Dec 24, 2021 4 min read

Sometimes it’s hard to understand the English language. Some people will travel a long distance just to put on another pair of underwear.

Another person will remove the coins from their pockets and place them in a jar at home. Of course, I am talking about the word change.

Change is inevitable during a person’s lifetime. It occurs without fanfare and sometimes with quite a bit of resistance. Outdoors’ people are often resistant to any change in their outdoors routines. Examples of change would be antler restrictions implemented some time ago and two trout openers. The deer harvest numbers in Washington County also are pictures of change. When I was a younger man, it was unheard of to go out deer hunting in Washington County. The numbers were so low then that there were 7 or 8 deer in all of Greene County or so it seemed. We all went to the mountains where deer were plentiful. This shift in the population today represents change.

A few years ago, I took a pause and counted the number of deer I had shot from a stand or while moving. Today’s hunter has changed that number as most deer are taken from a stand. There are various reasons for this change. The hunter today must contend with private land and trespass signs. He also finds a variety of long-range rifles that serve him better. At one time writers like Jack O’Conner talked of eastern brush rifles and compared them to long range western rifles. Winchester even named its Model 70 in .264 the Westerner. We have seen a drastic change in Washington County as more people hunt with more efficient long-range rifles. I used to be the only person hunting with a scope in my young days. Now everyone must have one. Change can be subtle, or it can come up and smack you upside the head.

When was the last time you went out to hunt a ring-neck pheasant? A truly wild ring-neck pheasant is unfortunately a thing of the past. As are Ruffed Grouse around here. They are the state bird but where are they? Change has taken them away. Instead of hunting them I switched to groundhogs, which are plentiful today. Coyote hunting is big now as they are so plentiful. We never hunted coyote in my day. I’m pretty sure there weren’t huntable numbers of coyote back then.

This resistance to change can be found in almost every aspect of hunting. New Year’s Eve would find the Blocks and the Hahns partying and having a good time. All at once Ruth Hahn burst into the room sweating and, in a panic, she talked about the ghostly apparition she had seen. She was sure it was a ghost that crossed in front of her car that evening. This occurred in the early forties. At the time relatives made fun of her and teased her. Looking back, I now realize it was a deer that had stepped in front of her car. No one had ever seen a deer before. Things were about to change.

Change will always occur in the natural world. We who walk among it note it and shift accordingly. Sometimes I don’t think we even notice that we do this. Hence my saying we resist change. Hunters who go out frequently to hunt know there are fewer hunters out in the woods and fields so license prices will probably go up. There will be resistance to this change. But the silent change that may occur and be less noticeable may be in the deer population. The Game Commission will then have to juggle those license numbers around.

Time will tell and change will occur regardless of what anyone thinks of it.