Can we find a solution for hunters and want-to-be hunters?

This old rock pile is in a pretty good area for wild game. I don’t mean the kind of wild game that stands on corners and causes street fights. I mean the kind that grazes or waddles around stinking! We have trouble with deer just like the rest of the population around here, tearing up fences and eating all the shrubs and flowers. My close relative is a victim of such with her garden being raided several times.

I suppose I would be as desperate as the next feller if I lived in town, just a few feet of yard and neighbors close enough to hear their garbage disposal run in their kitchens. I would want the chance to hunt the deer that damage vehicles and make the best chili in the whole world. I would probably beg some landowner for an OK to traipse around his place with a loaded gun and promise not to take a calf or cow to the locker plant! That is a daily affair during this time of the year.

I do have some special woods, the kind that deer like to hang around in, and they, the deer, take kindly to hay and cubes, water that is close and clean and they like our cattle just fine. You can find them almost daily, but I am here to tell you they do move around. The distance traveled in a day is surely miles and miles and they might or might not return for the next day or night. They are not branded or designed on by me or anyone else.

I do encourage the offspring to take a deer yearly for the meat. We all like that and I have stopped hunting for myself. The venison shows up in our freezer and I am thankful for it. The grands are learning to hunt and have attended the sport since they were little, so we are carrying on an old family tradition. The preacher is a country boy and welcomed to put up a stand on our place and we hope he has the chance to take a 12-point.

I think that is plenty of folks pursuing things with loaded high power rifles on my tiny little place! I sometimes will allow a feller to hunt for a day, but it is against my better judgment because he might not remember it is just for that day. I want to be nice, you know, I want to be nice but, golly, as sure as the sun rises in the east, I can’t always be! We live here, work here, and are at any given time apt to be walking around looking for an old hide or calf, tromping through

the woods, looking for the world like a deer!

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, if I could solve the need, I would for the hunters and want to be hunters needing a place to practice the sport that is in our nature and, I believe, even in our genetics. Since the beginning of time, we have needed to hunt to fill the larder in our teepees and wigwams. You fellers who can figure out all things need to get busy on this one!