Responding to an on-line opinion page invitation about the hypocrisy that hunters sometimes face, I decided to outline my own progression of the controversial activity of hunting, beginning in my Iowa boyhood.
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| Little did Guy Reynolds know that his son, Steven, and his Fox terrier, Bridget, would become a rat killing duo on Des Moines Street, at the Burlington-Northern railroad tracks clear past Dean Avenue, on Des Moines' Eastside. |
When I was about eleven years old, I hunted Norway rats that frequented the railroad tracks by the thousands near my east Des Moines neighborhood. In the shadow of towering grain elevators, my Fox terrier, ‘Bridget,’ and I valiantly tried to reduce their population every Saturday morning whenever possible. I routed them out from under giant sheets of wire-reinforced cardboard boxcar liners lying about in the grass, as one after another, Bridget snapped their backs and shook them until they didn’t move. Despite their apparent suffering, no one criticized us for doing that, strangely.
Around age twelve or thirteen, I progressed to shooting pigeons on my sister’s farm in Dallas County, Iowa with my Daisy pump action BB gun. Although they all didn’t go to waste, (think: roasted squab) shooting them saddened my sister; whereas wringing the necks of dozens of chickens just had to be done.
In my early teens, upon instruction by an older cousin, I graduated to hunting small game such as squirrels, rabbits, and pheasants using a 22-cal rifle, and a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun; as well as going fishing along Iowa rivers to my mother’s delight, as she was raised on fish and wild game in Roseau County, Minnesota in the early 1900s. Although I never knew if she hunted deer, I know she trapped fur bearers, like skunks, coyotes, and fox for spending money.
Contrary to the tradition of the father typically being the teacher in this regard, my mother was the one who encouraged me to hunt and fish, saying “You kill it. I’ll cook it.” My father’s family had been farmers in the Midwest for several decades before my folks were married in 1929. Because supplemental hunting wasn’t as necessary for them, as it had been for my mother’s family, Dad hadn’t learned to hunt; although it wasn’t something he did, he didn’t disapprove of it.
My family’s summers were often spent in far northwestern Minnesota visiting my mother’s family. Being as my mother was the eldest in her family; her next oldest brother was a gunsmith; her three younger brothers were hunters and fishermen; and her sister an avid hunter & trapper in her own right who fished summer and winter; hunted deer, waterfowl, and upland birds; that when I got around to dating girls I quickly discovered that some people were against hunting altogether. They found killing animals for food, horrible; they couldn’t imagine why I’d do such a cruel thing. One girl dumped me on the spot.
Those people didn’t think about fishing the same way, I guess. I could’ve been vindictive and asked, “Still have those old photographs of all the big fish you caught that summer before you put them back in the lake? Suffocating them; the way fish die out of the water is obviously more humane.” Even more amazingly, I thought, the majority of the guys with whom I had school classes didn’t hunt at all. Never had. Didn’t plan to ever go.
During that long ago time period, one of my younger in-laws became wildly indignant when I off-handedly teased him about being a Missouri coon hunter, “I AM NOT A KILLER OF ANYTHING!” he bellowed, almost spitting out his disgust. Witnessing his highly visible agitation, I did not reply to him even as I watched him eat a juicy hamburger at the family picnic.
In 1971, during my early twenties, I purchased an uncle’s farm a half mile from where my mother was born in 1909, and that year began hunting deer using a high-powered rifle. I sharpened my hunting skills through experience with my relatives here, and have continued to do so, every year, even as I’ve become among the very eldest in the ever-widening family hunting circle of men, women, and children who enjoy the year-around activities of deer camp and deer hunting.
My first wife, an Iowa woman, accepted my hunting interests having been nurtured on wild game herself as a child. She did not hunt, but while she didn’t enjoy eating deer meat so much, she did like eating fish; enduring the unappealing cooking odor of venison or fish as an occasional necessity.
My second wife, a Minnesota woman, wasn’t a hunter either; but knew through a life experience apart from our own knew how to make dandelion greens salad, cook beaver tail, and can caribou. Our daughter didn’t hunt either, but quickly learned where venison comes from, and even while knowing that enjoyed eating it fresh right out of the skillet. One time, many years ago now, she made a name for herself when she cooked a whole venison hindquarter for her classmates at Iowa State one winter.
My third wife, also a Minnesota woman, has her own hunting stories that rival mine, some involving moose, and deer, and getting lost on a deer drive with her family in the big woods, apart from the group, without a gun or light after sundown. Good thing she was a professional singer for 40 years, otherwise she may be out there yet
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