Over the last few days I’ve tried to write this up twice. Each time I gave up. I was trying to be too insightful on an issue, on something I found, that pissed me off. I left those two false starts down at the bottom of this for my own entertainment.
I had recently joined a group called Hunting, Fishing and Outdoors Professionals. They also run a forum.
This morning via email I get an update on the most recent topic. It fits perfectly into what I was having a tough time putting into words. It was a poll with a question I’ve heard before:
What do you believe is the most imminent danger to hunting in the United States?
• Gun Control
• Global Warming
• Lack of Access/Opportunity
• Politics
• Poor Recruitment
My answer had nothing to do with any of the poll choices, but it got me over the hump of what was on my mind. Added more to it here:
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
The other day, at an Illinois State Park (Silver Springs) that is also popular with birders, hikers and horseback riders, I came across a couple of butchered deer that were dumped about 20 feet from a parking lot.
When I first pulled up I could clearly see the remains of a deer. I didn’t think anything of it initially since I was also about 50 feet from a road with a 45 mph speed limit. To see the remains of deer on the side of a road around here has become rather commonplace.
When I walked up to the remains, I could see that there were two deer.
This was no longer a car meets deer issue, someone had dumped these here.
Based on how the ground was beat down around them, these deer had been gutted, skinned and slaughtered on this spot. Deer hunting was allowed on this section of the State Park and someone, or two, obviously had a successful hunt. One was a doe, the head was still attached to the skin, but the other must have been a buck, the head was missing.
Mixed in with the scattered remains were bottles of little vodka shooters, the kind you get on airlines.
I’ve only got out deer hunting once and was successful that one time. Every piece of the deer that wasn’t edible was disposed of in the woods. When I did that, I scraped away a shallow grave and when I was done, except for a slight hump in the leaves of the forest floor, you would never know I had just buried a deer.
I drove down to the next hunter parking lot and stopped to use an old outhouse that was made of wood. I noticed a hole next to the door.
The toilet seat was raised up and I noticed a piece of it was shattered off. I didn’t think much of it till I walked outside and walked around the outhouse. I found two more holes.
With the end of shotgun slug season, rather than empty their chamber and put away the slugs for next time, they shot up the outhouse. Three slug holes were in the walls and one had gone through the wall and blew the top off the raised toilet seat.
As I mentioned, quite a few other people, people that don’t hunt, use this State Park. It comes as no surprise that whenever hunting comes up, what I found is one of the first things that gets mentioned from the non-hunters that want to curtail nearby hunting opportunities. They usually cite this kind of complete disregard for not only the animals that are being hunted, but for the property anywhere near a hunting area. With what I found, I can’t blame them.
I’ve always assumed that all hunters have the same respect for the animals we kill that I do. That even after death, these animals will be given a certain amount of respect. I’ve always assumed that property will be respected and not everything is out there for others to plug full of holes. I may be wrong in those assumptions.
With the ever increasing population of the Chicago area and the decreasing amount of land that can be hunted, the question of whether or not we should be hunting so close to population centers will continue to come up. Whether or not we should be allowed to continue to hunt on land that is also used by non-hunters will also become an issue.
When that happens, the total disregard for life and property that I found this day will be used against hunters. I can see it coming.
We’ll only have ourselves to blame when that day comes. The ethical hunters, which I am sure outnumber those that are not, will be lumped in with the rest and we’ll continue to see our hunting opportunities disappear.
_____________
Failed Start #1
The pictures in this one are a bit graphic. There’s nothing all that pretty about dead things.
If I happen to be home during the day, by mid afternoon I have to get out of the house. Go for a drive on the back roads nearby, stop and take a walk if anything seems remotely interesting.
Silver Springs State Park is a five minute drive west of me and an easy destination for a quick walk. The Fox River cuts through the park, putting two thirds of the park on the south side of the river and the rest on the north side. This time of year as you drive the roads through the park, you have to watch for the pheasant. The hunters have pushed them out of the fields and they wander along the roads, a safe haven.
When startled, they don’t get and fly very high off the ground.
I’ve had one clip the antenna on my car and others look like they’re about to crash into the windshield before the veer off. Dead birds on the shoulders of the road testify that quite a few aren’t that lucky.
I always stop at the hunter check-in station to see how the pheasant hunting has gone for the day and to check to see if there are any deer hunters in the woods. This day, everyone was gone and it was barely 3 PM. Which means I can walk anywhere I want.
I headed to the north side of the river.
Failed Start #2
I’ve never gone deer hunting in Illinois. It’s not that I don’t want to, there are logistical aspects to deer hunting that I’ve never taken the time to figure out. With a broken back (supposedly I broke it when I was eight and didn’t know it) that never healed correctly, my back can go out on me without a moments notice. It’s happened when I’ve moved an empty Tupperware bowl from one side of the kitchen sink to the other. The worst one was when I went to pick up my pants one day. Over the next 60 days I had to learn how to walk all over again.
I’ve been told I’m a fool for doing the kind of fishing I do out on the Fox River, it’s not doctor recommended, but what do they know.
