(Hunt: to chase or search for (game or other wild animals) for the purpose of catching or killing.) from dictionary.reference.com
When did some hunters go wrong?
When they stopped hunting and just sat in pickup trucks or SUVs waiting to shoot out the windows at prey?
Or was it when hunting chairs, or as L L Bean calls them Wilderness Recliners, came with cup holders so hunters could sit comfortably in the sun and enjoy the beverage of their choice while they waited for an animal to wander aimlessly across the hunter’s field of vision?
In Maine, my family goes back to 1820 when Maine broke from Massachusetts. Before 1820, they probably also lived here but undoubtedly didn’t much concern themselves with Massachusetts matters. That was why they moved here.
But I do know one thing: my ancestors hunted like men.
They did not wait for the game to come to them.
They tracked it using their abilities.
They thought like their prey.
They walked like their prey.
They waited when the prey waited, and ran when the prey ran.
And one thing they did NOT do was to place mounds of months old twinkies into 55 gallon drums, haul them into the woods in the spring after the snow melted, and create a junk food dump for bears.
My ancestors did not believe in training bears to come to be shot.
My ancestors, like most Maine hunters, enjoyed the thrill of the tracking and the adrenalin rush of the chase.
Maine Guides go through rigorous training and testing to receive their highly coveted certification. Nearly all serve in the honored, 100 year old tradition of Maine Guides, yet a few, perhaps a small few, find it too arduous to actually guide their instate and out of state charges into an actual hunt.
Instead, these few train the bears with twinkies, or they hire others to do so, and then these few Maine Guides take lucrative checks from their charges for the privilege of leading them to a place where they can sit in their Wilderness Recliners and wait for a bear to come eat a twinkie.
Several years ago, some in Maine tried to ban bear baiting.
This misguided effort was, of course, defeated, and rightly so. A few Maine Guides should have the right, like anyone else to earn a buck by training bears to eat twinkies.
But these few Guides might consider covering that coveted patch on their jacket with cloth when they, themselves, sit on their Wilderness Recliner with their beverage in the cup holder, waiting for the bears to come to the fast food dump so their clients DON’T ACTUALLY have to HUNT.
Peter B Hayward
