I don't get hunting. I don't understand the craving to kill deer. I don't understand the need to call in sick from work, or calling in sick for your kid at school so he can go with you to the fields.
I have dozens of friends who hunt. I worked in northern Wisconsin last fall, and witnessed the restless "north-ners" get all hyped up.
The first day of gun deer season is like a holiday to these people - and many others across the state and the Midwest.
I get it ... but I don't get it.
I won't lie, I've hunted before.
We used to hunt gophers, rabbits and snakes in our subdivision as a child. When I graduated childhood and became a teenager, I advanced those hunting skills to chasing raccoons and opossums with baseball bats and cars.
I'm not proud of it, but it's about the only hunting experience I've ever had.
When I was 9 years old and about to shoot my first gopher I had ever caught in a milk jug, my dad told me, "Adam, once you kill an animal, you will never forget it - and that animal will never come back."
So I took my deep breath, prayed that God wouldn't smite me the moment I pulled the trigger, and pressed hard on that BB gun.
Miss.
Ten pumps and take two.
Bulls-eye. One less gopher in our yard. Only 34 to go to wipe them all out that year.
It's not that I didn't enjoy the feeling of killing that defenseless mascot of the University of Minnesota, it's just that in today's world, I don't see the need for hunting.
I understand the bonding with your child or a morning of drinking with your friends from college. But to me, that's not hunting - that's a gathering.
Personally, if you're going to hunt, I'd like to see it done the old fashion way - rocks, slings, sticks, and Robin Hood bow and arrows.
Then we would really separate "the men from the boys."
I've watched countless documentaries on PBS, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel to know that poor and hunger-driven people in Africa hunt big game like elephants, tigers, and lions for food and money. It's sad, but they at least have a good reason to do it.
Why do we as Americans do it? For sport?
I'm not saying hunting is wrong, but I just don't get it.
There are 1.5 million deer in Wisconsin, and obviously everyone knows that 1.3 million of them live and roam about 30 yards from each main highway in the state - so I kind of get the safety and mass-reproduction reasons for killing the deer that our automobiles don't.
But other than that, can't adults just pull a "Senior Skip Day" and hang out in a basement and drink beer and shoot darts instead?
I will congratulate you on a big kill, but to me, I laugh at most hunters as if they were singing "Da Turdy Point Buck" from their tree-stand over and over as if were their national anthem.
A dead deer is just one less thing to skin. You won't have to clean the blood and separate the meat. And venison doesn't taste that good to me, either.
But I'll let you do it, and I will just enjoy getting my sleep in the morning, instead of waking up and freezing in a tree stand somewhere - waiting for an animal to come out from its shelter to get an early-morning snack and enjoy its peaceful life.
I thought that was Nature's Beauty. It looks good in a photograph or painting in that setting anyway.
Oh well. I guess hunting just isn't for me. Good luck, and good hunting.
- Adam Krebs is the sports editor for the Monroe Times and can be reached at sportseditor@themonroetimes.com.
I have dozens of friends who hunt. I worked in northern Wisconsin last fall, and witnessed the restless "north-ners" get all hyped up.
The first day of gun deer season is like a holiday to these people - and many others across the state and the Midwest.
I get it ... but I don't get it.
I won't lie, I've hunted before.
We used to hunt gophers, rabbits and snakes in our subdivision as a child. When I graduated childhood and became a teenager, I advanced those hunting skills to chasing raccoons and opossums with baseball bats and cars.
I'm not proud of it, but it's about the only hunting experience I've ever had.
When I was 9 years old and about to shoot my first gopher I had ever caught in a milk jug, my dad told me, "Adam, once you kill an animal, you will never forget it - and that animal will never come back."
So I took my deep breath, prayed that God wouldn't smite me the moment I pulled the trigger, and pressed hard on that BB gun.
Miss.
Ten pumps and take two.
Bulls-eye. One less gopher in our yard. Only 34 to go to wipe them all out that year.
It's not that I didn't enjoy the feeling of killing that defenseless mascot of the University of Minnesota, it's just that in today's world, I don't see the need for hunting.
I understand the bonding with your child or a morning of drinking with your friends from college. But to me, that's not hunting - that's a gathering.
Personally, if you're going to hunt, I'd like to see it done the old fashion way - rocks, slings, sticks, and Robin Hood bow and arrows.
Then we would really separate "the men from the boys."
I've watched countless documentaries on PBS, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel to know that poor and hunger-driven people in Africa hunt big game like elephants, tigers, and lions for food and money. It's sad, but they at least have a good reason to do it.
Why do we as Americans do it? For sport?
I'm not saying hunting is wrong, but I just don't get it.
There are 1.5 million deer in Wisconsin, and obviously everyone knows that 1.3 million of them live and roam about 30 yards from each main highway in the state - so I kind of get the safety and mass-reproduction reasons for killing the deer that our automobiles don't.
But other than that, can't adults just pull a "Senior Skip Day" and hang out in a basement and drink beer and shoot darts instead?
I will congratulate you on a big kill, but to me, I laugh at most hunters as if they were singing "Da Turdy Point Buck" from their tree-stand over and over as if were their national anthem.
A dead deer is just one less thing to skin. You won't have to clean the blood and separate the meat. And venison doesn't taste that good to me, either.
But I'll let you do it, and I will just enjoy getting my sleep in the morning, instead of waking up and freezing in a tree stand somewhere - waiting for an animal to come out from its shelter to get an early-morning snack and enjoy its peaceful life.
I thought that was Nature's Beauty. It looks good in a photograph or painting in that setting anyway.
Oh well. I guess hunting just isn't for me. Good luck, and good hunting.
- Adam Krebs is the sports editor for the Monroe Times and can be reached at sportseditor@themonroetimes.com.
