Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 15, 2019

I used to work for General Motors here in Southern California (an R&D operation). One of our holidays was the first day of deer season, in Michigan.

About time, go clear out those deer so they stay off the roads. I do remember when school was closed for the 1st day of deer season.

I find that there is only three topics of conversation. Last hunting season, this hunting season, and next hunting season.

Here in MN, it’s the second weekend of deer hunting. The significant factor here is the unending stream of trucks heading out to deer camps on Friday (and back on Sunday).

I am in the U.P. of Michigan visiting family. Many men I know are now at deer camp out in the woods. They did their shopping, packed up and headed out yesterday or the day before to set up camp. Their family from out of town have arrived for opening day. These are generational family traditions. Downstate, many people don’t even know it is firearms deer season. Here, it is a holiday.

Fellow hunters: please look into donating venison to your local food banks. Included in your Texas license is the price of processing at participating processors. The Hunters For The Hungry is a great way to help provide for the less fortunate. Thank you for your help.

In Ontario, Canada, the opening day is always the first Monday of November. Before rifle season, it is the bow-hunter’s chance; and after the rifle hunters two weeks, the muzzle-loaders get to clean up the surviving deer.

We were on a fall riverboat ride and a buck and doe were swimming across the river. Someone said rifle season started a week later over there.

When I was in high school, back in the middle of the previous century, it wasn’t at all unusual to have guys show up in the morning in full hunting regalia, carrying a rifle that they’d carefully store in their lockers so as not to have it vulnerable to theft in their cars. Then, as soon as the last class of the day was over, there was a mad dash for the woods. Yes, those were the innocent days when kids could carry guns right into school and nobody thot twice about it.

I lived in a house on a seven acre wooded lot in suburban Ohio. One morning in the fall, the doorbell rang and a guy with two guns, dressed in camouflage and carrying all sorts of gear asked me if it was okay if he hunted in my woods. I told him absolutely not and if he didn’t get off my property I’d have him arrested for trespassing.

I taught school in Flint, MI. Many of the white kids skipped school for opening day. I asked the black kids why they didn’t go hunting. They replied, “Walk around in the woods with a bunch of old drunk white guys with rifles? Are you nuts?”

At my HS (SE OH, early 70s) deer season was a 3-day excused absence – for male students.

Not as many hunting licenses in Michigan.Not sure what would trigger that ;~|

I lived in South Carolina and in Pennsylvania. The first day of deer season was a holiday. Even the schools knew that the kids would be hunting with their dads.

In New York, it’s tourist season—which we really wish was handled like deer season.

My uncle said schools let out on the first day of trout season when he was growing up.

it’s fun to check out the grocery carts of men going to camp. Lots of booze and steaks! I thought my husband’s co workers in the UP were very friendly. They asked if he hunts, but they just wanted someone to fill on for them!

Hmmm, deer and elk season and you need something that would get a wide agreement across groups: prion testing for CWD as is now done in many states seems like a no-brainer to do. Currently, CWD has not had the mutation to jump to humans as far as anyone knows but with BSE having as long a lead time from exposure to symptoms as 36 years, CWD remaining viable longterm on many surfaces other than brass (including soil, wood, multiple metals, plastics), CWD being able to pass through the digestive tracts of carrion eating birds and coyotes while remaining viable, and CWD being able to be uptaken by plants and appearing in the resultant forage, it just seems like something that pretty much all can agree on that testing the carcasses to prevent exposure is a far better no brainer than losing one’s brain to prion disease eating it away later.

I was in an archery club in Wisconsin. We went on a co-ed deer hunting trip one year when deer archery season opened. It rained, but got a deer.

Since “they” figured out that deer Wasting Syndrome was caused by a close relative of scrapie, and that in turn is associated with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (well, probably)… and because the prions that transmit the disease(s?) aren’t killed by cooking… I wouldn’t eat venison if you killed it, much less go out in the cold and wet so as to shoot at something that I’m unwilling to eat.

In fact, considering the stories I’ve heard, I won’t go out in the woods during hunting season, even dressed in fluorescent yellow, orange and red; and carrying a sign that says “HUMAN” in foot-high letters. Stories like the guy who was out turkey hunting and shot his own bright yellow vehicle (I saw that one at the auto-body shop, and heard the story there). Or the guy, overheard in a bar by my friend who’d been nearly shot earlier in the day, talking about how he hadn’t actually seen a deer, but had taken a “sound shot” when he heard something moving nearby.

I heard that you can get a hunting licence in Michigan if you are legally blind. Sounds about right, Concretionist.

My cousin was shot by a deer hunter on L.I. in the 1950s (fortunately, not badly) while she waited for her school bus and at the time she was wearing a red jacket. That was her SECOND time being shot on their own farm by a deer hunter. Years later I was almost shot by one in their woods between their farm and a neighboring farm (all posted and private property). The bullet hit a tree near my head instead of hitting me.