Hunting: then and now
Sunday’s article on the decline of hunting hinted at several reasons. Allow me to voice my views. I, too, grew up in the ’50s and ’60s when neighbors could hunt on each others’ property without asking, or friends from “town” could call and ask to hunt on Saturday. “Welcome” was always the answer.
That was when the average farm was about 200 acres or so. Now if you aren’t farming 2,000 acres, you’re hobby farming with a “day job” to support your family and you farm on weekends. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion. Hobby farming, that is. I would like to be in that boat, myself.
Everybody is abandoning the “city” and moving to the country. They’re buying up good hunting/farming land and depleting land available for hunting, farming, and wildlife habitat. People who inherit land are only too glad to sell an acre here and there at inflated prices. After all, they aren’t farmers and have no connection to the land.
Try to lease hunting rights on private property. You better have money to burn. Hunting is now big business, meaning it’s now a “rich man’s sport.” There is a prominent citizen of Columbus who owns/leases several sections of prime deer territory in Noxubee County. Don’t dare think about setting foot on his private domain or you’ll find yourself facing a judge.
He complains about feral hogs tearing up green fields he plants and eating turkey eggs. He has two rules for those whom he deigns can hunt on his land: 1-If you shoot a deer, you better mount its head; and 2-If you see a feral hog, shoot it! Leave it laying if you want, but shoot it! That’s not what I consider a very good advocate of the sport of hunting.
There’s no season or regulation on hunting hogs, except if it’s in a game season, you are restricted to those rules. This particular “gent” won’t allow anybody to trap those hogs during off-season for game. Greedy. Hogs breed three times a year. As my cousin once remarked, “Hell! That’s more’n I do!”
Go out and buy a good hunting rifle or shotgun. Open up your checkbook. Ditto for ammo. Then get a license. Of course, the proper hunting attire is required, which isn’t exactly cheap, either, It’s fashionable to wear camo even if you’ve never set foot in the woods. I know of some who own top-of-the-line-four-wheel-drive pickup trucks, tricked out with all the bells and whistles. The only time they get off the pavement is when they get an oil change.
My point is hunters are killing the sport of hunting by paying exorbitant fees to landowners who are only too glad to accept the money. Landowners are to blame, too. Slob hunters who leave trash behind, you’re guilty of giving hunting a bad name, and therefore causing prices to rise.
When I was growing up, we didn’t leave evidence of our passing. Gaps that were open were left open when we went through them, and those that were closed were closed behind us. Nobody drove on land when ruts might be left behind. Usually, if a visiting hunter got his limit of squirrel or bird, he might offer half to his host. Money, lots of it, has killed hospitality and consideration in hunting.
I haven’t been hunting in several years. Bills come before hunting club dues. Being crippled prevents me from walking across pastures and through woods. My family no longer owns the farm where I grew up hunting. Just walked out the back door with a gun and the dog was ready.
Those days are gone, and unless rich doctors and lawyers and large landowners change the way they are doing things, hunting will keep declining until it is all but extinct. That’s something PETA and SPCA, and Liberal politicians will gladly applaud. So, if you’re complaining about not being able to hunt, think about the real causes it’s going the way of the dodo.
Cameron Triplett
Brooksville
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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