Where's The Sport? Comments

Well, Donal, I'll try and explain why I like to hunt. I lived in the Catskills for 40 years, where some of the high schools close on the opening day of deer season, because so few students show up- some of the teachers as well. We ate venison all year. I prefer it to any other meat. I loved being out in the woods and hills, sitting silently sometimes for four hours at a time, sometimes in a freezing rain, maybe memorizing a poem, or watching birds and animals do the most amazing things- that I would never have seen if I didn't hunt. I loved learning to shoot straight, to find my way through a forest, to outsmart deer- for often they outsmarted me. I even loved butchering the deer myself- learning to survive without supermarkets. I loved the friends who hunted with me all those years, most of them now gone or too lame to walk. I know deer would starve without being limited by hunters, as they did in huge numbers during last year's snows. I loved watching a good dog flushing pheasant and being able to hit those birds on the wing. To me, hunting is part of America's tradition. I think it is a good tradition. If you've never tasted my wife's pheasant stuffed with crab meat, you can't appreciate when hunting is. That is the story in as short a form as I can give it to you. With best wishes to you, Gene L.