woods with guns. For many of them, today will be their initiation in deer camp, and it’s a day they’ve been waiting for all year. I don’t quite know when it started but I do know that up here it’s one of those holidays that is so sacrosanct nobody questions it.
I chose to live where I live, knowing I would be the odd woman out when it came to hunting and killing animals. I’ve lived here for enough years now to have grown used to the fact that almost everybody I know here either hunts or looks forward to the benefits of the hunt.
I haven’t become complacent about it, but I do know it’s more complicated than a simple wish to make it stop. Up here, where unemployment measures in double digits and people are noticeably poor, I’ve come to recognize that a deer kill means food for a struggling family.
And who am I, a meat-eater myself, to turn up my nose? As long as we’re into eating meat, animals must die in order to keep our freezers full. I try not to think about that, hypocritical as that may be, but it’s a fact, isn’t it?
But hunting for sport is different.
With hunting as sport, meat in the freezer is a byproduct of the main event, which is killing for the sheer thrill of killing. No matter how the industry tries to mainstream it, they can’t get away from the fact that there’s nothing sporting about much of what we call “hunting.”
Hunting no longer means tracking your prey. It means sitting and waiting, often in a comfortable covered deer blind or tree stand. The folks up here stake out their territory and begin building bait piles weeks ahead of opening day, in order to make the deer feel comfortable enough so that they’ll stick around until the day the shooting begins.
Around this time every store and gas station takes to selling 30 to 50 pound bags of corn, carrots, and sugar beets. Deer feed. Big white blocks of salt lick are stacked alongside the feed. Artificial musk and urine scent can be sprayed on the bushes and trees surrounding the covered, camouflaged stand from which the hunter “hunts”. There are deer calls and deer decoys. There are sprays to kill human scent. Camouflage clothing is not just big business, it’s an up north fashion trend.
Motion sensor trail cameras catch deer on the move, even at night.
Hunting rifles have become high-tech, with state-of-the-art scopes that see at night and at long distances. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they can see around trees, too.)
The most shameful thing that can happen to a hunter during hunting season these days is to come home empty-handed. If the hunter doesn’t come home with at least one carcass they need only look in the mirror to find the one to blame. Every aid known to man is at their disposal. The deer will come. What it takes after that is simply to aim and shoot. Aim. And shoot.
By the way, when we go for our walk today (and every day through hunting season), this is what I’ll be wearing:
When we moved from Cincinnati to the Poconos, I was definitely shocked to learn about Dec. 1, the first day of deer season here, was a school holiday. I grew up with Bambi etched into my soul, and it just seemed so WRONG. Well, that was 50 years ago, and my perspective has changed. I've enjoyed venison, and appreciate that the hunters I know personally hunt for that one deer and then share generously with friends, family, and the needy. I recall winters when food became so scarce our deer were dying of starvation. I still love to see them wandering around the neighborhood, and recall one breathtaking late November night returning from a show performance when seven of them were peacefully gathered in my yard in the moonlight. beautiful sight. I guess I can listed with the ambiguous on this.
This is challenging for me. I understand that deer populations need culling and that hunting for food is one way to do this. And it sickens me nonetheless. I find the rampant species-ism in our culture confounding: why do we see the lives of dogs and cats and horses as sacred and worth protecting while we slaughter 200 million animals EVERY DAY. I can't reconcile the two positions. Suffering is suffering. Why do it if you don't have to? So after years of waffling on the fence, I've stopped eating animal products. AND I know that is a privileged choice. I think it's an issue worth looking at closely.