Published October 12, 2008
Deer hunters practice ancient outdoor traditions and skills
Within our lifetimes — say, since the 1970s — deer hunting has become a foreign and sometimes scary thing to a lot of people.
People will rail against hunters and hunting — even while cutting into a slice of chicken or beef.
Most anti-hunters seem to come from families where no one hunted or fished. Those outdoor traditions and skills — which date back to when primitive humans got hungry — have vanished for a lot of people.
But the hunting tradition lived on in Western Washington on the opening day of the modern firearm deer season.
Kadie Van Boven of Rainier shot and killed her first buck — a spike — Saturday morning at the Weyerhauser Company's Vail Tree Farm..
"It's my first deer," Van Boven, 21, said. "I started hunting last year, but it's always been part of my family — my dad is a hunter."
Van Boven didn't care that her deer didn't have a huge rack of antlers.
"And I don't feel sad about shooting the deer," she said as a state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Michelle Tirhi checked the animal. "It is meat for tonight, for the freezer — for food."
Tirhi said that more women are becoming hunters these days, and lots of girls and women passed through the Vail check station Saturday morning.
A lot of boys and young men also stalked deer Saturday morning, and Kody Pape, of Tenino, got his first buck after four years of hunting.
Kody, 17, tagged a spike buck, and his dad, Scott Pape, got a forked horn buck seconds later.
Scott Pape started hunting 36 years ago.
"I was about 10 or so," he said. "I hunted with my dad, and I lost my dad in 1996, which was the last year I got to hunt with him.
"I just want to show Kody what all this is all about — hunting — and I take him fishing."
Kody was happy about getting his buck, but looked like he wanted to vanish when a gaggle of people complimented him on his first deer.
"He just doesn't know what to say," Scott Pape said. "I'm a pretty proud papa right now."
Kody said he was ready to go home and clean up his deer.
Our society is slipping into the habit of gazing at each other over invisible fences, and those fences can be anything from politics to paychecks to anyone who seems a little bit different.
Deer hunters — who come from every part of our society — are unfamiliar to lots of people, and those invisible fences go right up.
But a fence blocks the view — even if it is invisible.
You don't have to want to shoot a deer — and eat it — to understand a hunter.
Real hunters develop skills that allow them to walk through the woods and find, stalk and, finally, shoot a deer. The plants, the weather, the direction of the very wind mean everything.
Deer have the advantage — about 75 percent of Washington's deer hunters don't kill an animal. That's even if they have a high-powered rifle and telescopic scope, high-tech camo clothes and all of the other tools of a modern hunter.
Deer hunting is not easy, but it teaches the value of open land, clean water and hiking over a steep ridge.
There is no shortage of deer in Western Washington — or the Northwest. Blacktail deer invade our gardens and walk down our streets in rural neighborhoods.
A deer hunter — any hunter or angler — has an intimate connection with nature that is hard to understand unless you are there — out there.
Van Boven plans to be out there again next year — and the next.
"To get a deer is the best part, but I love going outdoors," she said. "It's really exciting and wonderful."
Chester Allen can be reached at 360-754-4226 or callen@theolympian.com.
