State calls out to young hunters

Family hunts are tradition for many on Thanksgiving
Thursday, November 25, 2010 02:54 AM
By Alan D. Miller
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A tradition dating back to the Pilgrims will play out across the land today.

It’s less about turkey and gravy and more about gunpowder and lead.

It’s about the outdoors and bonding and family. In some cases, several generations will be involved.

Today, as on all Thanksgiving Days, thousands of families will fan out across the countryside for at least an hour or two to hunt – even in bad weather.

While Ohio’s deer-gun season starting on Monday gets most of the attention this time of year, the Thanksgiving Day hunt has much deeper roots in America and perhaps a deeper meaning for families.

And that’s important to folks at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, who are working against challenging odds to get more young people involved in hunting. Fewer kids live on farms or know people who own them, and there are many electronic distractions, said Tom Lavergne, a spokesman for ODNR’s Wildlife Division.

The push isn’t just because wildlife officials want to pass along their passion for the sport. There’s a more practical reason: The state is teeming with wildlife, some of which has no natural predators. Deer are at the top of the list. They have gone from plentiful in the early 1800s to nearly eradicated in the early 1900s and now back to bountiful.

Ohio’s herd is estimated at more than 750,000. Deer have become so thick in some areas that the land can’t support them all, and they are a danger to motorists.

At the same time, the number of Ohio hunters is declining. “For every hunter we lose, we’re replacing with maybe three-quarters,” said Mike Tonkovich, deer project leader and statistician for the Division of Wildlife office in Athens.

So the division instituted special youth-only hunting weekends. Last weekend, for example, hunters 17 or younger who were accompanied by nonhunting adults had first shot at the state’s deer herd. More than 40,000 young people participated, and they bagged more than 9,000 deer, some of which you can see online at www.dnr.ohio.gov/wildlife/dow/Photos.

ODNR created the special photo pages on its website a few years ago to allow hunters to upload and share photos of themselves with their trophies. New this year is a program that allows young first-time hunters to print “My First Harvest” certificates to recognize their accomplishments.

“It gives first-time hunters or trappers, or even anglers, the opportunity to upload a photo of their first take, and it incorporates their photo into a certificate,” said Lindsay Linkhart of the Wildlife Division’s central office. “We want people to be proud of what they’re doing. And the upcoming generation is more tech-savvy, so we wanted to incorporate some of that into what they are doing.”

Among them is Austin Dempsey of Thornville, who has become an avid hunter and fisherman at the age of 13. He’s an eighth-grader at Sheridan Middle School in Perry County, where he also plays football and basketball.

He hunts with his dad, Glenn, and brothers Anthony, 24, and Andrew, 27 – and with school friends and their dads. Hunting is big in Perry County, where Austin’s school will be closed Monday for an extended Thanksgiving vacation – and, coincidentally, the start of deer-gun season.

“I like the challenge,” Austin said about hunting. “I like the sense of accomplishment. I like the adrenalin you get when your heart starts pounding when you see a deer.”

He’s a big fan of the state’s youth program, which has allowed him to bag deer and turkey and catch trophy-size trout.

“I think it’s awesome,” he said. “It gives kids a chance when it’s just them.”

His dad likes it, too.

“It’s a perfect opportunity to have the youth out there in a safe environment,” said Glenn Dempsey. “The success opportunity for them is great. This is prime time for buck activity, and a really good opportunity for success. And the success will breed continued success. It will keep them buying licenses and hunting.”

Austin says he likes to eat what he hunts, but there isn’t always room in the freezer for all the meat. In those cases, his family gives away part of its catch to programs such as the Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry program (www.fhfh.org), which covers the cost of venison processing for those who donate meat to food pantries.

But there is a bigger reason for hunting, in his view.

“Getting out there with family – family and friends, that’s what it’s about,” he said.

That’s what it’s about for many families today as they load up for rabbit or pheasant. They might talk more than hunt, because it’s more about togetherness, said Lavergne, of ODNR.

“It’s a huge hunting day. I used to work on Thanksgiving, and we’d see as many people out then as on some of our opening days,” he said, adding that he knows of one family that has had at least one group hunt a year for more than 100 years.

Thanksgiving Day and the days immediately following it are the most popular of the year for small-game hunting, Tonkovich said.

Robin Dempsey said she doesn’t mind if the men in her house head out on Thanksgiving morning as she’s preparing the big meal.

“It keeps them out of the kitchen,” she said.

amiller@dispatch.com