Letter Of The Day

it's a long one, but worthy of the award.

I've had my bellyful of articles in the Register reporting how pheasant hunters are whining and crying because they are increasingly not allowed to hunt the private farmland in Iowa. I have little sympathy for these "sportsmen" from my experiences on our farm.

More than 30 years ago, I used to go hunting with my dad. He'd shoot a couple of squirrels or rabbits, just enough so Mom could pan fry them for a couple of weeks' worth of meals. He'd ask the farmer who owned the land for permission to hunt, and seldom was he denied.

The farmer knew there would be no full-scale ravaging of the wildlife since it was just the two of us — Dad shot only what we could eat. The farmer also knew there would be no vandalizing since we lived nearby and neighbors didn't — and still don't — destroy each other's property.

This relationship between farmer and hunter is long gone, and many examples prove it on our farm. We allowed pheasant hunters from the southern United States out on our land one year. They came in with a convoy of trucks and just as many dogs to run the fields for this thing they called a sport.

They didn't come just one day, but several, and "harvested" so many birds that we didn't see any pheasants for several years on our place. Since then, hunters, who haven't asked permission to hunt, have cut our fence wires, shot our "no trespassing or hunting" signs and killed our pets.

We've had trappers tie snare traps to our fence lines, only to find that the trapped animal tried to eat its leg off to get loose since the trapper didn't check snares as required by law. One morning, a kid who lost his head when a pheasant flew up shot across our highway and peppered the front right panel of my pickup. If he had shot a couple inches away from his mark, I would have been hit.

The Register's articles don't depict these particular types of experiences we have endured out here in the country, and the Department of Natural Resources really is only interested in selling the hunting licenses to shore up the budget. All the suburbanites who can afford their quarter-million-dollar homes, and those who come from out of state and have the financial means to bring in a half-dozen extended-cab pickups with purebred dogs to hunt, should surely be able to afford to lease or buy a 40-acre parcel where they don't need to care if they shoot the hell out of everything.

—Robin Crabtree, Madrid.

attribution