During my 40 plus years of hunting I could not tell you how many times I've been asked the question " Why do you Deer hunt? " and anyone that knows me will tell you that I'm not a one word , one sentence or even a one phrase person, so to properly answer that question would take some time, time which most people that ask do not have. but if they want to know if it's an Affliction , obsession , addiction , a passion, or any one of many single word descriptions, I just simply say YES.
Hunting Deer for me is not a matter of life or death as it were for many of our forefathers and settler's, hunting any type of game in those days was crucial to their survival and they made very good use of a renewable natural resource. However, in today's economic times there are a growing number of hunters that rely heavily on the yearly Deer seasons to help combat and somewhat offset the high cost of living, in other words, It helps put food on the table.
We have in our society today many organizations , groups and activist that would love more than anything to stop ALL hunting of any kind For Good, but what these people fail to acknowledge is the fact that hunters like you and I are the reason that we have the plentiful game in our country that we have today, through our management programs, our state DNR and Conservation Depts. , hunting regulations and collectively, our individual ethics for hunting.
I would venture to say that there have been more pictures taken, more articles written, more stories told, more licenses and tags sold, and more products produced and purchased for the Whitetail Deer than for any other game in North America , so if the people that wish to do away with hunting of any kind were to get their wish, I believe not only would you see a tremendous rise of game numbers, but you would soon afterwards see a decline in those numbers simply due to an extreme over population that most areas could not support.
Take in the fact that many states rely on the selling of tags,licenses, and permits to fund other things in their state and take in the Fact that people working in the hunting industry, making everything from A to Z that has to do with hunting would be put out of work. And the fact that the Hunting Industry is a hundreds of Millions of dollars a year business and an employer of tens of thousands of people and to think of that all being taken away is more then my mind can even comprehend, so we as hunters and sportsmen and women must stay on our toes and continue to seek out new and better ways to protect and manage not only the game that we pursue, but our freedom to pursue that game.
Hunting the Whitetail Deer is every word, sentence or phrase that you can come up with , Affliction, addiction, passion, obsession and the list could go on and on. but for me personally it goes way beyond just words and phrases, it's about the making of memories and the fellowship with hunting partners and the joy and excitement I can share with them when they connect on a nice buck or doe and the same excitement they show me when I do the same, and sometimes it's about the solitude and quietness of being in the woods alone , a time to re-energize myself and my thoughts. but more importantly, it's about my TRADITION handed down through my family, it's about my HERITAGE passed on from generation to generation and most important, it is my RIGHT given to me by all those who fought and gave lives in the protection of that Right.
Those are the reasons I love hunting the great Whitetail Deer
