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Here’s what’s worth reading today, Friday, October 9, 2020:
Texas archery deer hunters must ensure safety while in the field
Elk gores Colorado man on golf course; golfer suffers lacerated kidney
A man gored by an elk on a golf course in Evergreen over the weekend was taken to a local hospital where doctors determined his kidney had been cut. Zak Bornhoft, of Aurora, was golfing Saturday evening at Evergreen Golf Course, where more than an estimated 100 elk were spending the day.
Bornhoft said he never “felt threatened” by the elk, keeping a distance of at least 20 feet, until he finished up the 16th hole.
Teeing off on the 17th hole, elk surrounded the golfers, he said on Facebook.
“We took it slow to get out of the way, however this bull elk was eyeing us down,” Bornhoft said.
Bornhoft’s golfing party tried to “slowly” get out of the area, but the bull charged his golf cart. The bull missed the front-end of the cart on the initial charge, and “we sped off to get away.”
That’s when the bull charged again, “striking the side of the golf cart where his antlers went directly into my side of the golf cart and one antler just happened to gore me,” he said.
New Jersey annual bear hunt to end next year, Gov. Phil Murphy says
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said the coming bear hunt will be the last under his administration, ending an annual event that has raised hackles — pro and con — of environmentalists, homeowners, and hunters because of the ways it has been handled over the years.
“The 2020 bear hunt will be the LAST,” Murphy tweeted. He also announced it at his daily media briefing on COVID-19.
Murphy said the New Jersey Fish and Game Council is proposing an amendment to the game code to suspend the black bear hunt after the 2020 season by allowing the current black bear management policy to lapse. A new plan will be proposed with non-lethal methods to control the bear population, he said.
But environmentalists say the governor is engaging in political theater because the policy was set to lapse anyway and he’s still allowing the 2020 hunt, which starts next week, to proceed. Meanwhile, pro-hunting groups say doing away with the hunt will only increase the bear population.
During his campaign in 2017, Murphy pledged to stop the hunt. Instead, his administration instituted a partial ban in 2018 that prohibited bear hunting on all state-owned land. So, hunters not only had to continue to get state permits, but also obtain permission from private land owners. That reduced the size of hunting zones by half.
In 2020, even the humble duck stamp is controversial
The Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, more commonly known as the duck stamp, could not be less controversial. It’s a permit for hunting waterfowl issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but it’s also a collector’s item beloved by pacifist birdwatchers and other non-hunters because it raises money for wetland conservation and features a new duck design every year. But as with many other previously neutral issues, the duck stamp has become polarized.
For this year’s Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest, painters were required to include hunting imagery in their entries, a change from previous years that is a “result of the Trump administration’s recent rewrite of the rules,” according to Audubon. That means paintings which otherwise would have simply depicted lesser scaup, cinnamon teal or other duck species now feature floating shotgun shells, discarded duck calls and other hunting paraphernalia in order to meet the requirements.
As Audubon writes, some duck stamp buyers and artists support the rule change, while others, including hunters, are against it.
“I’m a pretty big-time waterfowl hunter, and I don’t feel like it’s necessary,” said Richard Clifton, who won this year’s contest with an acrylic painting of a lesser scaup drake. “I’d much rather see a straight-up duck painting.”
Evolution of a hunter: The lessons I’ve learned and the legacy I want to share with my daughter
My first impression of hunting was watching maggots crawl out of a small buck’s eyes as he lay in a friend’s backyard in central Wyoming. I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 years old. That night, as we ate venison tacos, I tucked most of the meat away in a napkin to throw out later. My family didn’t hunt, and it wasn’t something I understood.
Even after college, when my boyfriend told me over instant chat that he’d shot a deer, I called him a Bambi killer and slammed my laptop closed. He wasn’t bragging; he just wanted me to know. And I wasn’t a vegetarian. I understood, on some level, the hypocrisy. But I couldn’t understand why he wanted to kill something, or how someone I loved could find joy in taking a life. Butchering an animal for meat—slaughtering cows, pigs, lambs—was an act of necessity, not pleasure. I certainly didn’t see how it could be a “sport,” as hunting is so often called. We didn’t talk for days.
Fourteen years later, that memory flashed through my mind as I stood near a pronghorn I’d shot minutes before, my .243 resting nearby in the southeast Wyoming sagebrush. The thought was one of a thousand firing in my brain: relief at the clean shot, pure disbelief that I’d actually done it, and sudden worry about what our 3-year-old daughter would think as she walked toward me, holding the hand of the man I’d once called a Bambi killer.
I have a tendency to overthink, well, everything. And deciding to hunt was in the upper echelon of topics I’d analyzed, reanalyzed, then dissected all over again. Few mothers choose to become serious hunters in the early stages of raising a family, but here I was. Our shared hunting pack, which I’d used as a shooting rest, was still 100 yards away. It was my turn to carry it that day as my husband, Josh, watched our daughter. Snowcapped mountains rimmed the horizon. A few clouds drifted in the wind.
Other Stuff That Might Tickle Your Fancy
My heart is exploding with love & excitement after a successful hunt with our sweet mother, Lucille! Thank you Mom for these moments… We love you dearly and are SO proud of you ❤️ 87 years young and as deadly as ever. The example she sets truly amazes us more and more everyday! pic.twitter.com/O4Wg6XCKVV
— Drury Outdoors (@DruryOutdoors) October 7, 2020
Where to Shoot a Deer: Bowhunting Shot Placement presented by @BOWHUNTINGMAG: https://t.co/eymJcIiVuA#IAMSPORTSMAN #hunting #bowhunting #deer #whitetails #deerhunting #bowhuntingdeer pic.twitter.com/sj2Ik0IIbP
— Sportsman Channel (@SPORTSMANchnl) October 6, 2020
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