Bill Cochran

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My great-great grandfather, John, was a noted marksman and hunter, with 1,500 deer to his credit, not to mention an unknown number of bears, panthers, turkeys and lesser game.

He bought a mountain farm in 1838, paying for it with “50 venison saddles,” so the county history book says.

I guess that makes me an ancestor of a market hunter, but in his era market hunting was an honorable way to feed you family, especially if you had 10 kids and lived in a log structure tucked away deep in the hills of what is now West Virginia.

Grandpa John and I have a number of things in common. Though generations apart, we have shared a passion to hunt. That desire leaped from Grandpa John to me, spanning more than 100 years when it appeared to be dormant in the rest of the family.

Grandpa John and I also have shared the same land. My wife, son and I now own a chunk of the property he purchased with venison. It is a special place, because of its beauty and history, and because, when I let my imagination wander just a bit, I can see John’s presence there so profoundly. I can see smoke coming from the rock chimely of his log house, and I can see a buck hanging from a game pole out back.

The house is long gone, nothing there but a heap of foundation stones. You have to peer closely to see them through the blackberry tangles that run wild on the hillside, like the kids who once played there.

The deer are back. They disappeared when the 1800s merged into the 1900s. Gandpa John probably had something to do with that, but now our generation is blessed with deer just as John’s was. My dad had something to do with that. He was a federal forester who was a player in the restoration of deer in the East when I was an infant.

When the phone rang just before the past deer season, and someone asked for permission to hunt our property, I had mixed feelings in the pit of my stomach.

As a landowner and a hunter, I have been on both sides of the fence when it comes to ownership and accessibility. Through the years, I have enjoyed countless golden days afield, often with my son, because someone has been kind and generous enough to grant me the right to hunt their land.

But let me tell you, it isn’t always easy to grant permission to hunt. Your land is personal. You wonder if the stranger at your door or on the phone will treat it with respect. You don’t own the wildlife, but you’ve watched them all year and they, too, become yours through association and interest.

I tell the inquirer on the phone that he and his buddies can hunt. I send them permission slips with my signature. I tell them they will have to walk in from the hard road rather than drive into the interior of the property. I can’t risk damage to my access road, and I want to see if their desire to hunt is worth a bit of work. That generally eliminates the outlaws. I tell them to be aware that some of my regular guests also could be hunting the land. I tell them they must obey the game laws.

By the time I am finished, they probably can tell that, frankly, I’d just as soon they weren’t there.

Then I forget about them, until I receive a letter just after the deer season ended.

“I just wanted to take a few minutes and thank you so much for myself and on behalf of the rest of our group for giving us permission to hunt on your property,” it says.

As it turned out, they hunted only one day, the letter reveals. They didn’t kill any game, because they only saw does, which were out of season. But they had a great time, they said.

“I’ve always felt that none of our group is really serious about hunting, rather than just getting out among God’s creation, the good food and special fellowship with one another,” the letter writer stated.

“You have a beautiful piece of land that God created. Our greatest thrill was watching a huge black bear for almost 30 minutes, just eating crab apples and acorns and not knowing we were so near. Thank you, again.”

A letter like that is deeply appreciated, and enough to make a landowner swing the gate open even a little wider.