My dad raised my brother and I dove hunting and fishing. We didn’t really deer hunt. I went deer hunting a few times in all my years before moving to Wisconsin. I’ve done lots of other hunting but for some reason I never really went deer hunting. I’m not sure why. It could have been that my dad, brother, and I preferred dove hunting. It could have been that deer hunting was slow while dove hunting was fast. It could have been that the deer in Alabama are usually about the size of large dogs and who wants to shoot a dog?. I’m not sure why. All I know is that it never really interested me so when Pam and I moved up to Wisconsin, a major deer hunting area, I was more interested in duck hunting than going after any of the monster white-tailed deer around here.
This changed two years ago when I hear a “To The Best of Out Knowledge” episode called “The Vanishing Present.” This episode interviewed UW-Madison environmental studies professor Donald Waller. He described beginning to hunt deer because of the environmental destruction he knew them to be responsible for. I described this last year here. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any deer last year. Saturday is opening day of the 2012 gun deer season and I am once again hunting for Bambi’s mom (and Bambi too if possible). The good news is that Andy, the owner of the land I am hunting on, has been seeing deer consistently by where I will be hunting. Here’s hoping I lower the deer population Saturday.
SIDE NOTE – While searching for Andy’s blog url I found this post concerning Andy. Turns out that at the time of the post Andy had the Wisconsin record for the Shortnose Gar. Not sure if he still has it but I think that is cool. He really is an incredible sportsman.