OUR LEGACY OF LAZINESS

I’ve been hunting a lot of years now.  I’ve seen a lot of trends.  Over the years, we’ve all seen the decline in hunter numbers and most all agree that it is extremely difficult to get our youth interested in our hunting tradition.  They have so many more distractions.  Whether it be organized sports, Nintendo or the latest X-Box game, kids get busy with the latest toys of technology.  Who can blame them? Who is to blame?

I grew up without the wonders of technology; hell my family’s first television set was a19” black and white.  The only real technology to it was figuring out which way to splay the antennas to get ”a fuzzy at best” reception on each individual channel.  We did not watch a lot of television in those days.  There just wasn’t enough spare time. 

I grew up in the heart of Brooklyn, New York City.  Every day after schoolwork I played street hockey, stickball, baseball, football or basketball.  I was a typical city sports rat that would run up and down two full flights of stairs with my roller skates on, just to go to the bathroom or to get an occasional snack.  My grandparents were fortunate enough to own a little country house a few hours outside the city.  Every Summer, as school ended, my mother and father packed up the family and he moved us up to that house in the country for the Summer.  By the time I was 12 -13 I dreaded the upcoming Summers.  The thought of being away from my friends, with all that free time was just incomprehensible.  It wasn’t until much later on in my life did I appreciate how all those wasted Summers (of swimming, fishing, canoeing, hiking, water skiing and catching birds and chipmunks) fostered and eternalized my love for the great outdoors.

It seems to me that, yes, interest in the great outdoors has waned, but not because it isn’t interesting, but because there has been a lack of effort by parents to introduce their children to all that nature offers, and bye the way, this did not just start ten years ago.  This goes back much longer than that.  I remember men, who were in my hunting club who never shared their experiences with their children.  Many of them were too self-centered and selfish to share their time away, with their own children.  Too many times I heard them say, “look, my time away is my time,” “if I get a chance to get away and I want to have a couple of beers I don’t want to be wiping kids asses or chasing them around.”  “When he is old enough, I will bring him up!”  Bye then the cause was lost!  Worse then that, some of them objected to other guy’s kids being in camp because it encroached on their important right to use the vulgarities not normally heard or seen in their own homes.  Wrong, dead wrong!  It was that attitude that was the beginning of the end.  It was our generation that started the malaise.  We, collectively are accountable.  Oh, it’s easy to blame the pressures of horrible work schedules or other familial responsibilities, but when it is all said and done, laziness; lack of effort and insight, will be our generation’s conservation legacy!

The only way that I see, to reverse the trend is to make our outdoor experiences, family experiences!  For way too long, women have been excluded from our hunting camps and fishing trips.  No longer can wives and children be selfishly excluded from our hunting fires.  Their inclusion is just way overdue.  It is simply a matter of sacrifice, self-preservation and planning.  While family vacations to Disney are wonderful experiences, we need to get back to basics in order to save our traditions.  There are thousands of outdoor oriented vacation enterprises in the Northeast that encompass activities around lakes, streams and mountains.  Not every outdoor experience has to revolve around the harvesting of animals.  Good times spent in family activities will afford and nurture educational opportunities to explain and teach the ways and means of management goals and what is expected.

I don’t think that all of the responsibility and blame should fall to parents either.  The state’s responsibility to foster opportunity must encompass “affordability” as a factor.  There is absolutely no good reason that teenagers in this state should be made to pay license fees.  As the game managers of the state it is imperative to make recruitment and retention not only feasible, but enticing and affordable.  Afterall hunters are needed to manage game.  Without us (and it sure seems to be heading in this direction) the state will have to pay private companies to manage our herds and flocks.  I would further the idea by including, that college students and young men and women serving in the armed forces should be given free licenses.  It is imperative that the state understand that the expectancy of hunters as cash cows has become counter productive to animal management efforts and that every effort and expense should be made more palatable to recruit the citizenry back to the future.

Men it’s our move!