For the love of hunting

Is hunting and are hunters an endangered species?  Living in Montana, where most adults, especially males, hunt, it seems that our tradition of hunting for food and fun has rock-solid public support.  

But that type of wide-spread public participation and support is not the same throughout our urbanized country. Hunting wild animals for human food has been going on since the beginning of human history. Then, gradually over thousands of years, perhaps over tens of thousands of years, humans found that planting crops and raising food was a more efficient way to provide food for human survival.  

In America, our ancestors found a continent with abundant game in our forests and prairies. Even if you were a good farmer, how could you not shoot a deer that wandered onto your homestead, offering100 pounds of free meat for your family? That deer was shot and eaten by the farmer and his family. Deer, grouse or ducks were like gifts from heaven. 

But as our society modernized, it became more practical and even necessary for citizens to work for wages and buy their food. As recently as 1900, about half of all Americans were still involved in agriculture and living on farms. Because these folks lived with wildlife, they took advantage of the opportunity to harvest wildlife.  

Today, less than 5% of Americans farm and those farmers produce enough food to feed all 336 million Americans, plus millions of citizens in other countries. As fewer and fewer Americans live in rural areas, many Americans have become less inclined to maintain their outdoor and hunting heritage. Most experts estimate there are about 14 -16 million licensed hunters in the United States. That is a lot of people, but only represents about 4% of our total population.  

In Montana, there are over 100,000 licensed hunters or about 10% or more of our current population. Montana has a lot of public land open to free hunting, plus we also have a wide variety of game species that attract non-resident hunters.  

These out-of-state hunters pay dearly for non-resident hunting licenses, guide fees, motel rooms, food, gas and make many other expenditures for hunting. So, hunting has become an important industry in Montana.        

While our hunting population has been decreasing, there has been a dramatic increase in citizen groups that love wildlife and seem opposed to sport hunting. Public support for hunting as a means of supplying food for your family has much more public support than sport hunting.   

Witness the wolf debate that has been going on in Montana for the last 30 to 40 years. I suspect, if the truth was known, we have probably spent more money managing wolves, grizzly bears and other so-called endangered wildlife species than we spent for most of our game species. So, hunters, enjoy the current great hunting we have in Montana. There are dark clouds on the horizon.   

We are now just getting into the best aspects of the current hunting season. Archery antelope season opened in August, grouse season opened Sept. 1, followed by archery season for deer and elk, plus black bear season, plus duck season and other hunting seasons. This Saturday is opening of rifle season for antelope, followed by the rifle season for deer and elk later in October. Then there is a special muzzle rifle season (primitive weapons season) for deer and elk in December. So, the most popular hunted species and hunting seasons are just starting.  

I will open the antelope season this Saturday, hunting in north central Montana. Deer season will be especially fun as I will attempt to take a deer or two with my new 45-70 rifle with open metal sights. This rifle caliber is left over from the 1800s, but still a deadly weapon.  After decades of shooting with the wonders of rifle scopes, with high magnifications, I’m not sure I will be able to shoot much farther than 100 or 200 yards with my new 45-70. I killed my first few deer and elk with old-fashion open iron sights, but that was 50 to 60 years ago. Now, I’m not sure my 86-year-old eyes will allow me shoot accurately very far with open sights. But it will be fun and challenging to try. 

As hunters gather around a campfire after a day’s hunt, discussions will surely include lively discussions about predators and their impacts on game species. So exactly what is a predator?  Normally we think of predators as larger animals that kill and eat our treasured big game species such as our deer and elk.  

But how about our smaller game species? Are grouse predators? Grouse, as well as many songbirds, are predators. Isn’t the robin on our front lawn, eating worms, a predator?  

Last fall I hunted one morning on my farm, killing two sharp-tail grouse. Usually, I clean my grouse immediately upon returning to the farmhouse. But that morning I dumped the birds on the floor of my shop, then promptly forgot about my cleaning duties. Later that day I remembered my cleaning duties, so I took the grouse to a bench on the edge of our farmstead. I turned the dead grouse on their backs and began to remove the breasts. Now, recall those birds had been dead for several hours.  

As I was removing the breast meat, I was surprised to see movement in the grouse’s stomach. These birds had been stone dead for hours, so how could there be any life left. As I probed deeper into the birds, I saw there was life in the bird’s crop. Now, for those of you who don’t hunt or were not raised on a farm, the crop is a bird’s organ that collects the food the bird eats. It is an organ located between the end, or bottom, of the bird’s throat and its digestive tract. Sort of a temporary storeroom for freshly eaten food. When I cut open the crop, it was stuffed with dozens of grasshoppers. Many of those grasshoppers were still alive, but tightly pressed together. 

Can you imagine the horror that a grasshopper must suffer when it was snatched off an alfalfa leaf by the grouse, then swallowed alive, going down the several inches of the bird’s throat, then squeezed tightly together with other grasshoppers in the bird’s crop? 

In my dead grouse, those grasshoppers were pressed together, alive, but unable to move for several hours. I cut open the crop and released some of those grasshoppers. They crawled away and some flew off, I felt like I was a God, for those rescuing those grasshoppers!  

Death in the wild is normally very cruel and painful. So, a hunter shooting a grouse or deer is usually more merciful when compared to most deaths in the natural world. Hunters pride themselves on making clean one-shot kills, where the target animal is usually dead within seconds. Hunter kills are usually less cruel than natural deaths.  

So, get out there and enjoy Montana’s great hunting and fill your freezer with wholesome wild meat. Have fun.