I recently posted a story here about remarks made by DNR Director Frank Jezioro to an interim committee of state lawmakers. Jezioro lamented the slow erosion of land accessible to the average West Virginia hunter.
Ten years ago, it wasn’t hard to find large tracts of land in West Virginia where you’d be able to hunt largely alone. However, many of the large land holding companies saw better results from leasing their land to private hunting clubs. The clubs pay big money and the area becomes exclusionary. I was intrigued by the response the story received.
I once brought up this subject in an address to a group of timber operators. One gentleman made a remark which has stuck with me. He helped me realize why we are seeing potential hunting ground disappear. The gentleman told me he’d granted permission to hunters on several occasion and saw trash dumps, litter, four wheeler tracks off the designated areas, gates destroyed, and locks cut. A lack of respect for the land caused him and his company to go to the private lease arrangement. We have nobody to blame but ourselves in many ways.
Owning private property is a fundamental right in our country. What people do with their own land is their own business. If they want to post it and allow no hunting so be it. If they want to lease to the highest bidder it, so be it. We live in tough financial times and if a hunting lease helps a land owner defray the tax bill or puts a little change in his pocket, good for them. However, we should have respect for the guy or company which is willing to open up their property to any and all. I couldn’t argue the man’s point when he told me his story.
Shifting gears a bit. I can see a division among hunters which is widening. The outdoor media, including the TV shows, magazine articles, websites, and yes even to a degree the work I do, glories the big buck. We’ve become intoxicated by antlers. I see nothing wrong with being selective in which deer you want to kill. But if somebody still wants to kill a smaller buck, and it’s legal, why do people rip them to shreds? We live in a time when we have more deer than ever, too many in some cases. The best way to reduce those numbers is with hunters, so why the criticism of antlerless hunting?
Everywhere I go, I run into “armchair biologists.” Each knows the best way to manage deer and few are ever in agreement with how it’s presently being done. The dynamics of deer management are complex. Considerations involve much more than number of does one can kill on a ten acre food plot or an antler point restrictions.
I fear we are becoming more and more divided in our attitudes toward deer hunting. It seems a growing number are more influenced by made for TV success and less by the skills and deep appreciation for the woods we learned hunting with our Daddy and Grandpa. The priority is shifting from the enjoyment of the outdoors to putting antlers on the wall. The attitude is to get them regardless of the cost. The cost in some ways is money for a lease, in other ways it’s fewer hunters to compete with because many can no longer find a place to hunt or afford the lease. Consider how all of this looks to the non-hunting public.
We’ve long been known as sportsmen with a keen eye toward ethics,fair chase, and stewardship of the land. But the image is tarnished with inflammatory rhetoric, big money, and an emphasis on the kill instead of the pursuit of game.