A Report from Bowhunter

Our friend Bowhunter has something to announce, "I accomplished something yesterday that I have been attempting to do for 4 years. No, I didn’t travel back in time to stop George Lucas from digitally altering A New Hope. What I did was successfully harvested my first deer from Connecticut. Some of you might remember my last article about how hard it was to obtain a license to hunt deer with a bow in CT. Here is to perseverance."

"After a deer is harvested it must be taken to the meat processor. I have taken this happy trip many times back in Indiana and what a sweet ride it was as all of the locals would honk and wave a congrats as they saw the antlers sticking out of the back of the tailgate. This time was very different. As I drove through town with a deer in the back of my truck, I did get some looks, but not happy or congratulatory ones. There was one lady stopped behind me in a brand new hybrid. She was so appalled at the sight that she shaded her eyes with her hands.
It surprises me that we can watch the nightly news and see countless human deaths due to war or crime. We can enjoy violent movies by the stack and let our children play violent video games. Yet when it comes to seeing a humanely-killed deer, the hands come up. People here on the East Coast need to do two things. Number one is practice what they preach about tolerating my sport of choice. The second thing they need to do is to realize get educated about how beneficial deer hunting is to the community.
Here in CT, deer are overpopulated, because of the lack of wolves and coyotes that would normally keep the deer herds under control. Deer have adapted to living with humans where their predators have not. Do not make the mistake that the mass amounts overpopulated deer is a good thing. They are a danger to themselves and to us! We see the impact on humans in the amount of deer we see laying on the side of the highway after having crashed through the windshield of some unlucky driver. We see their peril in chronic wasting disease. CWD is the deer version of mad cow disease. It is transmitted through saliva contact, which is common among a mass heard with few resources."

Mod-Blog does not endorse hunting, per se, but neither do we have a problem with it. My father's family were all humane hunters. I don't choose to shoot anything - except when the shooting is with a digital camera - but I see that there is a place in this world for a sport that is properly regulated and practiced by responsible sportsmen (and women).