Huntin' seasin'

At 7 on Saturday morning, after three cups of coffee and listening to the dogs whine for a good fifteen minutes, we suit up in orange and walk out the door. Halfway down the curling drive CRACK followed by a hundred little KaBooms echoing off the mountainsides. Yep, it’s huntin’ seasin all right!

According to the caretaker of my Great Aunt’s house (where I’m staying) today is the first day of muzzleloader season. WHOO HOO! What I really wanted to ask was, “Uh, muzzleloaders? Like what the pilgrims carried but instead the hunters go out with hundreds of dollars of equipment, clothing and tree stands made from aluminum and they’re using old fashioned muzzleloaders?”

I understand the need to thin out the deer population. I do, I passed countless dead deer alongside the highway with their heads, legs and necks bent into unnatural positions. I understand that killing them is better than having them starve to death but I just don’t want to see it or hear it. What I do want to hear is that the deer that are killed are killed quickly, preferably with one shot between the eyes, the meat, pelts and everything else used and eaten and that is the end of it. Of course we all know that doesn’t happen.

There really shouldn’t be any dear season at all. They would have plenty of land had we not come in, ploughed it over and put ugly tract homes on their grazing land. Of course we never gave the land back to the Native Americans so why should we give it to some four-legged creatures… sigh…