Funny Questions Kids Ask

“Coach Jack, who do I have to kill to stop this madness?”

I suppose the question wouldn’t have bothered me so much had it been asked by someone my age. Coming from a teenager (one of several young people to ask me that question of late), it caused me to think before spouting off with my usual “Kill them all.” (I’m such an optimist, thinking someone might actually be able to do that, kill them all.)

“Jack, it’s sad that you are such a misanthrope. Humans are herding animals. Your rejection of the herd means you will die in the coming stampede as the races of Man make war against each other. Mark my words. Your friends, your own family, will turn against you if you try to stand alone.” This from a white Nationalist I used to exchange emails with. (I’ve given a lot of thought to his words and think he’s partly right. Some people I know will move with the herd, but some will stand up, choose to be men and women rather than sheep and cows. I’d sooner stand, and die, with men and women than live as a bleater, or cud chewer.)

 “Jack, you do know the American Experiment is over, don’t you? It failed, just as was its destiny. Humanity is not ready for self-rule. People are stupid cows. They want to be in a herd, told what to do, how to live, what to think. How can you not know this?” The European who asked me these questions has forgotten more history than I’ve bothered to learn. I’ve tried to blow the comment off as typical European arrogance, or socialist propaganda.

Looking to other Europeans I’ve met, all having reached adulthood in communist countries; I realize they too think America is over, The Experiment having predictably failed. Some of them merely shrug. They have their big screen TVs and a car, neither luxury was affordable in the homeland. “Sure America is dying, but it’s still better than where we came from. We will be in our graves before the worst of America’s collapse effects us.”

Others shake their heads. “I’ll go home if it (America) gets as bad as I think it will. Yes, Europe is in worse shape, but we’ve lived through two world wars and have never been as wealthy, before or after them, as you Americans are now. Yes, I love the luxuries I have here, but living without them? I’m better off going home where I have family.”

Then there are the people who nearly bring me to tears. “Jack, come here to live. We know how to survive. Please bring your family here and let us help you get through the bad times we see coming, especially for America.”

“Jack, you do know the American Experiment is over, don’t you?”

But- but-

An argument begins in my head. “Do you not understand that the current government administration’s dismantling of your country is not the problem, but merely the fruit of the problem? America, the very concept, the essence of it, is a rotting corpse held together by the mycelium of a toxic fungus. The leaders you see are simply the fruiting bodies, the mushrooms visible on the surface. Pick them off if you like; the fungus lives on, interwoven in the corpse.”

I guess I see the truth in all this. Somewhere, in this madhouse I call home, used to be a book, a teacher’s guide, copyrighted in the early part of the 20^th century. The focus of the book was social engineering, an end to The American Experiment. The utopians were certain they could change this country, and the world, via education, or indoctrination, depending on one’s viewpoint. Creating a herd of “planned thinking” automatons was probably in the works before the 1910s, but I haven’t read a book (written by any American with that bent) from earlier than 1914 or ’15.

With so many people telling me “America, as you know it, is finished”, including our current President (a typical utopian; preaching what we should be doing while he does the opposite), coupled with a hundred years of social engineering; via our schools promoting the dismantling of The American Experiment, I’ll admit it’s probably too late to turn things around. (Those who saw the collapsing of Rome’s civilization failed to wake its citizens in time to defeat entropy, which took hundreds of years. Our collapse is happening at the speed of the Internet.)

But- but- what about other peoples, other cultures trying to break free of the madness America is sinking into?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writes in her book “Infidel”, that her father was infatuated with the American Experiment, enamored with our Constitution and talked of creating a Somalia based on the ideals of America! He infected his daughter with his dreams of a Great Somali Experiment and betrayed her by selling her into a traditional Islamic marriage according to the customs of his tribe. Perhaps the European and American utopians are correct and no amount of idealism can overrule what human nature has dictated? Perhaps humanity will always rise above its base nature only to descend into totalitarian dictatorship? What is utopia but a dictatorship?

