Sunday, September 27, 2009
Hunters make choices ... good, bad
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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Mark Taylor
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For Virginia hunters, the next few months will be about choices.
Which trees should I put my stands in? Which stand should I hunt today? Which brand of doe urine should I sprinkle on my boots before I walk to my stand this morning? Should I even bother hunting in this terrible weather?
Those decisions will shape the season.
Hunters who manage to string together some good ones could have the best year of their lives.
Hunters who don't? Well, they might be ready to give up before rifle season opens.
As with life in general, the consequences of choices are often never known.
If a giant buck walks by your stand, and you're not in it, you'll never know. And it's probably better that way.
Likewise if that buck is approaching the stand you happen to be in but decides, before you see him, that he's not a fan of your brand of doe urine, you'll never know.
But there are times when we can see the results of decisions.
When that big buck does walk by and you kill him, you know your choices were good. Or, at least, not bad.
Some hunters will come to regret decisions they make in the coming months.
For example, some will choose to sit in an elevated hunting stand and not wear safety harnesses. Fortunately, most will stay in those stands.
A few won't be so fortunate.
Each fall about a couple dozen Virginia hunters tumble from stands and are injured seriously enough that the accident is reported to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Treestand falls typically result in a couple of deaths annually in the state.
These accidents are totally avoidable.
Every commercially produced tree stand includes a safety harness. They might not be fancy, but they work.
A number of companies sell comfortable, effective harness and vest systems.
They are like seat belts. If you're not used to one, you will notice it at first. But soon you won't even realize it's there.
The decision to not wear a harness affects not only the hunter, but his family.
For those who think ahead about the potential hardships and heartache that come after a tree stand accident, spending $100 for a vest or harness and taking a few extra seconds to put it on before each hunt won't seem like a big deal.
A few hunters will make poor choices regarding how they go about things. They will cheat.
Maybe they will hunt over bait, or go out after dark armed with a spotlight.
Rarely is the motivation to put food on the table for a hungry family. The motivation for most cheaters is to kill a trophy buck.
Cheaters want antlers that prompt awe and envy from fellow hunters. They want to win contests. To get their picture in the paper and magazines, or on an Internet message board where other hunters offer congratulations.
Some cheaters get that.
A few get caught, too, and that's no picnic.
Americans are pretty forgiving, but the exception may be for poachers.
A poacher may retain, or eventually earn back his hunting privileges, and he may turn squeaky clean. But he can never kill another good buck without drawing suspicion from fellow hunters.
Fair or not, once you're a poacher, you're always a poacher.
But that's really not the worst of it.
The worst of it is that cheaters who don't get caught still have to live with themselves.
Every time a fellow hunter offers congratulations, the cheater knows he doesn't deserve the praise.
Those citation certificates and ribbons and plaques aren't deserved either.
And every time the hunter sees that mounted and prominently displayed deer, he won't proudly think to himself, "Man, I paid my dues, worked my butt off and it finally came together."
He will think, "I am not good enough to do it fairly."
But maybe he could have done it fairly, had he made the right choice.
