We don’t do it much anymore, hunting, that is…not like we used to…and it’s costing valuable family social time as well as the beneficial lessons about life and responsibility.
By Ray Reilly for Press Pros
I’ll share with you in this writing…something we’ve lost in our modern culture that we’ll never get back, and a unique influence that once helped make young boys into young men.
It’s been obvious to me for two decades now that we don’t hunt and fish like we once did. In fact, I can’t remember anyone in the past weeks who’s even mentioned squirrel hunting, the prospects for rabbit season, and frankly…not as much talk about deer hunting as I remember from the past. We just don’t do it now. Hunting is out of fashion with American people.
But when I was ten years old one of the highlights of my year was the fall hunting season in northeast Ohio. Fall weekends of mornings in the woods, then a trip to Ervin Humphrey’s country general store in the afternoon to compare success (or failure) with a group of other hunters…and boys my age. My uncle Bob would always take me with him and I lived for – anticipated – those hours in the woods and a trip to Humphrey’s for a bottle of pop and a box of shells for the following week’s hunt.
It wasn’t the killing of game, although I do remember the first squirrel, the first rabbit, and the first ring-neck pheasant that I shot. Rather, it was the time with my dad or Uncle Bob that I remember – the lessons and the corrections I received on firearm safety, ethical shooting, and always, always, always…adhering to the hunting laws. You didn’t hunt out of season, and you didn’t shoot more than your daily limit.
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Lessons learned, and the most poignant of those lessons came when I was sixteen years old. Driving home from a good Trumbull County squirrel hunt Uncle Bob actually let me drive. I had my learner’s permit, but this was the first time that I actually drove on the road, and not in the parking lot at the supermarket.
“You know,” he told me. “The same things you’ve learned about gun safety are even more important when you get behind the steering wheel of this truck. Safety with a gun is no more important than safety when you drive. One slip and you can hit someone on the road and change their lives forever.”
To further drive home the point, he would point out wrecked cars at a local body shop, or at the filling station, where the wreckers had towed them after a crash on route 30.
“Someone got hurt pretty bad in that car,” he’d remind. “Maybe even worse. Think about that while you’re driving, or even riding in someone else’s car.”
That all started through the time we spent together hunting. How he and Dad would always caution me about shooting near livestock, or in the direction of a building. “Never fire a gun in the direction of the highway,” Uncle Bob would say. “You don’t know who’s driving down the road while you’re shooting at a rabbit. You have to be mindful of that,” he reminded.
I never forgot those times, and the speeches, because they came from someone I loved and respected.
And I never forgot his sharing with me that the animals we harvested were living things at the moment before they became our next meal on the table.
“There’s a responsibility,” he would remind. “And this is how life is meant. Genesis says that man is to have dominion over the animals of the earth. But there’s a responsibility, too. There’s always a responsibility.”
I don’t see that today because boys don’t hunt, and it concerns me. We’re losing valuable time between dads and boys where what you learn about what a gun can do to a rabbit is more poignant – makes a greater impression – than hearing it on television.
From hearing about it in a hunter’s safety class……
And the consequences of driving are no less poignant when you apply what you learned with a shotgun or .22 rifle in the woods. It’s all the same lesson.
We’re not doing this anymore, and it shows.
‘Til next time…I’ve enjoyed it!
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