Hunting

I was young then, Set. And hungry.

Nothin' wrong with free meat, Gus, you got nothing to be 'shamed about . . .

In the vein of ain't gonna do no good to try to stop me if you've read this before, I follow Set's annecdote (which appeared in This Thread )with:



Great annecdote, Setanta ... I can envision it clearly. I had to laugh on reading it. At the scene last night, as I stood in front of my truck surveying the damage, a vehicle pulled off on the shoulder behind mine. An old freind got out and ambled up.

"Hey, Timber ... thought that was your truck ... Deer?"

"Yup"

"Truck OK? Gonna drive alright?"

"Yeah, I think so ... don't hear anything wierd, and nothin' seems to be leaking"

"What was it ... doe or buck?"

"Doe. Down there in the ditch. Hind legs are both broken, but other than that not too banged up. ... I just slit her throat."


"I'll help ya get her up in the truck."

The question of whether I wanted the deer never came up ... it was just assumed the deer was mine and that I would take the meat. Oddly, now that I think about it, the old freind bears a striking physical resemblence to Ned Beatty.



Here's another timber-vs Bambi tale (from HERE ):

I've hit a few. Last year was real bad; Mrs. Timber and I each got one. Totalled her car (She really likes the heated seats in the new one though), and the one I got did damned near $4 Grand damage to my year-old Blazer. I once hit one twice. I saw him, braked and swerved, almost missed him, but at the last second, he pivotted and crossed back in front of me. I tagged him lightly, knocking him down but doing no damge to my truck. I stopped to check on him, he was laying in the other lane. As I was opening my door, he scrambled to his feet and charged right into the side of my truck, stunning himself again and caving in the left rear quarter panel. I shot him before he got up a second time. I think about the funniest one I ever got was a few years ago. I was coming home, driving a snowplow. I saw him bolt across a few yards in front of me, and I knew it was gonna be a hit as I was goin' about 50. I reached up and slapped the plow into "float", hit the deer with a huge thud, then there was a real clang as the plow hit the pavement and a shower of sparks from the guideshoes, and all of a sudden the windshield was awash in a sticky red fluid. I got the truck stopped and went back to check on the deer. It was dead, of course, but to my surprise, it wasn't all torn up. When I got back to the truck and toggled the plow lift, I discovered the source of the red mess wasn't the deer; the impact had burst the plow's hydraulic lines. It took half an hour with a bottle jack to lift the plow enough to continue the drive home. No other damage, and I came out about 120 pounds of sausage to the good.

Ka-plow!

Well, the numbers are in , and State Farm has named PENNSYLVANIA as the state with the most auto/deer high speed contacts. We average 57 deer whacks a day (with the exception of hunting season when the score rises to about 150 a day) but thats only for a few week period.
Coming in second and third are Michigan and Illinois. New York , surprisingly, isnt among the top 10. Coming up in the number 10 position is Wisconsin (probably nobody notices the dents , theyre too busy rustlin the carcae onto their truck beds)If an atlatl season for deer is coming in Pa, why not a vehicle season? You could get an annual stamp on your drivers license and I could make a fortune selling 2X8 oak "sport bumpers" for yer 250 or yer Dodge Ram (hell, you know the Dodge ram bumpers gonna fall off on its own after about a year)

I recall reading some years back that somebody did a correlation of reported deer vs vehicle incidents here in Wisconsin compared to deer carcasses reported removed from roadways and shoulders by police and Department of Transportation personnel. About twice as many carcasses were recorded during the study period than were reported incidents.


Nowadays, I don't think a similar study could be done - other than in residential and urban areas, carcasses no longer are removed; they are spraypainted to indicate they're roadkill, drug out of traffic hazzard range, and left for interested critters to deal with. Crows and raptors particulary enjoy the development.

what a responsibility. would someone coming upon a deer, laying there, but not spray painted, begin administering CPR?

You still have wolverines up there in Badgerland?

I would be willing to wager they don't, farmerman. I believe the wolverines headed north a long time ago.

Yup. And fishers - big 'uns. Some martens, a few mink, some weasels, and of course badgers. All in all, of the bunch, I'd prolly least like to piss off a fisher.

I see nothing wrong with hunting as long as it is done responsibly. My uncle would get angry every year as he rode over his property, seeing deer carcasses left by hunters who obviously wanted a bigger trophy.

The deer population has expanded so much that they are common on the roads, killed by a speeding driver. Another thing to worry about is Lyme Disease. It can be devastating in many different ways.

What really burns me is the people who move to the country to experience nature. The first time a bear gets into the garbage, they want to shoot him. That much nature is way above their comfort level.

Fortunately, a man living in the foothills outside Boulder was sentenced to time in jail for killing a bear who had been getting into his garbage. The judge must have been a native Coloradan.

BTW, have any of you had javalina? It is wonderful cooked in a pit and served with good BBQ sauce.

Never had real javelina - had Missori/Arkansas wild pig, though - all 'round unpleasant critters 'till dressed out and ready for cookin' - then they really start to take on a special appeal.

An aside but , I saw a program on the National Geo channel about lions and hyenas. The program set up the family trees of the opponents and claimed that hyenas, are actually in the same superorder as minks, weasels, skunks, wolverines etc. Boy talk about divergent evolution. They always looked like canids to me.

Funny, I always thought they looked like Whoopi Goldberg.

Quite frankly, i could kill it, clean it, cook and eat it if i had to, but i much prefer to find it ready-to-cook, wrapped in clear plastic wrap at the store.

I'm basically yer garden-variety of lazy carnivore. Hunting bores me . . .

yeh, but you cant get fresh gamey rabbit with them tasty pellets of iron any other way but to hunt em down .

No thanks. My grandfather taught me to use a rifle safely. He taught me to gut, clean, skin and cut up rabbits and squirrels. I've eaten a lot of them critters, and a lot of venison. Most of the venison was gamey, because those who hunted it were too dense and inept to drop the deer standing, instead of bringing it down after a run. It does nothin' for me--give me a good prime rib or a pork roast.

I've only been hunting once. We weren't chasing anything as large or exciting as large deer etc. We were hunting rabbits. I surprised myself by how well I could shoot, and we ate all those that showed no sign of disease. At the end of the week, I decided I wouldn't do it again. Rabbits are pests here, and they certainly need to be eradicated, but I just don't like taking life. I even slammed on my brakes once on a country road (when noone was behind me) to avoid running over a frog.

frog legs aint bad, but you have to get the big ones.
Set, I too am a bit disgusted by deer meat, its a tecture thing as well as taste. However small game animals have a wild taste that makes them special.
No matter how good a hip shootist one is, there will always be a stray pellet in small game (we cant hunt small game with anything but shotguns, no .22's allowed)

When i was a boy, i was trained with a .22 long . . . and lots of boys my age had their own, and hunted for small game regularly. I have no clue what the game laws were then, and i doubt those other boys knew or cared, either. After all, Eisenhower was President, and life appeared to be good and unchanging.