Dear Editor:

Deer hunting …This is a sport that has been enjoyed by southerners for a very long time. Whether it be hunting with deer dogs, sitting in a deer stand 15 or 20 feet off the ground or in a ground blind. It is also a sport that causes hard feelings or misunderstandings. Some people don’t think that running a deer with dogs is very sporting. But a very old hunter told me years ago that if a deer being hunted with dogs wasn’t caught in the first 30 minutes, chances were that deer would get away.

I hunt both ways, running dogs and sitting in a tree stand 16 feet off the ground. To me, that is not very sporting or giving much of a chance. The hunter that is sitting in a tree stand usually has a pile of corn or sweet potatoes or some other kind of bait to attract the deer close enough to be shot at. It has only one thing on its mind, to get to that bait and start eating. But when deer are being hunted with dogs, they have warning that danger is coming.

One of the biggest complaints is that sometimes the dogs get on people’s land that are opposed to hunting with dogs. Sometimes that can’t be helped, but we try to get the dogs off without causing problems. We have been told that if we could not control our dogs, we should not hunt with them, but the dogs are going where the deer goes. The dogs are like our children, when they are with us, we can control them, but when they get out of our sight, we don’t know what they are doing. I have had a dog shot and killed by a still hunter and several of my friends have had their dogs shot and killed by still hunters which is against the law, but they don’t seem to care. Still hunters have the same faults that dog hunters have, sometime they get on land they are not supposed to be on, but they get mad if anything is said to them. Dog hunters or still hunters are not perfect. You have a few bad ones on both sides of the fence, which makes it even harder for the ones that are trying to do it without causing any problems.

It is a season that is not in for but a short time, it would be nice if it could be a season without complaining and trying to cause problems.

D. L. Sessoms

Salemburg