Hunting season opened today, I was up reading before dawn and heard the booms of the deer guns echoing through the woods and off the hills around me. Hunting season is a big thing here, mostly a male thing, the men get up early, sit in freezing stands in the woods for many hours. A young man up the road told me hunting was an important part of his relationship with his father, the two hunt together every year.

Where do you go?, I asked him. “I hunt in New York State,” said the young man, “my dad hunts in Vermont. We get together for dinner to compare notes.” I smiled, male bonding.

In the urban Northeast, where I lived for many years, only the bad guys had guns. Up here, all of the good guys have guns, and they make it clear they will use them on bad guys if they come around. Serious crime is very rare up here, if you steal somebody’s stuff or break into their houses, you are taking definitely taking your life into your hands. Guns are another one of those subjects Americans can no longer talk about, only argue about on cable news and Facebook.

There are good hunters and bad hunters. I always give permission to the good hunters to hunt on my 17 acres, as I did on the first Bedlam Farm. The good hunters are ethical, conscientious, careful about the environment. They take their stands down when they are done, they leave no traces of their presence, they scrupulously follow the rules about gun safety, deer hunting. Most of them rarely shoot a deer, they seem quick to find reasons to let them live, but they love the outdoors, the environment, the woods. I am happy to have them around.

And there are bad hunters, “yahoos” as they are known around here, who try and shoot deer from the road, who shoot into farms and pastures (two last year shot right through the donkeys at deer in the back woods, they could easily have killed them. They shoot illegal,  undersized and young deer, they leave junk and beer cans around, they sometimes hit people’s horses, cows and dogs. More than once, people from New Jersey have shown up with machine guns purchased down there, they use them to shoot animals in the woods up here. The real hunters hate them. So do I.

Many people here put orange vests on their dogs when they walk them in hunting season, I don’t, we just keep out of the woods for a few weeks, walk on roads with clear lines of sight.

It is essential to pare down the deer population, they cause a lot of damage in great numbers, from ravaging gardens and crops to causing a rash of frightening accidents. Lots of people depend on the deer for food here, there is something urgent in the eyes of  young men looking for food in their families. The venison from a deer can go a long way in an expensive winter, it can buy a lot of heating oil through the savings on market food.

Good hunters seem like good people to me, good things to have around. I have never been opposed to hunting. In the real world of real animals, there is no such thing as a no-kill life. And there is not much to do about bad hunters, by the time the Sheriff of the trooper’s show up, they are long gone.

Hunting season is an integral part of the landscape here, a cherished tradition. Rituals are important, people need them in so many ways. All day, I heard the boom of the big deer guns out in the woods, bouncing off of the hills. Another year, another autumn, another passage in my life. A neighbor asked me if I would hunt with him, and I laughed and said, brother, you do not want me to hunt with  you. I can shoot a crazed rooster or rabid raccoon with no trouble, but don’t ever let me into the woods with a big gun, I am sure to fall down and shoot myself in the foot.