Lock And Load: Open Season In Montana

Today is the first day of the five-week hunting season in Montana.

It dawned on me today as I thought of all those drunk hunters (be they drunk on alcohol or simply drunk on the high power of a rifle with a scope) waking up this morning, rubbing the eye boogers to the side, and throwing boots on the wrong feet with laces trailing behind in the dew-wet leaves and, at higher elevations, white snow. My next thought was about the allure of Montana, the remote wilderness areas and tons of big game animals and beautiful scenery...and the general lack of human population.

I grew up in Montana around the fall hunting frenzy, a time during which sporting (it's designed to kill, let's call it a "sport", shall we) goods stores make some serious income...next to the holiday season in which hunters get shiny new weapons to replace their old, dirty guns...so they don't have to clean them. I watched the mostly orange-vested and mostly male rush of humanity toting rifles head for the woods and plains to shoot (and presumably gut and eat) anything from pronghorn antelope to bear, deer, elk, moose, wild turkey, and sometimes, each other.

Each other? Oh, but that's what the orange vests are for, you say! Hunters don't intentionally shoot each other, certainly! Why, they don't even issue human tags. If they did, you presume, it would be a lottery situation like sometimes happens with elk or moose tags. Okay, I admit, orange vests originated in the hunter culture as a visual warning device to avoid one drunk hunter from accidentally drilling a "thirty ott six" bullet through another drunk hunter's back; hard to explain to your hunting buddy's wife that you thought he was a doe, a deer, a female deer and couldn't pass up the 50-yard broadside shot. But, over the years, an interesting phenomenon has occurred. Someone came up with the idea that hunting is violent, bad, and shouldn't be allowed.

When the anti-hunting forces rose up, apparently to "protect Bambi", the hunters weren't sure what to do. At first they thought of shooting these protesters, since the quickest way to shut someone up is to "pop a cap in dat ass" (do they say that in Montana? A cap, in Montana, is what hunters wear on their heads to advertise their favorite heavy machinery company or beer brand). Someone convinced the hunters that shooting anti-hunters was counter-productive. Too many hyphens, the hunters complained...does "Smith & Wesson" have hyphens? How about "single shot"? Or "whitetail"? We digress. The hunters then went scientific. They reasoned that in order to keep shooting animals that couldn't shoot back, they would have to come up with proven scientific fact to support their case, so they hired ecologists (presumably who also have gun racks in their living rooms) to say that hunting is necessary for population control. Otherwise, the animals will overpopulated and die of starvation and exposure and disease...much better to blow holes in them.

So a great debate began, with the drunk hunters on one side and the likely equally drunk anti-hunters on the other side. Few shots were fired, but lots of sharp words were exchanged and probably legal action ensued. Meanwhile, every fall, animals continued to be slaughtered for "sport". And, now we get to my revelation, the human population of Montana remained almost constant and some years even declined. This gave me pause as I reviewed the science, the data, and the conclusions. Thomas Malthus (open an encyclopedia if you don't know him, or Google his name) would be proud. I pondered various reasons for this population stability and relatively low number of people in Montana (around 800,000 in the whole state). It could be that the greedy Montanans leave the state in search of higher paying jobs, it could be that the Californians who invaded since the 1980s to live their own "wilderness experience" don't reproduce all that well or are simply old people, it could be that many Montanans stumble up to Canada for Molson and Labatt's beer binges and stay there for life. A lot of possibilities, but the true facts come to light when we go back to our hunting pals and the orange vests. Having "population control" on their minds, hunters quickly evolved from shooting only deer and wild turkeys (hey, isn't that a booze brand?) to turning their sights on each other!

Yes, the secret is out, boys. You have, for years, been shooting each other in order to control the population of Montana. It's worked so well that the governor has a big campaign to bring in tourists to Montana. This way, hunters don't have to kill other Montanans, but can get tags for Floridians or Texans or North Carolinians. In fact, due to displacement from the hurricanes this year, hunters in Montana have a real windfall of potential targets so they can say "I am a sportsman" and "look at the rack on that one, he's a big buck" and "I had the taxidermist mount that lady's head with glass eyes to catch the light from the fireplace, see?" So, in the name of science and a balanced ecology, Montana stands as a proud testament to the efficiency of the rifled barrel and a Bushnell scope. "Welcome to Montana! We have a low crime rate because we kill a good 25% of our population every year. This year, we are shooting for 50% of all tourists so proceed with caution, enjoy your trip, and don't feed the hunters. Now, how about a nice juicy venison steak...wait, was that deer meat or was that the flank steak we cut off Larry's carcass last night?"

For those wanting to experience the challenge of touring Montana during the fall hunting season, please visit Big Sky Country at: www.visitmt.com

Note: Hunting of "game" is legal in Montana provided you have the proper permit. Hunting of humans is, as yet, illegal. So if you get shot in Montana, don't assume you are part of some state population control program; be sure to hire a lawyer and fight for your rights...oh, and hopefully you brought a sucking chest wound first aid kid and traveled with a buddy. Otherwise, I'm sure you'll make it to a dinner table nearby, one way or the other.

For more information on the vegetarian and vegan lifestyle, visit: www.goveg.com. You can find the Humane Society at www.hsus.org. Surviving hunters may want to check out www.nrapublications.org for the American Rifleman, American Hunter, and Shooting Illustrated magazines. To see some actual statistics of hunting accidents in Montana, read this article.