Hunting - Sport or Not

Today I had occasion to do some shopping in one of our local farm stores. My youngest son, whose favorite pastime is browsing this top of market, took me on the grand tour. I say grand tour, but I’d been in the store before only I normally just get what I came in for and leave. This time he insisted we walk every aisle; including the hunting aisle.

Now, I was raised in a hunting family. Dad always bought his deer and elk tags and we depended on this meat to get us through the year. Once or twice in the fall my uncles and my dad would get together to hunt dove, quail, pheasant, sage grouse and cottontail rabbit. When I got old enough to hunt with Dad I would go along and help clean and carry whatever was on the agenda for that season. I can remember walking for several hours behind my dad as he tracked a deer or elk, and learning to stop immediately when he said to. You see, my dad had learned to watch for the game bird’s eye to blink. I could walk all day and not see a thing, but Daddy always came home with a full limit to put in the freezer. We were the same with fishing. We didn’t keep anything that wasn’t big enough to eat, and we ate what we were fishing for.

So today, as I was saying we were cruising through this farm store and now I’m paying attention to the stuff in the hunting aisles. Game blinds, deer stands, deer corn, you name it, they had it. Okay, I think, what the heck do they need all this stuff for? Well, here in Oklahoma as in some other states, all this stuff is legal to use to hunt wildlife. Which brings me to another that is legal here. Game farms where you tell the owner what you want to hunt for, they turn it loose in a certain area, show where they turned it loose, then you “hunt” it. The majority of this stuff is actually raised on the farm, is used to human contact, and probably wouldn’t understand that somebody was going to hunt it if you told it.

Let me state this plainly: I am not against hunting. My family has relied on it to help put food on the table for as long as I can remember. I think hunting is a wonderful way of managing our wildlife and the revenue it brings in is very much needed by the agencies to which the task has been given. However, placing bait out for wildlife then sitting comfortably in a stand while the deer comes to you is NOT hunting. Privately held game farms and ranches where the wildlife is hand raised then released for someone who refers to himself as a sportsman is not hunting in my book either; culling, maybe, but not hunting. Let’s not mix up hunting with sports.

Sports are games. We cheer for our favorite team, or play the game ourselves. We wear the colors of our team. We go out to a stadium and enjoy hotdogs, peanuts, chips, beer, etc. We host tailgate parties. Enjoying sports is inviting the gang over to watch football, baseball, basketball, soccer, etc., on our brand new big screen TV.

Hunting is just that. It’s going out early in the morning, seeing your breath steam in the frosty air, and tracking your game. Walking, for hours sometimes, just to see an animal’s tracks in the frost or snow are hunting. You only take what you’re going to eat, and don’t worry how big the rack is on that elk, or how it’s going to look above the fireplace. There’s no guarantee you’re going to bag your limit in hunting. You don’t even get the guarantee you’ll see your prey. If you’re lucky; you’ve got a good guide, or done your homework before the season starts and know where the good game trails are; the weather is with you; and you make a decent shot – that’s hunting.