It was on Thanksgiving Day. I was in the woods about an hour before daybreak. I hunt as I was taught by my father and his father’s fathers decades before by stalking. To describe it simply, I find a fresh set of tracks and stalk that animal down. There is really no technology type stuff involved except I carry a firearm. My father and our ancestors carried only handmade bows and hand fletched arrows. My father did not like firearms as he felt it gave too much of an advantage. Truthfully, he was and old school Blackfoot (lord help the man who called him a Blackfeet!) Indian complete with all the dressings. He just wanted to hunt as our ancestors did, by handmade weapons. The morning in question, I actually had problems locating fresh tracks. Here in Alabama, we rarely get snow and it was already around 45 degrees before daybreak. Therefore, I knew the animals had fed all night. I hunted all around the mast crop areas to no avail. I found plenty of older tracks, but none significantly fresh to begin stalking. I was a bit jetlagged and thought I was just missing that for which I was searching and needed to focus. When daybreak finally happened that was when the shooting began.

All around me, a firearm reported at least once. I thought, well at least someone is filling his freezer. I left that day empty handed. I returned the next day feeling much fresher than the day before. I hardly ever fail at taking meat on Thanksgiving Day and I felt I had some catching up to do. As Yogi Berra said, “its Deja vu all over again.” To make a long story short the same thing happened the next day. I thought to myself what is going on. I had a different plan on the fourth trip. I carried my gun in case of a chance at meat, but I really had no intention of hunting. I was going to do a little trespassing. I noticed I always heard the shooting at the same places and almost at the same time of the day. I wanted to know what those hunters were doing. So I let them shoot their shots and like usual around noon I heard no more. That’s when I struck out across country. I never carry a map, but this day I brought one and pin pointed where the shots were coming from on my map. One area I targeted was three and a half klicks away northward and the other was half that to the northwest. I would just make a loop back to my present position.

The trip to the furthermost target was uneventful so I will not bore the reader with the details of the march. What I found when I arrived was staggering. It was a huge green field of the like you would see inside a game reserve. It hosted two shooting houses (really they were more like mansions) setting on the same side of the field on opposite ends of the field. Along with the field, there were four solar powered electronic feeders, which contained corn. I looked around a while and started for my second target. I was already convinced that I would find the same setup. The return target was the same except there was no electronic feeders on this one just a huge green field. Same two mansions and one of them had someone in it. I thought well the fit is about to hit the shan now. The person in the house turned out to be an old school mate. We greeted each other and talked about families. Then he wanted to know what I was doing walking around out there. I admitted to him why I was there as I saw no reason to lie to him. He explained that he was a member of a hunting club that leased the land I just crossed. We said our good byes and I promised I would stay off their land. On the way back to my truck, I thought about what I had learned. First thing that sank in is I did not like the way they were “hunting” and the second thing was that there is nothing I could do about it nor was it really any of my business. The deer will eventually wise up and go nocturnal and the hunters would be forced to break the law by hunting at night if they wanted meat. I do not want to get into Alabama’s game laws, but what they are doing is illegal in Alabama, but besides that, I wonder what satisfaction they get from hunting in this manner.

I guess it looks to me the way my firearm looked to my father. When I stalk an animal, I am not required to come within close range of it as my father (and me when I was a young man) was forced to do. He would never fire at a deer over forty yards away. He feared he would not make a clean kill and the animal would suffer from his laziness. We never had to go over a hundred yards past the impact point to retrieve an animal dad shot with his bow. He also hunted a lot with a tomahawk; he took many turkeys with that implement. He never threw it at a deer as he said they would either duck it or jump it. I have had this happen to me using a bow. We do not use the little squiggly things on our bowstring that dampens the twang of the string. When an experienced deer heard that twang, he would jump the oncoming arrow. I guess what I am saying is I feel hunting over bait in any way, gives the hunter too much advantage. I would not have a problem if these same hunters hunted the trails to and from the fields as this in when the deer are on high alert. To tell the truth, the hunters on these fields will very rarely take a large older buck except maybe during peak rut, if they are lucky. That old man will hang back in the bush and observe before he goes out into that open field. He will only come out into it downwind. If he smells you or it does not feel right to him, he will just fade away.

It has been a couple of days since I met up with my old classmate and I have been talking to other hunters. It seems most own at least one of the corn feeders or they are hunting around some of the flavored blocks you can buy at Wal-Mart. As I stated before, it really is none of my business how another man hunts his land or land he has leased. However, I see this type of hunting as a potential problem. I understand a man needs to feed his family, but some of these hunters are taking a deer a day, some more than one a day. I really do not know where they are keeping all of this meat. I try to keep friends and family supplied, but it doesn’t take a deer a day to do this. I see this type of hunting detrimental to our hunting privileges. If too many deer are easily harvested the bureaucrats will start to swarm. If anything is easy, it always leads to excess. Excess deer harvesting will inevitably lead to excess game restrictions and rightly so. If you or someone you know, hunts in this manner just fill your belly and your freezer. Supply your friends and family with their needs or give it to the organization “Hunters for the hungry,” but never take more than you need.