So what do I tell the youths who ask, “Who do I have to kill?”

Everyone or no one.

There is no sense in hurling yourself against the wall of humanity as it stands today. Better to adopt a Roman Stoic mindset: endure what you cannot change, but change what you can. At the very least, learn to read and think. Hord “paper” books. (Digital books are too easy to manipulate. Ask George Orwell.) Observe what has happened, learn from my generation’s mistakes. Remember what is right and good, and prepare to survive. Always remember that out of the fall of Rome, America was born, eventually. Something greater than America will rise out of her rotting corpse. You must be the seed waiting for that moment.

Even at the darkest moments of the Soviet empire, people took their children into secret places and taught them the true history of their people to counter the indoctrination of the communist lies (state education).

The American Experiment went farther than any of the European utopians thought it could. The next turn around the Wheel will see an even greater experiment put into practice. Live to be the seeds of that moment.

Or simply enjoy the ride to the bottom. That’s what most people will be doing.

Baaaa...

Mooo…

Cutting to the Bone

( Written when gasoline got over $4 a gallon)

So gasoline is getting beyond our budget, again. I figured it would, for a variety of reasons I’m not able to do anything about, so I don’t dwell on them. Not dwelling on events I can’t actively cause, or change, is a part of practicing my version of Roman Stoic philosophy. Changing things that are within my ability is the major focus of Roman Stoicism as I am attempting to live it. Of course, just changing things doesn’t always bring about the tranquility the Roman Stoics used to pursue, and I’m not sure tranquility is what I want in my life. Still, I need to start somewhere and tranquility isn’t such a bad goal.

If, and when, gasoline hits former Vice President Al Gore’s suggested price of $5.00 per gallon (“Earth in the Balance”, if my memory serves) I’ll have long since changed my habits to accommodate a life requiring as little of the substance as is possible. One drastic change came about several years ago after learning of the VP’s target price of $5.00 a gallon. I all but stopped voting for anyone with a “D” after his or her name. While that was a tough decision to make, (I tend to have mostly Democrat acquaintances and enjoy exploring the ideas they have, mostly about food production and religious issues) the change was made easier by the hypocrisy of the Democrat Party when gasoline prices hit $4 a gallon the first time. The Dem leaders started bellowing how unfair it was to the working class. I stopped dead in place when I heard that come over the radio. What? They were all for a fiver a gallon when it would be mostly in taxes!  Wasn’t that going to hurt the working class? Or was that the whole point of getting the price that high? Crush the working class; force them onto government doles to survive? Not that much of what the other party was/is doing seemed sane to me either.

The rest of the changes I’ve since made have been simple reductions in spending by way of behavior modifications. No more running to other towns to buy coffee and sit with friends to discuss everything under the sun, but we also didn’t bother to spend our time and money in Emmitsburg. We still go to Giants in Gettysburg, or Weiss in Thurmont, for groceries and will continue to do so as gas prices continue to rise. We’re simply working things around so we make the trips part shopping/part visiting. As time goes on, with ever-increasing costs, we’ll make the trips monthly, rather than weekly. We’re also beginning to eat what we grow in the gardens rather than give most of it away.

Another gradual change came about partly because of rising prices of gas and food. We now buy half a beef (for the cost of processing the whole animal) and freeze it. Wanda gets to enjoy steaks we pay $1.50 a pound for and see in the markets for as much as $10.00 a pound! I’ve taken to buying large cuts of pork (soon we’ll be buying whole joints of pig) and turning it into sausages we can’t find the equals of in supermarkets, for considerably less than store sausage costs!

We’ve bought canners and a dehydrator for processing the vegetables we grow. We’ve been, and will continue, planting open pollinated varieties of most things we grow so we can save seeds for following seasons. Purchasing hybrid seeds each year is wasteful not only because of their inability to reproduce viable seeds of a known standard for next year’s planting. They are also usually grown on farms dependant on fossil fuels for everything from preparing/fertilizing the soil to shipping seeds around the rock. Their prices reflect that.

