SOME SUGGESTIONS
Deer hunting season has opened in Cattaraugus (yes. that's right) County and orange is the color of choice for outerwear. Enjoy Where Worlds Collide, another beautifully recycled article by moi.
WHERE
WORLDS COLLIDE: THE WHITE TAILED DEER
This
is one of the few places in this country where you can walk down the street
carrying a rifle or a shotgun and no one will pay
any attention to you. Deer are our meat.
Hunting along with garage sales make up our
underground economy providing opportunities to
make some
untaxed cashmoney. When the garage sale
signs come down around the end of
October, the “welcome hunters" signs go up.
In
Cattaraugus County about 15 percent of the total housing is listed as “seasonal.”
That is, visitors from out of the area have camps
back in the hollows or on hillsides off old
logging trails or pipeline routes. Many of these seasonal residents occupy their
dwellings only
during hunting season. They buy groceries and liquor and eat out and
pick up camping goods,
hunting gear,
ammunition, and sundries. Some come in groups and hire a book and
bottlewasher; some stay in rooms in private homes or
in small motels. Business at area
bars picks up.
Local churches run special “all you can eat” breakfasts or dinners, box
lunches
extra. There
is no doubt that rural areas benefit economically from hunting. New York State
Department of
Environmental Conservation figures the
state takes in about $690,000,000
from hunters. Divide that by the 62 NYS counties and
you’ll see that’s about $11 million.
That’s quite an injection of funds that stay in
rural regions desperate for an infusion of funds.
Most
rural schools gave up and made the first day of deer hunting season a holiday
because absences were so high. The Monday deer seasons opens, teachers in
area high schools
expect to mark time.
However, recent statistics gathered by the State Department of Hunting
have noted a decline in the number of licenses
purchased. The decline began back in the
80s and
continues today.
Researches attribute the decline to lack of family tradition and a
decline in
leisure time.
Cornell
University researchers are worried because they see the hunting experience as
one that teaches cultural values. I am not sure what cultural values they are
talking about
because they don’t mention them. I guess it’s a longing for the past, pure
nostalgia. Remember
when dad went out and shot that deer and we ate
venison all winter. Remember it hung
in the front yard from a tree branch. Remember that?
Remember
getting up before dawn and going out into the cold darkness with dad. It’s
killing your first deer; it’s having blood from the kill rubbed on
your forehead, an ancient male
coming-of-age ritual.
Hunting
was a way to get food. It was for the
ancient hunters a way to build loyalty to
the tribe, to teach survival skills to separate the
men from the boys. Sometime during the
19th
century hunting became a way to make a living. Buffalo were killed for their tongues and
maybe
their skins and the meat lay rotting on the
prairie. The Buffalo hunters were the
heroes of the
frontier.
They were romanticized in our folk tales and literature. They decimated the herds of
buffalo that roamed the great plains. Do you want to destroy a people? Destroy their food
supply. The
native tribes the plains relied on the buffalo for food clothing shelter. Without the
buffalo, the tribes of the plains had to submit or
starve.
The
eastern white tailed deer (odocoileus virginianus) was the staple of life for
the Easter
woodland peoples.
Excavations of Hopewell mounds have revealed shoulder blades (use as
hoes), leg bones (awls), and other parts for
needles, forks, not to mention the use of hides for
moccasins and clothing.
The
Senecas hunted the white tailed deer.
They too used most parts of the animal for
food, clothing and tools. In the east the white tailed deer was also
hunted almost to extinction in
the decades following the Civil War. Hungers ravaged the herds, skinned the
animals and left
the meat to rot.
The going price was fifty cents a skin.
In
1888 an observer reported “the deer were hunted with dogs the year round. . .
.finally
becoming so scarce that whole winters would go by in
many Pennsylvania counties without
anyone seeing a single deer track.” By the turn of the century it was estimated
the deer
population was no more than 350,000 for the entire
country according to Mike Sajna/s “Buck
Fever.”
In
the ravaged highlands of the Allegheny Plateau the clear cut areas favored the
growth
of browse and deer were reintroduced into the newly
created Allegheny National Forest.
Timbered
land was purchased under the auspices of President Calvin Coolidge in
1923.
the Forest is now about a million acres covering
Warren, McKean, Elk and Forest counties in
Pennsylvania, bounded on the west by the Allegheny
River and on the north by the New York
state line.
In
Cattaraugus county of the New York side between 1900 and 1935 over 78,000 acres
of
farm land was abandoned. In roughly the same time, the state and
municipalities replanted about
20,000 acres with 25 million trees. Left to themselves in an area of pasture
going back to brush
the while tailed deer made an amazing comeback. Following WORLD War Two deer herds of
forty and fifty were a common sight along the narrow
two-lane asphalt roads that served the
county.
The
conservation movement succeeded almost too well. Now in those same reforested
areas you can look up and see the tips of shrubs and
the lowest tree limbs have been nibbled
leaving what foresters call a browse line, a sign of
overpopulation. Come a bad winter, and if
you
want a bad winter, this is the place to find it,
many deer will starve because herds have outgrown
the food supply.
What
can we do about it? Wildlife management
sometimes extend the hunting season or
add does.
