News - Sports

Saturday, Jun. 30, 2007

Changing face of the outdoor experience

Last week we took a peek at changes which have transpired in the world of fishing between by boyhood and today. Most have been steps backward, or maybe to put matters more bluntly, they reflect negatively on the world in which we now live. The same holds true when it comes to hunting, although here the picture may well be even bleaker.

THEN: You could hunt almost anywhere, and on private land a simple request to do so invariably brought consent. In all of my adolescence I can only remember being denied access one time, although folks would often say you could hunt squirrels or rabbits but then add "Don't shoot my birds." Incidentally, the one instance of being denied permission came at the hands of an outsider who did little to endear himself to locals thanks to his penchant for saying "We didn't do it this way where I came from."

NOW: Posted signs proliferate like kudzu, and the sad truth is that public hunting as we have known it may well vanish in the next half century.

THEN: Most hunters, boys and men, owned a maximum of three guns--a shotgun was most common, with a .22 not too far behind. Some added a centerfire rifle as well.

NOW: You would think, by reading the outdoor magazines (and I say this even though I earn much of my livelihood writing for them), that it was imperative to have a different gun for almost everything you hunt -- a turkey shotgun, a waterfowling shotgun, an upland game shotgun, and rifles of so many calibers it would take a mathematical genius to keep up with them all.

THEN: Ammunition was affordable, and you could buy both shotgun shells and rimfire cartridges individually.

NOW: There are some shotgun shells (such as turkey and waterfowl loads) which cost as much per shell as two boxes on sale would have cost in the 1950s.

THEN: You hunted ducks with lead shot, and few cripples were lost.

NOW: Duck hunters have to rely on frightfully expensive composite loads or else shoot steel shot, and the latter likely cripples as many ducks as lead ingestion ever sickened.

THEN: A boy could walk through the streets of small towns with a shotgun cradled in his arm without occasioning so much as a second glance from anyone. I personally did it countless times.

NOW: You can rest assured that if a lad tried it, almost anywhere, local law enforcement officers would receive a bevy of phone calls.

THEN: A boy could take a gun to school and leave it with the principal or in a car without anyone being concerned. It was a common practice. My brother, who drove a school bus, would take a shotgun to school for use on squirrel hunting outings once he had run his route.

NOW: Having a gun anywhere close to school grounds will bring suspension, expulsion, or worse.

THEN: Hunting attire consisted of worn out clothing or durable Duxbak gear, with foot wear likely being a pair of second-hand combat boots.

NOW: There seem to be more camouflage patterns than there are species of trees in the Southeast, you have special underwear of all sorts rather than a union suit, and it is easy enough to break the bank on accessories for the sportsman.

THEN: You didn't need a hunting license until you were 16 years of age, and it was common for boys of 12 to hunt alone.

NOW: In some states simply clearing the path for a youngster to hunt involves a paperwork maze which would give a pointy-headed bureaucrat indigestion, hunter education is required everywhere, and licensing regulations are often quite complicated.

THEN: You could head into nearby woods, whether just outside town or deep in the country, and find peace, quiet, and a few bushytails.

NOW: Suburbia threatens to eat up woodlands everywhere.

THEN: Most folks hunted or, if they didn't, viewed it as wholesome recreation, and I doubt if you could have found a handful of folks in any upstate South Carolina county opposed to the Second Amendment.

NOW: You regularly see letters to the editor and editorials suggesting that banning all guns is the fast road to social salvation. Individuals who wouldn't know a pig's snout from its curly tail tell us it's wrong to eat meat. City slickers with no real links to the land want to ban hunting as cruel.