The first time you shoot a deer, you start to think PETA might have a point.Especially with an accurate, close-range shotgun blast, an animal can die quickly in front of you, sparing none of its final agony.
There are bleats and whimpers, and a basic sense of empathy encourages you shoot again in hopes of ending the pain.
"Please die," you mutter, feeling for the first time guilty about your choice of sport. The beast seems to obey you, finally resting its head on the ground.
Soon, though, a sense of accomplishment and jubilation pulses through you.
"I'm the man," you say in amazement. "I'm the man!"
At least, that's the way it happened with me two years ago. It was my fourth season of hunting.
I shot a gun for the first time when I was about 10, and I quickly followed up the experience by taking a Hunter's Safety course. At 13, I went hunting for the first time.
In many circles, hunting is a misunderstood activity. Hunters are seen as wasteful, irresponsible drunkards who take joy in eliminating life.
In my native Wisconsin, though, it is generally seen for the many things it is: a rite of passage, a wise use of renewable resources, a refined skill and a safe pastime.
First of all, hunting is limited by law in ways that keep the deer population thriving. Each hunter must buy a license with a given number of kill tags.
The number of permits issued, as well as the number of kill tags per permit, is based on studies of the deer population.
In years with too many deer (high populations knock the ecosystem off balance, oftentimes causing starvation; also, deer tend to run out in front of cars and damage farmers' crops), more permits are issued.
In tough years for deer, fewer licenses are given out. This system keeps nuisance-animal damage to a minimum while maintaining the deer population for years to come.
Next, killing and preparing a deer involves a variety of skills. Members of the elite left wing often treat hunters with disdain, and I hereby challenge them to learn even the basic fundamentals of the process.
The first and most important skill is marksmanship. Shooting a gun with confidence involves hours of practice.
Despite media images of wild, random shots with perfect accuracy, targets are very hard to hit.
Keeping a steady hand is paramount, and newcomers must overcome the impulse to flinch while pulling the trigger. Such movements, no matter how slight, can lead to wide, embarrassing misses.
Once a hunter can hit targets, he or she must learn where to shoot a deer (through the lungs).
And then do it. Just seeing a deer usually requires hours of patience. I have often spent entire weekends – of ten-hour days – in the woods without a single spotting.
Seeing a deer within shooting range is even rarer.
Even once a deer has been killed, however, the challenges and adventures of hunting don't end.
First, the animal must be found. In cases that involve smaller bullets, less accurate/lucky shots or longer ranges than the anecdote I recounted above, deer can run for long distances before dying.
They are found by following a blood and hoof-print trail. This is easy in standing snow, but very difficult in snow-starved years or during precipitation.
Deer that are not or cannot be tracked by the hunter who killed them become food for various other species. Such a situation is wasteful but sometimes unavoidable.
The process of preparing a deer for processing is long and gruesome. "Gutting out" an animal involves cutting it open, pouring out the inedible parts (resulting in a "gut pile") and getting it ready to be dragged out of the woods.
The smell of innards is terrible.
Once the animal has been brought to a home, the hide must be pulled off and the meat dipped in water to remove the loose fur clinging to it.
At this point, the meat is generally packaged and taken to a professional butcher, but more ambitious hunters do even this themselves.
Most hunters, my family included, keep the finished product. Consuming an animal one killed completes the never-ending cycle of life and death.
Or, as I like to say, they taste better when you've watched them drop.
Many of those who hunt for sport but do not like deer meat, or those who have the time to kill more than they can eat, however, donate their venison to the hungry.
So far this year – and the biggest deer-hunting weekends have not begun yet – hunters in Wisconsin alone have donated 64,780 pounds of meat (from various species) to the Hunt for the Hungry charity (www.huntforthehungry.com).
I cannot find a comparable donation of fruits and vegetables by an animal-rights group (e-mail me if you can, and I'll run a correction), though PETA gave $1,500 to the violent Earth Liberation Front (http://newstribune.com/stories/021603/bus_0216030908.asp).
Finally, despite yearly media portrayals of hunting accidents, it is an extremely safe activity.
In 1996, for example, 1,048 accidents (91 of them fatal) occurred in the U.S. (with Alaska not reporting) and eight Canadian provinces, according to the International Hunters Education Association (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/ihea/ihea96a.html#Safer).
Compare these numbers to the 13,034,000 people (16 and over) who hunted in the U.S. in 2001 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/fhw01-us.pdf). Together, they participated in 228,368,000 days of hunting.
Not factoring in that this number does not include the hunting-heavy Canadian provinces or those under 16, while the injury and death statistics do (this makes hunting appear less safe than it is), there is only a .000459 percent chance of an injury for the average hunter in a day of hunting. There is a .000040 percent chance of a fatality.
Compare this to driving. There are about 2.0 fatalities for every 10,000 vehicles every year in the United States (http://www.census.gov/econ/www/natf/Chap3.pdf).
That means, on a given day, there will be a fatality for every .000055 vehicles. Dividing this by the average vehicle occupancy of 1.63 (http://www.bts.gov/products/national_household_travel_survey/highlights_of_the_2001/html/table_a14.html), there is a .000034 percent chance that a given vehicle user will be killed in a given day.
One might notice that an average commuter's day of driving is about 15 percent less likely to result in death than an average hunter's day of hunting. However, it must be taken into account that the average hunter probably spends a much higher percentage of his/her day hunting than the average commuter spends in a motor vehicle.
At any rate, it must be admitted that the two statistics are quite comparable.
The category of non-fatal injuries is where the safety of hunting is most pronounced. There are about 167 injuries per 10,000 vehicles each year in the U.S. (same Census Bureau document).
This translates to a .00458 percent chance of an injury per day per vehicle, and a .00281 percent chance of injury per day per occupant.
This is 512 percent higher than (6.12 times) the injury risk of a day of hunting. Again, the average hunter probably hunts more in a day than the average commuter travels.
As a final testament to the safety of hunting, here's an odd fact: deer kill more Americans than hunting accidents do. Each year, about 130 fatal car crashes are caused by deer running into roads (http://reason.com/rb/rb112101.shtml).
Essentially, hunting is a fun, responsible and safe way to participate in a basic facet of human life: killing things and eating them. Many choose to ignore the facts of where their meat comes from, but I prefer the route of honesty.
As Ted Nugent once said: "Hunt on. Kill on. Eat on. Paint on. Live on."
All data are the most recent I could locate. All calculations are made to the highest number of significant digits available.
