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In many mountain towns, including this one, today is the busiest day of the year. The Friday before the start of big-game season is the annual peak for highway traffic, last-minute camping purchases and the sale of spirituous beverages.
This annual onslaught of rifle-toting drunks is sanctioned by the state, which gives them licenses, and welcomed by the local chamber of commerce, which loves the money they bring to town.
But I'm getting tired of it. Our public lands are
supposed to be managed for multiple use,
but for the
next month or more, there are only two uses. You can be a
hunter. And if you want to enjoy an Indian Summer walk with
your family, you can be a target.
This keeps getting worse. Once upon a time, there was only one big-game season, which commenced in October. Now the woods are a treacherous place any time after Colorado Day, with early hunting seasons for archers and muzzle-loaders. No doubt there are lobbyists pressing at this moment for special seasons for pistols, knives and boomerangs.
I eat meat and I own a gun or two, so I can't come up with any moral objections to hunting. But what can you say in its favor?
Hunters claim that they harvest
surplus deer and
elk which might otherwise starve to death. But why is there
a surplus? Because other hunters a century ago eliminated
the major predators of deer and elk. Bring back the wolves
and grizzly bears, and let them conduct the harvest.
Another common argument for hunting is that some people need the meat.
Figure what the average middle-class hunting trip costs -- investments in rifles, the pickup and camper, the food and beverage, the specialized clothing and gear, the time taken from paying work -- and beef from the supermarket looks like a bargain.
Sure, there are impoverished people who really do need cheap meat. I've known a few. Making all hunting illegal would not affect them, though, because they already disregard all known game laws. They never buy licenses, and when their larders are empty, they just go out and jacklight a deer, no matter what the season.
But that doesn't mean that regular licensed hunters are all law-abiding sorts. Every rural landowner has an assortment of horror stories about gates left open, shots fired at his home, dead livestock, holes in his fuel tanks, meadows driven across, total disregard for his property rights, etc.
Much of that, I suspect, is that most ranchers content
themselves with mere No Hunting
and No
Trespassing
signs. If they applied some with and
creativity when posting their land, they wouldn't have
trespass problems.
No matter how many elk were grazing on the other side of
the fence, would anyone cross it if the sign said Rocky
Mountain Radioactive Materials Disposal Site No. 13.
Visitors must apply at gate for protective garments
? Or
if the placard proclaimed that a venison-infested meadow
belonged to the Colorado Rural AIDS Hospice
?
There is also the argument that big-game hunting fulfills some elemental human need. Certainly I too feel an occasional compulsion to spent several days camping with friends, swilling beer and swapping lies around the campfire. But why isn't that excuse enough? Why bother with the pretense and the trappings?
Oh, but there's the kill. That moment of truth when all your senses function at red alert, when you've finally stalked your target and the beast is in your sights. Your ancestors hunted. You're continuing a fundamental human tradition.
You can find adventure and challenge almost anywhere, though. Just try to get around Denver on the RTD, or to make a living anywhere else in Colorado. The biggest such adventure is war, where what you're hunting is also hunting you, and very few people who've been through that want to try it again.
Of course, today's hunter with his zoom scope and semi-automatic rifle says he is following ancient human traditions. He's a law-abiding citizen, except when he sees game within a fenced and posted pasture. He's saving cash by spending about $10 a pound for such meat as he gets. He's helping cure a wildlife population problem that was caused by hunters.
But he spends money. Those who profit will welcome him this weekend, and the rest of us can hunker down indoors and wonder what we did to deserve this armed invasion.
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