Artist and all,
I like to think of myself as a man who speaks what he means. I am a working man of small means. It took years of sweat and hard work on the railroad for me to save for the down payment on my place. I am still making payments on it. Do you really think I am making those payments for anyone other than my family and myself? Call them anything else you want but a poacher is one thing plain and simple a THIEF! I for one have no problem shooting thieves. I have no love or intellectual sharing in mind for anyone who is not willing to work for something of his own but instead chooses to break the law to steal mine. Now, all that said I probably wouldn’t have really shot the guy but damn it, It’s my land and nobody is supposed to be shooting on it or even be on it without my permission. Though I may have been trained to shoot people while proudly serving our country I can’t imagine shooting someone without extreme provocation and or fear for my or my family’s life or safety. Nevertheless, a poacher is armed and in the very act of stealing something from me. I feel totally justified in holding him at gunpoint until the game warden or the sheriff gets there. I try to never ask anything I’m not willing to give. I am totally willing to respect the property rights of others and I keep off their land without permission. As far as stealing, I was taught from as early as I can remember that I don’t want anything that doesn’t belong to me and I teach my kids the same. Now as for calling the neighbors hillbillies, I did not call him one in conversation with him. I only came to the conclusion he was a hillbilly after speaking with him for a while. If you must know I was as friendly as possible when I yelled across the creek “ Hey neighbor how’s it going?” I even offered to come over and help him find the deer he just shot but he turned me down. I certainly was not looking down my nose at him at this point. Only after talking with him and trying my best to get some sort of cooperation on harvest by age and being flatly turned down did I in my mind determine his hillbilly status. I guess by hillbilly I was just trying to put a name on the people who frustrate me by saying things like “ we just don’t have no big deer round here” while they load up a 6 month old buck fawn with a few inches of antler sticking thru the skin or “ we got plenty of bucks over here I even saw one with 5 points!”. They shoot everything that moves this year and then wonder why there’s no deer next year. They have never even seen a 3 year old deer because they shoot all the 1 and 2 year olds they see. In the context of the forum “Quality Deer Management” I didn’t expect anyone to take exception with the name calling of hillbilly towards someone totally unwilling to practice such management. I don’t think that the knowledge of what a MATURE deer is necessarily makes one superior but the willpower to only harvest mature ones is certainly a virtue in my book. Now I realize aging does is tough and I’m not any better at it than the next guy but I can sure tell a yearling buck from a 4 , 5 or 6 year old. Once again I am speaking to those of us interested in “Quality Deer Management” meat hunters who shoot does for venison in the freezer are different.

On a related note, I have started clearing the fence line with a chainsaw and tractor and can’t imagine how anybody ever did this with just an axe. I will still end up having a dozer come out but they cost so much that I want to do as much as I can to minimize the amount of time I pay for at $60 an hour. If anybody around DFW has a smoker and wants some good pecan wood, let me know. I am doing all I can to save these beautiful 75 foot tall trees with trunks that would take 2 men to reach around but in doing so they are loosing any and all branches that might fall on the new expensive fence. In some places the really big trees are actually dictating the fence line because I refuse to cut them down. They are just too old and too pretty and besides that they bear lots of pecans. Does anyone know if deer like pecans? Looks like the shell might keep them from it. I’ve never seen them eat one.

Good Luck to all and no harm meant or intended to Artist