It didn’t take long for me to get a response to the column on the death of hunting in America. One guy stopped by the shop that afternoon to thank me. In all fairness, I must note the ones who agreed most with what I said were old geezers like me. The younger generation just told me it’s a different world they live in than the one I grew up in. That’s simply what I implied in the column and I recognize that. Any time any one of us performs in some way through difficult circumstances, we immediately assume that for anyone else to reach that status, it must be done the way we did it or it’s not valid.

    That brings me to some other issues that are beginning to grate on my gentle personality. I’ve heard the words “fair chase” and “ethics” just about enough to become troubling. If those are phrases and words you like to throw around, I’d invite you to read the last sentence in the paragraph above.

    I simply don’t understand how a person can determine what’s “fair” and what’s not. I suppose the caveman and the early Indians might have considered Davy Crockett as being unfair since he had a dog that barked in one corner and bit in the other. Guns certainly cut down on the stalking distances. I’m sure they would have thought his actions “unethical” by their standards as well. There’s a popular T-shirt being sold with a picture of an Indian brave with the following:  “Vegetarian: Indian word for “can’t hunt.’” With the advent of the modern gun of today, we call “ethical fair chase” shooting a bull elk at 500 yards, yet the first Americans had to do that at less than 50 feet to survive. Perhaps we should consider ourselves unethical using those standards.

    With hunting sitting right on the precarious cusp of fading away, we need to stop all this “me better than you” garbage. If it is legal but doesn’t comply with your ethos, then you shouldn’t do it. That, however, doesn’t give you cause to decide that it’s unethical for everyone else. We have enough enemies outside the hunting community without creating them inside of it.

    Those of you who get the weekly Kent and Sussex Crossroads may have seen the front page depicting  a “rare white deer” that lives on Cape Henlopen. Not that I expect them to recant the story, but I fired off a letter informing them that this type deer is hardly rare, and biologically should be removed from the herd. I know that’s never going to set well with the bunny hugger crowds.

    The doe is a piebald deer and as such has genetic flaws that can and will be passed along to subsequent generations. This trait seems harmless when it first appears due to inbreeding. The next generation however begins to suffer terrible physical maladies. They include overbite, Roman nose, humped back and deformed limbs. A few years back I got a piebald fawn that was killed by a fox. The tiny animal probably never took a step as its front knees were formed backwards. It had no ability to run and was easy prey.

    Obviously this deer now is a tourist attraction and to remove it will cause an uproar. That doesn’t change the biological fact. Piebalds are not albino deer (albinos are perfectly normal except for a recessive gene that keeps it from having any pigment) nor are they “partially albino” (there is no such thing).

    I’ve been asked numerous times if its “bad luck” to shoot one. For those of you who recall the great satirical cartoons of Gary Larsen’s “The Far Side,” one cartoon puts this in perspective. Two buck deer are standing talking to one another and on the chest of one is a huge target in his hair patterns. The other buck says, “Bummer of a birthmark, Hal.”

    Exactly my feeling on piebalds.