Crossing the Line
Remember the scene from the musical "Oklahoma" where the cowboys and the farmers are at swordpoints (maybe pitchfork points) over their different views on gainful employment and lifestyles? A recent incident on a Dodge County farm brought that analogy to mind recently over the sporadic skirmishes that occur between hunters and farmers. Although we can post our land, there are times when we have to chase an unfamiliar figure clad in blaze orange from our woods and marsh during deer hunting season.
This case involves a farmer who had leased land from a landowner who failed to tell him he had given permission to a person to hunt on the land. While out combining, the hunter had the audacity to approach the farmer out in the field and demand that he leave the corn standing. The farmer was further stunned into silence (not for long mind you) when the hunter ordered him to remove himself (and the combine) from the field citing that the noise might cause the deer to flee out of his reach into an adjoining field. One call to the landowner ended that guy's hunting privileges in a hurry.
That battle of wills also pertain to farm families whose members are torn between the rituals of harvest and hunting. "But if you combine all the corn there won't be any place for the deer to hide!" is often heard from the deer hunting camp. "But we have to get the corn in before it snows" is a logical rebuttal from the person driving the combine 24:7 to beat Old Man Winter.
My solution to this dilemma - everyone gets their deer quota on opening day so the combine doesn't stand idle too long and they have a tropy to mount on the living room wall. That would make everyone (excluding the deer) happy.
Remember the scene from the musical "Oklahoma" where the cowboys and the farmers are at swordpoints (maybe pitchfork points) over their different views on gainful employment and lifestyles? A recent incident on a Dodge County farm brought that analogy to mind recently over the sporadic skirmishes that occur between hunters and farmers. Although we can post our land, there are times when we have to chase an unfamiliar figure clad in blaze orange from our woods and marsh during deer hunting season.
This case involves a farmer who had leased land from a landowner who failed to tell him he had given permission to a person to hunt on the land. While out combining, the hunter had the audacity to approach the farmer out in the field and demand that he leave the corn standing. The farmer was further stunned into silence (not for long mind you) when the hunter ordered him to remove himself (and the combine) from the field citing that the noise might cause the deer to flee out of his reach into an adjoining field. One call to the landowner ended that guy's hunting privileges in a hurry.
That battle of wills also pertain to farm families whose members are torn between the rituals of harvest and hunting. "But if you combine all the corn there won't be any place for the deer to hide!" is often heard from the deer hunting camp. "But we have to get the corn in before it snows" is a logical rebuttal from the person driving the combine 24:7 to beat Old Man Winter.
My solution to this dilemma - everyone gets their deer quota on opening day so the combine doesn't stand idle too long and they have a tropy to mount on the living room wall. That would make everyone (excluding the deer) happy.
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