At Cranberry Station, 1920

     It’s hunting season!  It’s the time of year when, up around the head of the bay, pickup trucks are parked along the sides of the road– their drivers off in the woods after deer, or maybe bear or cougar.  It’s a time of the early morning pop-pop-pop of shotguns down at the bay — duck hunters crouched in makeshift blinds.  I love it all.
     Along with the leaves turning orange and gold and the smell of wood-smoke in the early morning air, those are the sights and sounds of fall here in the country.  Even though I was seldom in Oysterville at this time of year when I was young, and even though there were no hunters in my immediate family, I feel nostalgic about hunting season.
     Maybe my sentiments come from hearing all the stories of the pioneers and how, at first, they needed to live off the land.  Or maybe it’s that sense of camaraderie and pride that I see in modern-day hunters.  Undoubtedly, it has to do with the bear sausage or venison steaks or duck dinners we are occasionally treated to.  Whatever the reasons, I get upset with the Bambi huggers who don’t like any part of it.
     Invariably, they are ‘newcomers’ from the city.  Often they are the same people who hate that the deer invade their gardens and that the bear overturn their garbage cans.  I know several people who are planning to take down trees because the droppings from roosting birds mess up the walkways around their houses.
     It never ceases to amaze me that otherwise intelligent people can feel so anti-hunters, so anti-animals and so anti-birds all at the same time.  But, what is more confusing is why they move to the country in the first place – and then immediately want to change it or, at the least, grouse about what happens here.
     But, change it will…eventually.  New developments, more newcomers, less habitat for the animals, will all take their toll.  The only alternative is to put up that gate at the 101 junction that everyone has talked about for years.  At this time of year, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.