Better a quick death from a bullet than a slow death by starvation, they
argue.
There are too many Bambis and the deer are eating
themselves out of habitat. This, of
course,
has nothing to do with the fact that all natural
predators have been eliminated from those
reforested areas.
We can’t have wolves or mountain lions eating those cute little deer.
Let’s shoot them.
It’s better for them. Hunting is
good for the forest and good for the ecxonomy
and. of course, good for the deer as well.
I
was listening to my favorite Golden Oldies radio station, WBRR, and the
announcer
asked, “What’s the most dangerous animal in Pennsylvania?” My first thought was man as the
commercial played giving listeners time to think
this over. The answer? The white tailed deer.
Approximately 50,000 car-deer accidents are reported
each year in New York State.
It’s estimated that five times that total are killed
or injured and never reported. They are
tossed
into ditches, stagger off into the fields
surrounding the roads, out of sight, you
know.
Lest
you think I only delineate the problem and pass on, I have offered a solution
here but
no one takes me seriously, not even me. Perhaps it’s time for a new cultural
tradition. Hunt
deer with vehicles, no snowmobiles or off-road
vehicles, but ordinary cars, Toyotas, Chevy’s,
right on the road.
You don’t need a hunting license if you have a drivers license. No orange
vests or black and red plaid buffalo jackets. Not even a gun. Run them down. Is a fender more
costly than a gun?
Factor in the outfit, the ammo, the hunting license – evens out. When you see
a buck tied across the funder or strapped to the
roof of a car, do you know if it has been hit by a
bullet or by a car?
This would benefit the local economy.
Someone has to repair all those
fenders and front ends.
It’s actually pretty
easy to hunt with your car. When you see
the “deer crossing” sign,
pay attention.
The deer is a territorial animal, tends to stay in the same one or two
mile area and
use the same paths over and over until they become
well defined trails following the path of least
resistance.
They walk around bushes shrubs rocks or roots in an ambling, rambling
pattern
that would drive a median stripe painter to
suicide. Put an obstacle in their usual
route and
they’ll try to go around it until they find the
continuation of the path. This habitual
strolling is
what allows the highway departments to put up those “deer
crossing” signs. All a driver has to
do is look the signs. There are certain stretches of road that are
notorious places for deer kill.
Seldom will you drive by without seeing a carcass, a
set of guts strewn over the road.
Not
only do drivers know where deer can be found, but they can pinpoint the time of
day
and the season as well. Most deer are killed in late spring when they
come down to the roadside
to browse on the new grass which is tasty with salt
washed off the winter roads. In the fall
they
are so spooked by gunshots they heedlessly run into
traffic to get away. Also fall is the
mating
season and deer are on the move.
The
average driver has a one in five chance of hitting a deer and the odds go up
especially if one drives at dawn or dusk when the
deer seem to merge with twilight and
materialize out the fog. Since this timing aligns with peak commuting
time that hit is just
waiting to happen when your number comes up.
Scan
the roadsides, especially at night when you’ll see the reflection of their eyes
as a
bright red glare.
If you miss the first one don’t worry; there’s usually a second
following and
you’ll get that one.
Perhaps
the starving deer will commit suicide by throwing themselves in front of
cars. In
that way drivers will assume the role of absent
predators such as wolves and wild cats
winnowing out the weak and depressed.
Car
killed deer are sent to state institutions for use. So orphanages, old age homes
prisons end up with the meat. You won’t have to eat it. Most hunters wil tell you that they eat
their kill.
However, if a hunter tenders a recipe for venison you’ll be amazed at
the elaborate
preparations, long cooking times and heavy spices
they add to get rid of the gamey taste they
claim to love so much. There is also some dental danger involved
with eating shot venison.
There may br unexpected bits of bone or bullets.
A
Wall Street Journal writer figured out the cost of venison by adding up the
amount
hunters spent and dividing it by the average dressed
out deer. This area of mathematical
endeavor not one of my strong points so I rely on
this estimate. He figures the cost of
gun-killed
venison at $31.07 per pound, not counting what the
butchers charged to prepare it. The
average
car-struck deer costs the insurance company about
$1,100 which figures out to $18.33 per pound.
So this would save you money.
Two
of American’s most culturally valued activities - hunting and driving - will be
combines in a new and exciting way. That will certainly rejuvenate a dying
tradition. Perhaps
the Cornell gurus should consider widening the
narrow range of cultural values they are trying to
save. In
Pennsylvania who keeps better statistics on hunters – 91 % were males; 97% were
white.
If
we add car hunting maybe more women and ethnic minorities will join the
hunt. A
deer crushed fender will be a status symbol, those
dowdy hunting outfits will get some style.
Teenagers might try hunting on motorcycles, evening
the odds a bit.
All
irony aside the moment hunting became a way to make a living or a sport the
cultural
value disappeared.
It’s like saying that because the number of golfers is declining, we’re
losing
traditional cultural value.
If
I had to eat, I would kill a deer. It
they were nibbling my cashcrop, I would kill a deer.
Would I go out in the cold November woods filled
with armed white males between the ages of
21 and 44 to shoot at one? Not a chance, sport.