As we hear the state wants to raise (as much as double) the price of keeping a vehicle on the road we’ll start taking vehicles off the road, saving on insurance and maintenance fees as well as the tag renewal costs! For every increase in state, county or town fees we’ll find some way of reducing our need for something else, preferably by directly eliminating spending in a given tax area when we can. We already spend much of our disposable income in Pennsylvania. It wouldn’t be so difficult to take all our business across the line if Maryland politicians can’t grasp that increasing taxes and fees often causes the reverse of their stated goals! And if Pennsylvania starts getting equally ridiculous with their sales taxes? Well, we’re already in a “cut to the bone” mode so we’ll simply hunker down to weather the storm until some sane administration regains control of either state. And if that doesn’t happen in my lifetime? Well, I have friends who’ve survived, even thrived in socialist/communist countries. They’re eager to teach me how to be comfortable even in a totalitarian state, which seems to be where we’re heading.

A few years ago I’d have been furious to find myself having to consider these “cuts”. Today, I’m almost eager to start making them deeper, to take ever more of my earned cash from grasping fingers that produce nothing and demand more and more. I can make a game of not spending, of hording, of hiding. Laughing at the tax grabbers, the do-nothings, could easily become a sport for me. Finding ways to be productive, yet giving nothing to the governments is a great way to exercise my inventive genius. (“Genius” is typed with tongue firmly in cheek.)

Another option we’re seriously considering is pooling our resources and joining with people of like minds. Over the last decade we’ve been asked to sell out in Maryland and joining some of the hippie communes that have survived from the late 1960s to this day. Pagan communities have invited us and even “whites only” pagan conclaves have offered sanctuary from the coming chaos they predict. (At first, I was surprised to learn there were pagans so racist, though I quickly realized that pagans are no different in their thinking than any other labeled group.)

Whatever we end up doing spending wise, I will continue to stand on the archery range as coach to the families who manage to attend the IWLA’s youth program. Unlike those in government, who always urge me to “think of the children” (so they can continue to rape the taxpayers), I actually do think of the kids and volunteer my time, equipment and what little expertise I have so the kids have a chance to grow in ways I did not discover until I was an adult.

Hate

I suppose I should give fair warning to the couple or three people who might pause to read further. This is not a pleasant remembrance of some bygone moment of life in or around Emmitsburg. For those preferring a politer view of Emmitsburg- please pass this one by.

So it begins. I hate having to think, to ponder unpleasant moments. Sadly, I often have no choice.

“NIGGER!”

I turn in stunned disbelief. Wanda and I are standing on the walk in front of our house in Emmitsburg. Our son’s girlfriend is on the door stoop, just about to go into the house after a long day at her job “down the road”. She stands stone faced as I turn from her to a speeding away, dark green, older SUV and back to her.

“Did he yell what I thought he did?” I’m no longer sure I’m standing where I thought I was in space or time. I feel… confused? I definitely feel a rage building. I’m wondering if I’m about to go into the house to get a weapon? What’s handiest? Bow and arrows? Rifle? Pistol? Ball bat? Hammer? Something explosive? So many options and he’s speeding away.

“Yes.”

I’m in the middle of the street now, staring after the vehicle, trying to will it back so I can drag the driver out of his cage (biker talk for the wheeled boxes oblivious idiots travel about in) and break his bones. Hurt him as badly as I see my friend hurt. Cripple him physically so he’s forever in pain as this friend of mine is now forever hurt by someone on my street! In my town! In my county! My state! My country! MY WORLD!

Her words penetrate the rage. “Old Man, he’s just a dumb ass Emmitsburg cracker who doesn’t know a spic from a nigger. Leave it be.”

I can’t leave it be. I shake with rage. Rage that I long ago learned to turn into foaming, incoherent cursing rather than hurt the people around me.

