December 26, 2005

First Walt Disney and after that the outpouring of Saturday morning cartoon fare for children has raised us a generation of non-hunters. The Bambi-Generation, well-meaning but uninformed, they see each backyard creature in humanized terms. Lovable little animals with human voices cringe from the bad old NRA Elmer Fudds that rational sportsmen have become.

And nature, being an opportunity-based force, rewarded us with city parks and golf courses plagued with Canada geese, suburban gardens ravaged by Bambi and a resurgence of predator types from foxes to coyotes to the occasional edge-of-town-lurking mountain lion.

Those who used to suit up on weekends to disrupt this or that form of hunting activity, now lie abed at night in their suburban homes. And, if they listen closely, hear the muffled munching of Brer Rabbit in whatever serves for the backyard briar patch.

It's interesting and instructive to watch the Bambi-Generation come up against the reality of living in a relatively predator-free suburban environment. Animal rights are giving way (ever so slightly) to the every-day experience of an urban life striving to coexist with perpetually encroaching wildlife.

The Chicago area, where I hail from originally, got a taste of what was to come nationally, some twenty or thirty years ago. Chicago and specifically Cook County, prides itself on the extensive Cook County Forest Preserve District it pulled around its broad shoulders some seventy years ago. Virtually a wilderness shawl, the district is but another of Chicago’s unique preservations of green space. The district encompasses some 67,000 acres, 77 times the size of New York's Central Park.

That luxurious greensward used to hold within its boundaries an almost unlimited natural wonderland, abundant in the spring with trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, primrose and wild phlox. Black and raspberry shrubs, cranberry, dogwood, redbud and countless other native plants are mostly absent today from Cook County's forest preserves.

A ‘browse line’ some four feet off the ground evidences an all-inclusive destruction of wild underplantings that looks as if man himself had done the clearing and cutting. It's far too neat a job for nature. Thousands of varieties of native species are at risk to overpopulating deer, no longer prey to natural enemies.

Hunting seasons in and around urban areas are sneaking back into the game laws, although we’ve largely lost our hunting dads to the Bambi-Generation. Possibly we'll import hunting instructors from the Austrian Tyrol as we now hire Swiss ski-instructors. These loden-clad Europeans might work their way through the language barrier to infiltrate an ambient hunting barrier amongst our young and inexperienced.

Thus might our American frontier heritage and our native woodlands be restored simultaneously.

Almost 900 deer are killed annually within Cook County. It’s not a minor accident when a 260 pound deer comes through the windshield, particularly if it ends up in your or your child’s lap.

Approximately 150 people a year lose their lives to deer collisions nationwide and nearly $1 billion is spent repairing bashed-up cars.

Hunting the population down to manageable size has been the way of the world since there have been deer and geese.

Just because we have shed our hunting instinct to the humanization of Disney's Enchanted Forest doesn’t mean that the hunting solution is no longer valid.

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