by Walter Scott
Let's talk about the heritage of the hunter for a few minutes.
The other day in a conversation with one of my editors, I was asked how I could care so much for wildlife all year long and then go out and hunt them.
When a person thinks about it, there does seem to be a dichotomy in the hunters' behavior.
Like most hunters, I do my best to provide food and cover for wildlife. I try to make life easier for the animals in my care during hard winters and wet springs. My wife and I enjoy watching deer, turkey, songbirds, and all other sorts of furry and feathered forest creatures.
We provide nesting areas, food plots, and wind breaks. I also like to hunt and eat the animals I help to raise.
Hunting is a part of wildlife enjoyment whereby a person matches their skill and wits against the game animal.
For thousands of years, we as humans have hunted, both out of necessity and for the enjoyment of being one with nature.
As time has passed, bringing home the subject of the hunt has become less a critical part of the experience. For most of us, the bonding together of men in the autumn to venture forth into the woods in pursuit of wild game is why we hunt. We are reliving an age old experience that makes us more a part of nature.
A census of whitetail taken during the year 1900 showed fewer than 350,000 deer in the United States.
A similar census taken 100 years later listed more than 30 million whitetail deer.
Hunters have made this remarkable increase in numbers possible.
Other beneficiaries of the largess of the hunting public are songbirds, endangered and threatened species, as well as other game animals.
When I was growing up, I was 16-years-old before I saw a deer in the wild. I had never seen a bald eagle, a trumpeter swan, or a Baltimore oriole.
Today, I have two eagles that spend the fall and early winter at my place. Three trumpeter swans stopped by for several weeks this fall.
We have more than enough deer to hunt and an oriole nested beside my driveway this spring.
Hunters, perhaps more than most sportsmen, take their sport seriously. We spend money to preserve habit that benefits all wildlife. We spend money to train young people in the proper and safe way to hunt. We are serious about continuing a sport that has been around as long as have people.
Hunting is a tradition that has become part of our way of life.
I look at our hunting party, as I am sure many hunters do, with pride and satisfaction. Some of us have hunted together since we were kids.
An important part of our life is the time spent afield and in the woods.
When we had children, they grew to appreciate nature and the joys of hunting. Our children now have children who will, with our help and conservation efforts, enjoy the same experiences we have shared for these many years. In thinking back to the conversation with my editor, rather than the flip response to how I could hunt of "because it is fun" a more appropriate answer may have been, "because it is who I am."
The hunt is part of the experience of nature.
I care deeply about wildlife and I have learned to enjoy nature in its many forms, from watching a newborn fawn rise on unsteady legs to the pursuit of the wizened old buck.
Hunters provide the means for animals to flourish and they have the right to enjoy nature in all its forms.