I did go deer hunting out in Virginia about eight years ago and I got a deer. In Virginia the deer are considerably smaller than their Illinois counterparts. The chances of getting one over 125 pounds are pretty slim. For some reason my back can handle some heavy lifting, but heaven forbid I try to pick up that dime.
This hunt I had all figured out. I would be hunting along a hardly ever used logging road that now doubled as a deer path through the dense woods. I set up in a ground blind along the old road. I can’t sit in tree stands. If my back were to go out on me while sitting up off the ground, I would be royally screwed. If I got a deer from my ground blind, I assumed it wouldn’t go more than 100 feet after being shot. This was muzzleloader season so I knew I wouldn’t be wounding the deer. It would then be easy to get the deer to the road and drive my car right up to it.
Which is exactly how it all went.
I field dressed the deer on the spot, gathered up all the entrails and buried them in a shallow hole out in the woods.
A couple of days later after I skinned and butchered the deer, I gathered up all the parts and went out into the woods. I made a shallow grave and laid the deer, what was left of it, to rest. When I left, except for a small hump in the pile of leaves, you would never know I had just buried a deer.
Back here in Illinois, with deer approaching the 200 pound mark, there is no way I’d ever be able to get them out of the woods. All of the places I’ve gone squirrel hunting I’ve also seen some of these big deer. All of these spots would require me to drag a deer for a minimum of a half mile. That’s not going to happen. I would have to quarter the deer and make four trips to get it all back to my car.
cofisher
18 Dec 2011Ken, the hunting slobs will always make more of a splash than the hunting sportsman. That’s just a fact of life. The media loves to do a story showing dead, dismembered bodies lying in view of the public than a legal kill.
Ken G
18 Dec 2011Howard,
The question of whether to continue hunting in some areas around me comes up quite often. In this case, the slobs picked a very busy stretch to do what they did. At that point it doesn’t matter that in the same area a few hundred pheasant hunters a week and another 50 or so deer hunters all did the right thing. They’ll only remember this.
I considered doing some clean up, but they were so far gone I would have needed a hazmat suit and then burn it afterward.
bob
18 Dec 2011with “rights” come responsibilities and obligations. Don’t observe the latter, you lose the former. I’m not sure it should be otherwise.
Ken G
18 Dec 2011I remember you telling guys that at some of the City Parks. Such a simple rule. Another thing I remember you saying often….what were you thinking? I need that on a t-shirt.
Pam
18 Dec 2011It’s tragic that this kind of mentality still exists. You would think people would have learned by now. It’s sad the animal protection groups don’t go after this type of hunter specifically, leaving the respectful hunters who care about resources and the environment alone.
Ken G
18 Dec 2011Pam,
We all get lumped in with the slobs, as Howard called them. That is a shame. The dedicated hunting and fishing groups have done much more good than they’re given credit for. Quite a bit that the non-hunters and anglers enjoy in the outdoors wouldn’t exist without us.
Brookfieldangler
19 Dec 2011I understand the issue of having to take a couple attempts at this one. I have been trying for a couple of days to type a response and I just can’t come up with something.
The best I have is that I think you are right, the stand out morons will ruin it for the others.
Ken G
19 Dec 2011Eventually I narrowed it down to what I wanted to say instead of beating around the bush. I was pretty proud of myself though, no swearing and I only said the word “pissed.”
You should hear me when I talk about it. Thank God I have a little more self control when I type. That’s why I could never use that Dragon speech recognition software. I’d have to go back a re-write the whole thing anyway.
We all know we’re better than that. The sad part is the impression it makes on the non-hunters/anglers. They won’t care how ethical the rest of us are at that point.
kyle
19 Dec 2011Great job on this article, neat to read it from a hunter point of view..
Ken G
19 Dec 2011Thanks Kyle. Since I didn’t start hunting till I was 45, 10 years ago, and I’m the only one in my extended family that hunts, I’m real aware of what others think of us. Last thing I want to hear from my family is “see, you’re all a bunch of barbarians.” Just not true.
River Mud
20 Dec 2011I live and hunt less than 30 miles from H$U$ headquarters. Several times a week, I hear radio ads for their anti-hunting land protection group, Wildlife Land Trust (“protect your land from hunters – forever)……
So imagine my mood every time I come across a headless, 200lb buck on a trail on public land.
But so many hunters (conscious, ethical hunters) don’t see the threat. When I blogged about the Jeff Foiles incident throughout 2011, I got numerous emails from people who said, “anti-hunters don’t care what hunters do. Shut up about it. They can’t make hunting illegal.”
Like to take those guys on a bus trip to some of the hottest deer spots in the country…which are now in “no firearm discharge” zones….but right!! “they can’t ban hunting.”
Ken G
20 Dec 2011That’s my point exactly. Hunting around here is already severely limited because of the close proximity to Chicago. No need to ban hunting, only need to make it virtually impossible to access. I’m only willing to travel so far myself. After that, the squirrels I like to hunt start costing about $30 a piece. Not worth the effort and cost.