Then she tells me that this has been going on since the first day she moved here almost 3 years ago. “I’m afraid to get out of my car in Thurmont.” she says. “And there are places in Frederick that are worse. Emmitsburg isn’t so bad. This is the first insult I’ve gotten in town in at least a couple of months.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I don’t want to believe what I’m hearing. I thought the town had changed. That the racists had at least learned to keep their prejudices to themselves. I know some local people who are still in the Klan, but they keep their mouths shut publicly. I’m aware of the Kluxers in the Thurmont area and have had young friends tell me of their fighting with children of Klan families in Catoctin High School over the years. But in front of my house?

“Old man,” she says. “Why do you think I never walk around town unless I’m with your son? I’ve been called nigger and have been told to go back where I came from since the first day I got here. Believe me, I have seriously concidered doing just that! I was never called a nigger in any part of the boroughs of New York City. No! I had to come to nowhere Emmitsburg to experience that!”

Now, I’m a racist… as well as a bigot, a sexist, a homophobe and probably a few other unpleasant things I’ve yet to grasp the meanings of. Many people I know share these… traits with me. Some of these traits are probably survival instincts hardwired into our animal selves, unlikely to ever not be just below the surface of our thinking. Other traits I know I learned along the way to this place. They can be unlearned. When I meet someone for the first time I notice skin color and sex. The brain automatically slips the person into a category- say… black/woman. Cute, handsome, plain, unattractive also get tagged with “black/woman”. Depending on the meeting I might discover a pleasant attitude and the person gets tagged as friendly. If she says something of interest she gets tagged with that too. If I have time I begin asking questions to learn what I can of her. I may even decide I like her and consider cultivating her as a friend. But she is first, and always- black- different. Which is good, as I have little use for people exactly like me. They bore me. In the case of the “cracker” in the SUV- they embarrass me.

And there’s the rub I think triggered the rage. All the racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic thoughts and utterances that have ever escaped me caught up with me the instant I saw the hurt on my friend’s face.

The puzzlement I’m pondering- What feeds my rage? The hurt my friend took, or the guilt I experience?

Fortunately for me, and the cracker, the spic won’t let me hurt him, ever. Not that she thinks he’s worth saving, but she thinks I am.

Bullstuff Meter

“You must do this. You must believe this. How can you not see this? What are you, stupid?” So the comments pour over me from those who have decided they know more, are greater thinkers, better “papered”, more moral and obviously better bred than I. It doesn’t matter if I’m talking to a socialist or a conservative, an atheist, a xian (anyone claiming to be Christian, but obviously not), an agnostic or pagan, an academic or pseudo intellectual. I’m always wrong, they, always right.

The Catholic Encyclopedia for instance says this about Paganism: “… in the broadest sense includes all religions other than the true one revealed by God, and, in a narrower sense, all except Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism. The term is also used as the equivalent of Polytheism.”

I’ve been anxious for decades for someone to present me with proof there is a god, any god! I’ll settle for a Greek or Roman god. Heck, I’d take proof positive that Mother Earth is a god, urr… goddess. I’d even settle for proof that Obama is the One!

I’ve endured countless lectures on why I’m going to Hell if I don’t accept Jesus as my savior, yet no one has been able to prove to me the man actually lived, let alone taught the religious philosophies people keep pressing on me. When I tell them I want to believe, that I simply can’t without some proof, I’m usually told I’m stubborn, or foolish, or willfully stupid, or my favorite- damned. Rarely, am I pitied and told I’ll be prayed for.

While I’m searching for proof there is a god, I’m hoping the atheists will prove to me there isn’t one. So far, they’ve succeeded as well as the “true believers” in presenting nothing concrete to support their belief in… nothing? However! They are, by and large, as certain of my stupidity as the worst of the religious are.

Then there are the ideologues who hound me with their beliefs claimed (just as the religious do) as fact. The high priest of the cult of Man Made Global Warming, urr… Cooling, no wait! Global Climate Change! Yeah, that’s what it is (at least for this decade), tells me I’m destroying the planet with my lifestyle. Really?

