Hunters' time to shine, we hope
It’s fall. If you’re a hunter, this is your time. Your time to enjoy crisp mornings on a ridge as dawn breaks, to take in evenings at camp around a fire under a shimmering night sky, to put meat on the table.
This is your time to shine, to use the privilege that allows us to hunt. It’s also the season when we wear our ethics on our sleeve for the world to see.
Ethics? What, you might say, does ethics have to do with hunting. Plenty. Ethics is our moral compass to what’s right and what’s wrong; even if something is legal, it can sometimes be wrong.
Take for example fair chase, the idea that we give animals a chance, that in fair chase there’s a fair chance the hunter sometimes kills his prey but often doesn’t. If you doubt that, you’re either lucky or a nonhunter.
Each generation of hunters has developed greater technology and, as a result, had to recalibrate their ethical compass.
Once upon time, it wasn’t considered fair to use scopes on rifles. Now not only does nearly everyone use rifle scopes, there are scopes that read out the distance to the target.
Range finders and global positioning satellite (GPS) systems are available. They are all advantages and legal. But each hunter must decide what is too much of an advantage.
Our pockets fill with gadgets as our pocketbooks empty. And to what purpose? Does the venison taste better?
Hunters need to be able to look at themselves in the mirror without hesitation each morning. Of course if something is illegal, we don’t even have to cross the Bridge Ethical.
Remember that property that was open last year and closed this year? Maybe, as the Bard once wrote, the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves.
Sometimes posted land comes from problems like gates left open and cattle out. Other times land is closed because of bullet holes in irrigation pivots or water tanks. It doesn’t happen everywhere or with every landowner but it does happen occasionally. And as grandma said, a few bad apples ruin everything.
We hunters need to remember that we have been given a great gift by our ancestors — publicly entrusted wildlife that often inhabits private property. How we use or abuse that gift will say a lot about whether our grandchildren continue to enjoy our hunting tradition.
And speaking of gifts, we’re taught to say thank you when someone gives us something. If it’s been a while since you thanked a landowner, perhaps this is the year.
How about thanking the spirit of that animal laying at your feet for giving up its life so you may have something to eat?
Think about this as fall deepens and we enjoy the privileges of an American hunter. And perhaps ask yourself, what will you do as a member of our collective hunting community to encourage the future of hunting?
Bruce Auchly is the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 4 information officer.