Hunting Season

            When I was eight years old, I got my first bb gun for Christmas. It was a bit of a tradition in our family. My grandmother’s house was filled with trophies from successful hunting trips, ranging from antlers to mounted heads to an entire turkey, positioned as though it was a living creature poised in flight. My uncles and my father always gathered during deer season to talk and laugh and socialize before they ventured out into the wilderness to isolate themselves, hoping that a sizable buck would stroll by, or stop to investigate the sugar beets they would pile up as an invitation to walk into the crosshairs of the rifle’s scope (before the ban on baiting, of course). Sometimes my dad would take me out to his stand to sit with him. I never hated it, but I never liked it either; what seven-year-old likes sitting in complete silence for hours, in biting cold, with the flimsy promise of maybe seeing a deer as the only incentive? However, having a background that included yearly hunting shaped my perspective on it greatly.

            When we talk about nature, we inevitably must discuss what we take away from it. However, as a child, I learned we can give back to it as well, even in an act that seems so violent. When I was a child and watched Bambi for the first time, my heart broke. I knew my father was going out and shooting deer, leaving fawns like my sweet, beloved Bambi without mothers. That’s when my father sat me down and explained why we hunt. In our little corner of land, there aren’t any real big predators to hunt the deer down, besides us. Without hunting season, the deer would quickly overpopulate and destroy the ecosystem. As I got older, I also realized that there were years we ate as well as we did because my father had a gun and a good eye for meaty does. We could eat off his kills for months if we needed to. Humans often do take from nature, and hunting in large quantities can royally screw up an ecosystem, sometimes to the point of no return. But allowing ourselves to become part of the ecosystem, rather than an entity outside it, can be greatly beneficial to all sides. So when my father brings in a big doe, I eat without guilt. Even Bambi has his place in the ecosystem.