I fly around this rock in jet airliners to give paid speeches to people who live and think the same way I do? I live in a house big enough to comfortably shelter Emmitsburg’s entire extended Cool clan, make huge chunks of income off the oil stocks I own, monthly pay an electric bill partially generated by the burning of more lights in and about my home than some small countries can boast?

Well, I guess he’s right. I am leaving one hell of an immense global footprint. Except I don’t live like that. He does. Yet I’m killing the planet by working within a half mile of my home? Which, by the way, didn’t/doesn’t require a smidgen of the resources his mansion sucked out of the Earth, to build, or maintain. I’ve only once in 56 years been off the ground in anything that flew under its own power. That was a De Havilland “Beaver” that took me twenty minutes into wilderness Canada and brought me back out. I doubt that roundtrip flight used the fuel his jet consumes while warming one engine. But I’m told to change my extravagant ways?

Of course, I don’t get it. It being the opinions and dictates of my betters. I’m one of those leeches sucking on the blood (collected taxes) of town, county, state and federal governments because I’m under-educated, under-employed and not paying my fair share of the tax burden while demanding government services and assistance. Or so I’m told in news articles on-line, by way of a DSL service we pay for, via a computer we bought, operated with electricity we pay for, while sitting in a house bought without aid of a government loan (which we probably qualified for) while working locally for less combined income than the average “down the road” employee spends on their combined new home mortgage and workday travel expenses each year! But I’m the problem?

Okay, for the sake of enlightenment, I’ll accept that I’m the problem. Now, some genius please come along and explain it to me; slowly, in small, simple words, and please be patient and not get angry when I ask for clarification because I truly do want to be a safe little sheep and have someone or thing watch over me and assume all my worries and burdens. I don’t care if it’s a god or a state. I’ll follow. Show me the way! Convince me, not with utopian/dogmatic (same end result, different spelling) or ivory-towered fabrications untested in reality, or pronouncements from those never stooped so low as to entice their food from the soil. No! Just simple facts I can grasp, taste, and use. Line up your proofs, show me how you live and I’ll get in line if my bull stuff meter doesn’t register much above zero. (So far, it’s been pegged at “overload”.)

In fairness, I have engaged in conversations with philosophers I respect, mostly because they are living what they preach. One of them (a communist at home on the farm, a serious capitalist off it) has claimed to have looked upon Babylon and found it sorely lacking in anything truly useful to, while being repressive and destruct of, the soul he believes he is. He has climbed his mountain, cleared a bit of ground, sown his seeds and taken to raising/educating his clan along with most of the food they consume. His goal is not to avoid Babylon (Babyland, as he sometimes calls what the rest of us live in), but to view it in its entirety! To understand what his god (Mother Earth, Nature?) demands of him counter to the Siren promises of Babylon.

Another pagan, living in the heart of Babylon, ministers to those lost in its tangle and desperate for some connection to reality, their Mother. Oddly both pagan philosophers work, or have worked, in fields of science. One worked for a drug company and the other a telecommunications satellite company. As different in lifestyles and worldviews as these two pagans are, they have been very patient with me, taking time from their busy lives to explain what they are about and to answer my questions.

I’ll listen to such philosophers. Philosophers who live what they preach. All others? The BS meter is still pegged at over-load.

Wildings among us

I encounter… things that are where they aren’t supposed to be. Living things, I can find in books about North American wildlife. Things like the North American River Otter, which I found Ron Cool quietly watching early one summer’s morning as he hunkered at the Monocacy River’s edge only a few yards from canoers who were snoring the dawn away. Yawning beside him I softly asked what was so interesting. Nodding to the opposite bank, he muttered, “Wait”. I waited. Two otters slide down the muddy bank into the water. They swam about for a couple of minutes then streaked back up the bank only to come sliding back down a moment later.

“There aren’t any otters along this part of the river.” I whispered.

Ron shrugged. “You better tell them.”

We watched them play a bit longer until some awakened sleeper loudly demanded to know what we were looking at. I haven’t seen an otter since.

