Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Hunting the white deer

News item:
A recent front page feature photo and article in the local newspaper showed a beautiful white deer – pride of many neighboring Waukesha County rural residents for its presence, its stateliness and beauty - slain by a self-aggrandizing deer-hunting young man. It doesn’t matter who he was, but THAT he was. In the late deer’s path at the wrong time.
Yes, shrinking habitat.

It is not necessary for the sewer raccoon news to take up an overkill cudgel protesting this event. A vast number of readers wrote or called anonymously to the Sound Off column to complain about the placement of the bloody picture on the front page, and more to the point, that the killing happened at all.
We put that Freeman article aside to save the defining picture, but now it is lost in the churning vortex of stuff around here, being frequently but never successfully culled in attempts to straighten things up. (Found it!)

Native Americans wrote or called the Sound Off line to say that killing a white animal is bad medicine, should never, ever BE - and is not done. Others said they had been feeding that deer and silently admiring it on the hushed QT, fearing that just such a killing might take place in this deer-happy hunting ground.

The heart-stopped killer rested, one presumes, on the fact that his deed was done in a DNR-sanctioned chronic brain disease deer-culling area. He stated that he was thunderstruck by the uniqueness of his kill. At first he couldn’t believe it, he said. And then he killed it. He said he wants to have the carcass stuffed to be admired, maybe in a sporting goods store, or a museum.

Many reacted that it would have been much better to allow the creature to live, to enrapture and amaze, in animus.

One writer said that it was a wonder why the hunter did not lower his weapon when he saw it. Did not a higher calling speak to him? Many protests appeared in the reporting newspaper and I guess it’s a credit to the paper that the remarks were given space. Newspaper interest; mission accomplished?

This writer has historically been against hunting in his day and age, though he has close friends and relatives who do hunt. A few, for sustenance. They will perhaps read this and shrug. Ho-hum, they'll murmur: “there he goes again.”
As a frequent traveler to northern Wisconsin in deer-hunting season it has annually intensely bugged (him) to see the dead deer tied to fenders or protruding ostentatiously from the tail gates of pick-up trucks, sometimes in a multiple "success." One of the best cartoons he ever saw was a car being driven by deer, with human hunters lashed to the roof and fenders.
The annual carnage; the ancient bringing in of the kill; the over-powering imbalance of human sporting machinery.... the automatic rifles, the 4 wheel vehicles, the even chemically or battery-powered mitts, the folding deer tree stands, esoteric jam and jelly baits; yes, in our book, the horror. Our subject slayer used bow and arrow; same result.

Real men (and women) will say this writer is a pussy. But what is real pussy-hood, anyway?

“Hey, didja git y’r deer?” Answer: “Yah, I got MY deer. Yah-hey.”

You real pussy, you!

In the case of the benighted white deer spoiler, there it is in the paper. See the blood? Wow, this time he got HIS deer, and it was a white one!

Dumbkoff!







1 comment:

Unpladis said...

First of all, it's not "dumbkoff" (sic), it's "Dummkopf".

Secondly, if there are any "automatic rifles" in the woods, I'd like to know. Not only are automatic weapons highly restricted and illegal to use for hunting, it would be patently stupid to use them for hunting, as the multiple wounds would ruin a lot of meat.

In referring to yourself, you state, "As a frequent traveler to northern Wisconsin in deer-hunting season it has annually intensely bugged (him) to see the dead deer tied to fenders or protruding ostentatiously from the tail gates of pick-up trucks".

Does it bug you as much to see a kid eating a burger at Culver's? Or to see someone wearing a leather jacket or belt? Or to stand in line at Pick'n'Save behind someone buying a jar of Ma Baensch's herring? In order for each of those situations to become reality, an animal had to die.

How about buying a potato or onion in a store, taking it home, and frying it? If instead of frying it, you buried it, it would grow. That means that when you buy it in the store, IT'S ALIVE. And to benefit from it nutritionally, you murdered it. You used your over-powering imbalance of human technology - a knife - in your quest to benefit biologically from that vegetable.

You do raise some good points. For example, the ostentatious or deliberate display of dead deer is always in bad taste. However for a long time Wisconsin law required that any deer being transported had to be partially displayed, and some choose to still do that.

Perhaps it's worth a few minutes to take a psychological step back and analyze your horror. Why do you feel horror when seeing dead deer? Should deer not be hunted? They would die anyway. Would a deer that died of natural causes be any less horrific? Perhaps to some, but it makes no difference to the deer.

Again, should deer not be hunted? There would be a lot more car-deer accidents. Should we give up driving cars and trucks, so that as many deer as possible can live?

Or... should deer just not be hunted *by humans*?

I submit that your horror is not in seeing the dead deer, but in the belief that a human *enjoyed* killing the deer. No hunter I have ever met *enjoys* killing an animal. Rather, we recognize the deer as a gift from nature, we utilize what we can, and return the rest to nature, just as the Native Americans did.

To have a reaction of horror, one must have started with an expectation of perfect peace, tranquility, and lack of predation. Well, let's think. The deer were here 500, 1000, 2000 years ago and more. And yes, they were hunted then too. They are part of the natural evolutionary food chain, just like the plants they eat.

Unfortunately for the plants, their life forms are sufficiently different from the human life form that no one writes blog postings or editorials about them.