A time to Kill

Death is natures way of saying ”Howdy”.

 

 You must be wery wery quiet when hunting wabbits.

                                                                  Elmer Fudd

 

 Ah fall, the time when a young mans fancy turns to communing with nature, getting out in those glorious woods, possibly encountering one of our furry, four footed friends..... & killing it.

 That’s right folks, it’s hunting season again. The time when grown men, leave their desks, razor blades, & women behind, don camouflage & pumpkin orange caps, load up on whiskey, cigars & toilet paper & head for the hills.

 For this is the season to answer that nagging call of the wild, to revert back to our hunter-gather fore-bearers & kill or be shamed. A time to provide meat for the family, bring home the bacon as it were. Even if it cost more per pound getting it, than if you ate nightly in French restaurants the entire year.

 For those of you new to the area prepare yourself for an onslaught of bearded men the likes of which you thought had fought along side Atilla the Hun.

 400,000 thousand strong.

 That’s right wary reader, 236,904 Elk hunters, & 195,054 deer hunters will descend on Colorado during the next 2 months in pursuit of our 194,400 elk & 545,200 deer.

  That’s a hunter for every 1.7 animals, that’s more men with guns than we sent to Desert Storm. That’s more armed men than were in Vietnam at any given time (although 2.4 million served in Vietnam that was over 20 years)...this is in two months.

 Deer hunters will enjoy a 30% success rate, elk hunters a 16% success rate.

 In other words almost 100,000 animals will meet their demize in what many consider one of the most barbaric rituals in modern times.

 What makes a normal law-abiding, Church going, children loving, husband & father, suddenly throw down his cell phone, pick up a gun & march off into the woods where he’ll, squat in the mud, chew fire chard meat , drink himself nauseous while howling raucausly at bodily noises. How can the same man that brought a kitten home for his daughter last week blow Bambi’s brains out this week? What exactly is that tiny little dark element in human nature that allows a otherwise ‘civilized’ man to revert back to something that will crawl through brush for days sneaking up on a defenseless, unarmed, dewy eyed, herbivore & murder it.

 How can this same man that spinach makes queasy at the home front then suddenly two days later rip into the still warm body of his newly  massacred victim & extract the bleeding liver to tear at it like a starving hyena.

Could it be that we are still animals ourselves. Could it be for all our excellent breeding & fine tuition’s paid, down at our very core, under those pressed arrow shirts we are nothing more than Neanderthal with a haircut? A carnivore with a persistent blood lust that thousands of years of evolution cannot erase.

Could that be?

 

 On the other hand.

 400,000 hunters will soon descend on Colorado for two months of the most stress reliving, male bonding, nature communing, healthy recreation left in today’s society. These sportsmen will fork over 55 million dollars alone for licenses, not to mention a kings ransom in orange evening ware & a staggering amount in potent spirits & exotic groceries.

  The Colorado Division of Wildlife actually receives no state tax money, & only 8 million in Federal money’s generated by excise tax on arms and ammunition go to the agency, so it is safe to say the same bearded, smelly element that stalks these animals pays heavily for their preservation. This blood money, as it were, goes into programs such as teaching 5000 urban youth to fish, awarding $50,000.00 in scholarships for students in wildlife management, transplanting grouse, monitoring bald eagles, stocking streams & 1100 lakes with close to 100,000 fish, & training 21,000 students in hunter safety & outdoor ethics.

 As we all know few elk & deer in this county would have survived last winters heavy snowfalls without hay bought with hunters money. So it is a carefully monitored business actually, the number of licenses sold reflect the winter kill rate & the spring birth survival rate, resulting in Colorado laying claim to the largest Elk herd in the nation.

  Oh yeah, & if your worried about becoming a statistic yourself during the next two months consider this. There has been only one non-hunter fatality in Colorado since 1970.

A young dirt biker ‘sneaking’ up on a trigger happy man in orange.

 

 But hunting is far more than statistics. Where would this massive yearly build up of testosterone be unleashed if it were not for hunting? Tractor pulls & football are entertaining but not near the release of aggression that killing something is. And talk about bonding, in today’s kinder gentler environment the human male has been so namby pamby-whitewashed that his position sometimes is lost in this new politically correct society. But in the woods, with a gun & a two day growth, mans sense of purpose has never been clearer....the provider.

 As a buck toothed, four-eyed, scrawny 12 year old, shooting my first deer probably did more for my self esteem & my relationship with my proud father than any other singular moment. The small buck involved probably didn’t harbor the same feelings , but I will always be thankful for it’s sacrifice.

 And finally consider this option, in the past 6 years the federal government has personally dispatched over 638,000 coyotes. Yet the coyote population is exploding. It seems if left alone only the dominant monogamous pair will breed, keeping the size of the pack stable. But when threatened by indiscriminate killing all other pack members begin breeding & in larger numbers. So, by killing them, we have eliminated the dumber, slower ones. What is emerging appears to be double the number of intellectually superior coyotes.

 So if my calculations are correct, these deer & elk , so long complaisant about the up & coming carnage, are very soon going to get the picture.....

Then we’ll have ourselves a sport.