Then there was the afternoon a stork set down along Middle Creek in the late 1970s. I hadn’t seen a stork since we lived along Topper Road over to Fairfield. Then, the majestic white birds nested on Fred Crum’s chimney each year. I hadn’t seen a stork since we moved in 1964 or ‘65 so finding one startled me, but I at least knew what I was looking at. Sadly, I haven’t seen another since.

Probably the most exciting animal I didn’t get to see was the bobcat, which terrorized some friends for more than a week before suddenly vanishing. That happened in the mid 1990s. The friends were living along the Taneytown Pike, just a few miles out of Emmitsburg, when the huge cat showed up one night late in the fall. The beast circled the house calling out the house cats. Those poor felines were insane with fear and the humans were not much better once they saw the size of the cat as it stood on its hind legs peering in their windows. When I told them a bobcat was stalking them, they thought me insane. (Hey, I wasn’t the one afraid to leave my house after dark.)

I suggested they call the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which they did. The DNR told them there were no bobcats in their area, but if there were, they are a protected species. (Typical DNR response.) I suspected it was a bobcat because I’d been along the Monocracy River years before when one cried out in the depths of the night. When I described the 1 AM scream to friends who keep a cabin in upstate Pennsylvania, they told me they were sure I’d heard a bobcat as they often encountered them in the PA mountains and also heard them in heavily wooded areas along the upper Monocacy.

Why did the bobcat suddenly stop harassing my friends? Because the corn that bordered their house on three sides had been cut to the ground and removed. The cat no longer had cover to travel from the woods to the house so it moved on to safer hangouts.

What brings all this to mind? The cougar, also known as puma, mountain lion, catamount, or panther, which I’ve also not seen, but have heard stories about for years. The latest telling is of a foal with its hide torn from shoulder to knee and a large bite wound on its rump. The storyteller said he could see the claw marks where the hide was first punctured before being stripped down to the knee. The bite mark left fang holes big enough to stick his little finger into.

When I asked where this young horse had been attacked, he told me a story of a pair of very large cats circling his campfire decades ago as he fished along a local body of water. The attack occurred in that general area. He also allowed the area is as unvisited as any place in this region can be and that the owner of the land and horse claims big cats live in the remotest part of his farm- an area people seldom visit.

Do I know there are cougars near Emmitsburg? No. Do I believe they could be living near here? Yep. I’ve seen otters and heard bobcats where they weren’t supposed to be. Bears are spotted on College Mountain from time to time, one even came into town a few years ago. Why wouldn’t I believe cougars live where I’m not supposed to be?

The teacher in me

You say it was this morning when you last saw your good friend

Lyin' on the pavement with a misery on his brain

Stoned on some new potion he found upon the wall

Of some unholy bathroom in some ungodly hall

An odd song to be obsessing over as I cruise down US 15 at six o’clock of a morning thinking about the class I’m supposed to cut my teeth on as a Bow Hunter Safety instructor. I find myself hitting the repeat button each time the song ends. How does this song fit into the coming day’s events?

He only had a dollar to live on 'til next Monday

But he spent it on some comfort for his mind

Did you say you think he's blind?

The memories the song is dredging up are from those early days of teenage disillusionment with my parents, school, the country and people in general. Mixed in with those memories are the alcohol-hazed days when I finally settled into being a misanthrope.

More than a decade of my life was spent with alcoholics, drunks, potheads, coke snorters, pill poppers, ‘shroom eaters and needle junkies. Most of us seeking a momentary escape from our lives, a fleeting pleasure earned with a dollar rather than our mindful efforts.

Yeah he'll always be another one of us

He said he wanted Heaven but prayin' was too slow

So he bought a one way ticket on an airline made of snow

Did you say you saw your good friend flyin' low?

Flyin' low

Dyin' slow

(Written and sung by Hoyt Axton, a band member of Steppenwolf)

Best I can figure, I’m reminiscing on where I’ve been to bolster my resolve as I step into a place I don’t think I belong. A place where my actions and words can ripple through the lives of others. Good people I have little in common with, yet feel I have some obligation to.

