A HUNTING SHE WILL GO - Give me my food Saran-wrapped

On Sunday, Oct. 7, The Oregonian newspaper’s cover story, A-hunting she will go - Following her grandpa, Vanessa Smith sets out to do what far fewer Oregon kids do these days: bag her first kill, triggered a
a bag of letters to the editor with the usual PC language – how dare someone teach children (or grandchildren) to kill – was the feeling of one angry writer.
Okay, where do you think that barbequed chicken on your table came from – a tree?
The very people against hunting are fine with eating meat as long as it is cleaned up and bagged in a nice clear Saran wrapper and in my freezer.
That, I admit, was my view before I met my husband 24 years ago. My dad was not a hunter, my brother was not a hunter, I did not even know a hunter. I was a city girl. We did not own guns for that matter growing up. So, it was a complete shock to me when in college my husband and I were discussing in the Pilot House at the University of Portland hunting. He said he hunts grouse and pheasant, and I said, you hunt, you actually kill animals? . . . .Then, four years later I marry the man, and he hunts yearly with his dad and he’s taken our son Ryan, now 16, hunting.
I have grown to appreciate hunters – and fishermen – a lot. They are some of the most nature-loving people I know. They love the outdoors, getting dirty, navigating the countryside in boots and heavy jacket, through some of the most beautiful countryside in Oregon. And hunting and fishing are a part of that experience. If they bring nothing home, it is still a great adventure for them, being outside. Like Henry David Thoreau, it is not about the hunt but about nature.
Hunters do not care any less about the life of an animal than non-hunters; it is just that they know where their meat comes from. Hunters keep the wildlife population in check. They are not out there just for the kill, but they eat the meat they kill. Conservationists say in the Oregonian story that hunters are “the original preservationists." The Oregonian quoted Rick Hargrave, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife: "In Oregon, the culture and heritage is based on hunting and fishing. If you cut hunting and fishing out of the equation, you are impacting the wildlife as a whole
Our generation of children is being raised on video games and electronics and television -- being left inside instead of being given the gift of the outdoors. And, children are getting farther and farther away from realizing where their food comes from.
Hunting and fishing bring them
back to nature. Back to real life. Back to true free-range food.

Cornelia Seigneur aka Nellie

www.writermom.net

www.myspace.com/corneliaseigneur
www.writermom5kids.blogspot.com