Huntin’ Season Arrives

The air is crisp and the leaves have turned on the trees from green to varying vibrant hues of gold and red.  Fallen leaves crackle as the breeze carries them away.  I love the sound of leaves crunching under my feet as I walk around the terrain of Obediah Hill.

I’ve been watching white-tailed deer from my window for weeks as they hurry to gobble up the acorns fallen from the oak trees.  They seem to favor the white oak acorns.

I watched quite a spectacle last night.  Nine deer were in the yard.  There were four bucks, from what I could tell.  One massive buck stood under an oak tree and silently dared any to challenge him.  He had quite a rack.  Another large buck chased a smaller buck away, entirely, and then proceeded to chase an antler-less deer—be it buck or doe, I don’t know. The chase continued for almost an hour.  The antler-less deer was more lean and nimble than the aggressor and leapt in and out of the woods effortlessly.  The aggressor grunted and stomped in the chase making quite a racket as the pair dodged in and out of the woods.  Both eventually tired and disappeared into the woodline.

Deer hunting season has begun here. There are more than 1 million white-tailed deer in Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.  In Arkansas, hunting seasons are granted for deer, black bear, wild turkey, elk, squirrels, rabbits and other fur-bearing animals, and waterfowl.

Today is the first day for modern gun use.  The past couple of weeks have been dedicated to bow and muzzle-loader gun use.

Obediah Hill has seen much traffic in the past 24 hours from visitors from other parts of the state to participate in Modern Gun Season.

There are deer camps scattered across the area with members having hunted with the same deer camp all of their lives.  Hunting is a much anticipated way of life for people across our great nation.  Often, deer camps work together, sharing the hunted land and proceeds of their game.  The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has a program called Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry, in place since 2000, in which hunters donate a portion of their game.  It is estimated that the program has provided around one million meals to the needy since it’s inception.

For the past few years, we’ve even been able to check our deer online, rather than driving to a check station to register our game.  Isn’t technology grand?!

Last week there was a Special Youth Modern Gun Deer Hunt.  Youth aged 15 years or younger were permitted to hunt with modern guns. Our newspapers were lined with photos of youth as young as 6, happily posing with their deer.

We do not hunt for the sheer sport of it.  We hunt to garner the meat, though there is excitement in the hunt.  Our family primarily hunts deer, but we have also hunted squirrel and wild turkey.  Game meat is always much healthier than purchased meat, having been stayed from hormones and processed food.  There is much to be said about processing your own meat, but that’s my least favorite aspect of hunting.

We keep guns relative to hunting.  Muzzleloaders, rifles, and shotguns.  We also have hand-guns for an entirely different purpose: protection.

Some of our firearms have been passed down through several generations, and some are quite recent purchases.

From the United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, The Second Amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There is much history in the right to keep and bear arms.  From the founding of our great nation, families have kept guns to protect and feed their families.

What will happen with our gun rights and hunting priviledges in an Obama administration?

Sportsmen
Barack Obama did not grow up hunting and fishing, but he recognizes the great conservation legacy of America’s hunters and anglers and has great respect for the passion that hunters and anglers have for their sport. Were it not for America’s hunters and anglers, including the great icons like Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold, our nation would not have the tradition of sound game management, a system of ethical, science-based game laws and an extensive public lands estate on which to pursue the sport. Barack Obama and Joe Biden recognize that we must forge a broad coalition if we are to address the great conservation challenges we face. America’s hunters and anglers are a key constituency that must take an active role and have a powerful voice in this coalition.

I’m not certain if conservation in this sense means of the land or of the hunter.

Obama, having been raised in big cities and elite schools across the country, could not understand the longstanding family tradition of hunting and gun ownership in rural areas.  I can’t help but feel nervous as I try to imagine what an Obama administration will bring.

The NRA warns that Obama has four targeted goals regarding gun ownership in our country:
1. Making the expired ban on assault weapons permanent.
2. Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment.
3. Closing the gun show loophole.
4. Making guns in this country childproof.

I think non-gun owners don’t understand that the main sector of gun owners are law-abiding citizens.  Most gun-related crimes are not committed by individuals who intend to be law-abiding.  We practice gun safety.  I have never pointed a firearm at another individual, and our guns are locked in a gun cabinet, away from visitors and children.

The definition of ‘assault weapons’ in the ban is not just military weapons and the like, but semi-automatic rifles and guns hunters and shooting sportsmen use.  I don’t personally have a use for an AR-15, but, there could come a day when our borders are invaded again…  The point is that I don’t agree with any form of bans on guns.  Once the bans start, they’ll be like eating potato chips—they won’t stop at just one.

I think repealing the Tiahrt Amendment would be a privacy violation, and subject to misuse.  The Tiahrt Amendment prohibits the release of federal firearm tracing information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency conducting a bona fide criminal investigation. If anything, the Tiahrt Amendment could be strengthened.

There is no gun show loophole.  Gun show sellers are required to do background checks on individuals before the sale of firearms.  Private individuals can sell guns to whomever they please, sans the background check.  Believe me, a gun seller does not wish to sell a gun to a criminal.

Childproofing guns is an expensive venue if it entailed using ‘Smart Gun’ technology.  This type of safety device prevent the device from firing if it was in the hands of an unauthorized user, using biometric or other technology.  Some gun manufacturers have deemed this an impossible and even dangerous venture.

We utilize the lock on our gun cabinet.  None of our parents or grandparents locked their guns up.  Our families have instructed safety to our children, just as generations before them.  I think the one of the problems these days are the children and their parents.  We were reared to respect our parents and today’s child is being reared as the center of the household.  Many children are home alone while parents, either both or single, work and are left to become responsible adults without the guidance of an adult.

One week of teaching Vacation Bible School, and I was ready to run away from children.  I have adopted a term for those children:  Other People’s Kids.  OPK are sometimes disrespectful, self-serving, spoiled, and  lack consequences for negative behavior.

I will be paying attention to Obama’s choices for Attorney General, Secretary of State, and the new head of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  Each will have a major role in gun ownership and control.

Obama was a director of the Joyce Foundation between 1998-2001.  In his tenure, the Chicago-based foundation gave out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated against gun ownership.  The Joyce Foundation has funded the group called Violence Policy Center, a serious anti-gun ownership rights organization.  The Joyce Foundation provided $700,000 in 2007 to the VPC.   Some of their information is disputable.

The Violence Policy Center touts themselves as “…the most aggressive group in the gun control movement…”

That’s only one of the groups funded by the Joyce Foundation.

Earlier this year in California, referring to a Pennsylvania group he’d spoken to earlier, Obama said, “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

It sounds like an elitist policy preview on gun ownership, religion, and rural America.

In the words of the late Charlton Heston, “I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands.”

Now, I’m ready for some deer steak.

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Update:  Dtmf, great research on Obama and guns.