Do I feel guilty about all those who chose the path to a bottom? I chew on that and decide we knew what we were doing; we knew the consequences of our choices. Hell, I wanted some of those consequences! I think of those who have died, who are dying and those who have atrophied, who say to me “Don’t you wish you were eighteen again? Don’t you miss those days?”

No. No I don’t. My glory days are in front of me, not behind me in some brown bottle or wine filled bong. I think it so odd that in my mid fifties I’m making memories while so many of my once-upon-a-time friends are already trapped in theirs.

There is activity about the Frederick chapter house of the Izaak Walton League of America. I’m not as early as I’d hoped to be. Since I was at the previous class (Hunter Safety, the most basic course) just the week before, most of the instructors know me by name. They tease me about coming back for more. I make my way into the building and find Ben Kelkye, instructor of instructors, a man I admire, one of very few. I tell Ben I don’t want to become a Bow Hunter instructor. That I’m not a hunter and have nothing to add to the day’s events.

He argues, once more, that I’m already instructing the kids in the youth program so I might as well formalize my efforts and join the rolls of the National Rifle Association’s certified instructors. I compromise, tell him I’ll take the class over again as it’s been years since the wife and I took it together. He cheerfully agrees.

I struggle to pay attention to the lectures. The course is very different from the previous one, much more detailed. So much to absorb, especially when I have no plans to hunt. I have to keep reminding myself that I’ll be passing this knowledge on to the kids.

Still, what am I going to pass along? I’ve never killed a deer. I am so out of place among these knowledgeable “outdoorsmen” who have years of hunting behind them. Who actually love the sport, who teach the safety courses because they have a passion for hunting and want to see the tradition carried into the future so others can experience the outdoors as only a hunter can.

So what am I going to lecture about when my turn comes? How to safely use a tree stand? I’m a groundhog! How to track a deer? Or field dress it and transport it safely? I don’t hunt! Will I have to explain “carrying capacity”? How wildlife populations are studied, the carrying capacity is determined and bag limits set for the following season? Maybe. I did follow that well enough.

Or hunter ethics? Ahhh. Something I don’t need a harvested deer under my belt to talk about! I’ve had plenty of discussions with hunters and non-hunters about the lack of hunter ethics! Animals wounded by hunters taking shots beyond their abilities. (Deer running around after the hunting season with legs dangling from wounds caused by incompetent shots. Deer dying from infected wounds caused by arrows still sticking from their hindquarters). Idiots shooting bullets through farm equipment, old cars and farm buildings just for the fun of it. Hunters who admit they shot deer and didn’t take the time to track them because a better one would be along in a few minutes. Hunters who arrogantly trespass on private property, damage trees with their hunting stands, cut away saplings and brush to create firing lanes, damage fences, leave gates open, shoot goats, cows and horses because they don’t know what they are doing! Or worse, because they can. Then there are the meat poachers who sell their kill and the trophy poachers who kill for the head and antlers (sometimes just the antlers) and leave the meat to rot.

I can’t do much about the adults who might do those things. Sure, I can stand in front of them and berate them for a lack of ethics, but only they can change how they behave. The kids are another story. Most of them haven’t solidified their hunter mentality. They can still be influenced by the ethical actions of those of us willing to stand before them and preach the gospel of the ethical sportsman.

As I’m driving home late in the day, parts of another song (written and sung by former Steppenwolf member John Kay) fill my head.

My thoughts turned to the teachers

And the champions of the weak

The protectors of the creatures

And the saints down on the street

All the helpers, all the healers

Who lay hands on wounded souls

And whose daily acts of mercy

Drive the cynic from my door

Countless times I’ve seen the wonders

That the gift of hope can bring

To the betrayed and the forgotten

Yet I stood watching in the wings

Too many times I heard the call

And did not answer, to my shame

But I swear from this day on

I will lend a helping hand.