BOB KORNEGAY: Hunting tradition still means much

Hunting has undergone a lot of changes through the years. It isn’t like it once was. Not by a long shot, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Each year, when hunting season opens, I find myself often thinking on this. I can’t help but ponder the changes that have occurred during my own lifetime and the lifetimes of my nimrod predecessors.

Many of hunting’s changes have been negative. Long gone are the days, for instance, when prime hunting property was freely accessible to practically anyone who wished to shoulder a rifle or shotgun and venture afield. Many woods and fields trod by our hunting forebears no longer even exist, replaced now by industry or sprawling corporate agriculture. What is there is largely controlled nowadays by leaseholders who can afford to hold the land in reserve for their exclusive use and enjoyment.

On the other hand, some of hunting’s evolution is positive. Market hunting and wanton wildlife destruction at the hands of hunters are now illegal and collectively abhorred by true sportsmen everywhere. Hunters have become knowledgeable game managers and, for the most part, wise stewards.

Statistics and opinions today indicate that hunting might be in trouble. Hunter numbers continue to decline as more and more participants give up the pastime, lose the feel for tradition, or, as poorly tutored youngsters, fail to appreciate it or pursue it from an early age. Most disheartening, it is often now socially and politically correct to vilify existing hunters and at the same time work diligently not to create new ones. Through it all, acre upon acre of hunting land (not to mention valuable wildlife habitat) is ground to rubble beneath the developers’ bulldozer treads, inexorably falling prey to the march of “progress.”

Yet, some of us continue, despite rules, regulations, and expenses that are apt to make hunting a complicated, costly venture. Add to that the fact that few landowners want us around anymore.

So, why do we persist? Well, to a hunter, the answer to that question is not so difficult.

To a true hunter and sportsman, hunting means much more than shooting and killing within allotted boundaries of space, time, and allowed bag limits. Hunting is much more than that.

Hunting, whatever the prey or method employed, is the extra-sensory experience of a Deep South autumn. It is acorns and dry leaves that crunch beneath the hunter’s feet as he or she walks lightly on a carpeted forest floor. It is a crisp morning and a cup of hot coffee, sipped in predawn darkness in the friendly confines of a deer-camp kitchen. It is a hurried breakfast bolted in haste lest the hunter miss the first covey of quail, the first flight of mallards, or perhaps his appointed time to climb into his tree stand.

Hunting is the familiar heft and feel of a trusted, favored firearm. It is old, comfortable boots and an old, no less comfortable pointer, retriever, or hound. It is whistling wings over a marsh and a buck’s frost-breathed snort. It is bounding cottontails and scampering squirrels.

Hunting is a special place indelibly etched in mind and memory. A beaver-impounded cypress pond where the ducks always pitch in at daybreak. A bottomland woodlot where the squirrels are fat and sassy. A briar field where bobwhites hide and rabbits bound away. A trail where that once-in-a-lifetime whitetail buck is bound to show himself sooner or later.

Hunting is fellowship, sporting camaraderie unlike any other human association. It is old buddies, contemporaries who see the world as you see it. It is new companions who look to you to lead by word, deed, and example, to show them what hunting is and how it can come to mean to them what it has long meant to you.

Hunting is a rite of passage. It is the look on your child’s face when that first squirrel succumbs to the crack of the new Christmas .22. It is learning to respect and love the woods, the creek, the deer, the raccoon, even the lowly ‘possum.

Hunting is in the blood, an inherent bond passed down from beloved outdoorsmen who have gone before. It is a beautiful thing for which we can all be truly thankful.

My, how I pity those who don’t understand that.

Contact outdoors columnist and writer Bob Kornegay at [email protected].