|
I'm not against hunting, just not with a firearm. I lived in rural Vermont for many years before moving to Asia, and I hardly knew anyone who didn't hunt. I didn't know any 'trophy' hunters. The people around me hunted for food. Pay scale in the 70's-'80's in a Vermont lumber mill or a garage wasn't near enough to feed a family of 4-6 people, so if a family didn't fill its freezer with deer, ducks, turkey, game birds, and fish, the kids would have to miss a few meals each week. My nearest neighbor had five kids. Each one old enough to get a hunting license did, and dad would take them out during different seasons. Deer season in Vermont usually meant you could take one male deer with a rifle between the end of November through January. If you also have a bow license, you can use a bow to take a buck or doe from October through January. During deer season (that's the important one for meat in Vermont) dad and a different child would go out each day. Dad would take the deer, but put the child's deer tag on it, and bring it to the weigh station. It was serious work for them. Not sport. Every year they harvested seven deer. That family ate venison all winter, and gave away a lot of meat to families who were not such good hunters.
I stopped using a rifle or shotgun in '72. But I continued to hunt with a bow. In those days I had no education so my income wasn't any better than my neighbors. Venison helped us out a lot too. Holding a bow license usually meant that I could take two deer (buck and doe) each year, and that was enough to supplement our meat for the winter. Vermont rivers were full of trout and the lakes had salmon. We did OK.
And special thanks to Vermont Fish & Game department. Their planning for the numbers of deer needing to be harvested each year was spot on! The Vermont deer herd is the largest and healthiest it's been since before the Civil War! Balancing the available food supply with the size of the herd insures healthy animals. Healthy animals produce more offspring than sick ones. Right now, Vermont doe's produce 2.4 fawns per year, the highest recorded for any US State!. With lumber harvesting laws prohibiting clear-cutting and requiring forested lanes at least 50 yards wide between areas cut so the deer can travel from feed lot to feed lot in safety, the herd will continue to grow. I wish I was there to see it again!
Stitchawl
|