Thanksgiving (Part II) - a time to kill

In my little corner of Virginia, as men sit around the dinningroom table on Thanksgiving day passing gravy, stuffing, sliced turkey and pumpkin pie back and forth to one another, most have a single, clear thought in their head: "I could be out trying to kill an animal..."

The actual dates for hunting season vary from state to state and regionally within each state. You can find the details of hunting in the Volunteer state at Tennessee Deer Hunting. And West Virginia Hunting provides info on one of the best states to hunt in. Of course, even though deer season is over now, there are other things to kill.

Firearms season for deer started on Nov. 16 in Tazewell County, Virginia, and ended on Saturday, Nov. 28, while I was in a car returning from a Thanksgiving visit with my in-laws in Red House, Md. We won't talk about what I got (or didn't get) this year....

Last year, my family ate deer meat once a week for 8 or 9 months.

Do deer have rights...

Deer season creates a mindset in rural Appalachia that is almost completely foreign to the coastal urban mainstream of America.

One environmental group last year tried to start a ruckus over deer season in West Virginia this year. The group (whose name I won't mention) made national news when it critized the WV State Superintendent of Schools because the state allowed kids in public school to miss class in order to hunt.

In a statement released to the press, the environmental group took a condescending tone and questioned the educational value of hunting - which it described as "the recreational killing of animals." That the idea that hunting is, by definition, cruelty to animals was basic to the environmental group's statement.

In a response, the State Superintendent pointed out that students who got out of school to hunt were required to make up their classes, so that no educational time was lost. But more importantly in some areas of the state, hunting is an economic necessity - providing meat for much of the year. Education is, after all, primarily an economic tool.

Anyone who's ever driven the back roads of Logan, Mingo, Wyoming or McDowell counties can guess what 75 pound of deer meat means to the family of a laid-off coal miner.

The environmental group was undetered in its opposition. Their position - the position of environmentalists generally - is based on the unchristian world view that individual deer have equal rights on the Earth to individual humans; the Bible teaches that humans alone are made in God's image and that the Earth (along with its deer herds) are meant to be stewarded and used by people.

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