How Animals Die

by Steve Sorensen
(Originally published in the Warren Times Observer, January 14, 2012.)

Wild animals never die under the
palliative care of a physician
while family and friends hold vigil.

If you’ve done much walking in the woods, you’ve found the remains of a dead animal. And you’ve wondered how it died. The truth is there are lots of ways, and none of them are pleasant. Wild animals never die under the palliative care of a physician while family and friends hold vigil.

Everyone who drives or rides in an automobile knows one way animals die. Deer don’t seem to obey those deer crossing signs. I don’t need to describe the aftermath because we all know it’s never a pretty sight. Tens of thousands of deer are killed on Pennsylvania’s roads. No one really knows the totals because many are not reported and some hobble off to die away from sight.

Cars don’t kill just deer. They kill every animal, domestic or wild, that ventures across a paved surface. You’ve seen them, you’ve probably killed at least a few, and you accept untold millions of road kills as a gruesome fact of modern life.

Predators kill animals. You might not know it, but you may have a predator living with you. The most popular pet these days – the common house cat – is also the most widespread predator. Even if your furry friend has been declawed, his cohorts kill millions of small animals and songbirds each year.

Domestic dogs are predators too, though not nearly as bloodthirsty as cats. Wild canines including wolves, foxes and coyotes, inflict deaths far less humane than deaths delivered by hunters or trappers. When a coyote, or pack of coyotes, catches a deer, they begin eating the deer while it’s still alive. Pictures prove it.

Animals also die from disease and malnutrition. When certain animal populations get too high disease can, and does, wipe them out by the hundreds. When food sources are scarce, it can mean difficult weeks during which animals are more vulnerable to disease, predators, and even starvation.

Finally, animals die by accidents, even without collisions with tons of high speed steel. They impale themselves on sticks. They dislocate joints. They drown. They fall. Birds of prey break wings in pursuit of fresh meat, then suffer while some other predator makes fresh meat of them. Animals of the same species even kill each other.

Virtually every way animals die in the natural world is horrible by human standards, even hunters’ standards. It’s a tough world out in the woods.

I recount these descriptions not for shock value, but to make one simple point: only one predator tries to minimize suffering in his prey. Only one predator cares enough for his prey to kill quickly.

That predator is man. Whatever means man uses to capture his prey – whether bullet, arrow, trap, or something else – he judges his success in part by how quick and humane the kill is.

Trappers especially want a quick kill. It’s to the trapper’s advantage to get to the trap as quickly as possible after prime time for catching the animal because he doesn’t want a bigger animal taking his catch.

Surprisingly often, trappers will find their prey lying there comfortably in the trap – maybe even asleep. Modern foot-hold traps are so well-designed that, when the proper size is chosen for the target animal, they rarely break a bone. And it’s a tired old canard that animals frequently chew their legs off. It rarely happens. So, arguments about the cruelty of trapping focus on exceptions more than on the facts of life in the wild.

Like it or not, man is a predator, and consumptive use of wildlife is not somehow less moral for him than it is for other predators. So I lay out these facts to show that man has a unique place among the many hunters in God’s creation. He’s the one predator who cares about suffering, seeks to minimize suffering in his prey, and finds satisfaction in a quick, clean kill.

Next time you find the remains of an animal in the woods and it wasn’t killed by a hunter, know this – no matter what happened, that animal almost certainly suffered before it died. That’s a fact of life in the wild.

Felines, Big Numbers, and Sunday Hunting

by Steve Sorensen
(Originally published in the Warren Times Observer, December 31, 2011.)

What in the world is
“world class” wildlife?

Over the course of a year I gather thoughts that either aren’t worthy of a full column, or disappear via the delete button when I edit for length. Some of them got cut from this column, but here are a few thoughts that remain, strung loosely together.

I heard on the radio that people travel to Kenya to see “world class” wildlife. Huh? What does that mean? Who keeps the list of “world class” wildlife? Are whitetail deer on it? Are wild turkeys on it? Are box turtles on it? What in the world is “world class” wildlife?

Maybe our Pennsylvania critters aren’t thought of as “world class” to a lot of people. On the other hand, could someone on the radio in Kenya be telling people to come to Pennsylvania to see “world class” wildlife?

Wildlife is a resource. Hunters and anti-hunters all agree on that, and they all enjoy wildlife. The disagreement begins when we call wildlife a “renewable” resource, and when we talk about wildlife management giving us a sustained “yield.” The words “renewable” and “yield” mean animals die at the hands of man.

Lots and lots of animals die at the teeth and claws of other animals, and I don’t see people caring about that. That fluffy feline that roams your neighborhood and thinks your garden is his litter box may kill more animals than all the hunters in your neighborhood combined. Add to that the predation by hawks, owls, foxes, coyotes and all the rest of the wild predators, and the order of magnitude is somewhere above holocaust.

A peer-reviewed (a word that’s meant to add credibility) study from the University of Nebraska says feral cat predation on birds produces an annual economic loss of $17 billion. I don’t know how they measure that, but that’s a lotta tweety birds. The report also says kitty cats are responsible for the extinction of 33 bird species worldwide. Regulated hunters, (guys like me, many of my readers, and Theodore Roosevelt), aren’t responsible for any. The score? Cats: 33 species; Licensed Hunters: 0.

The number of birds killed by cats in the U.S. alone could be a billion. Pussycats win again. Yes, cats definitely kill more animals than hunters kill. For them, hunting season is open 24/7/365. No wonder those numbers are ginormous!

Speaking of big numbers, proponents of Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania say that legalizing Sunday hunting would be an economic boon of over $750 million. The beneficiaries include hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that cater to hunters. They say it will bring badly needed jobs to our state.

Count me a non-believer. Hotels will rent more rooms a couple of weekends a year, but they won’t need more clerks and maids. Restaurants will serve more meals but their existing staffs of cooks and waitresses will be up to the task. And no gas station will hire attendants to pump gas for the influx of hunters for a few extra days of hunting season.

The numbers also say Sunday hunting will stimulate sales of hunting clothing and equipment, but no nimrod buys Sunday hunting garb. They’ll wear and use on Sunday what they wear and use on Saturday. To me, the economic argument supporting Sunday hunting seems overblown.

I don’t believe some of the points on the other side of the Sunday hunting argument either. Some say that farmers and landowners don’t want to be disturbed on Sunday by hunters asking for permission to hunt.

Really? Hunters seldom ask for permission on the day they go hunting. They ask ahead of time, and nothing stops hunters now from asking on Sunday for permission to hunt the following Saturday. I’ve done it. They’ve said “Yes.”

Nor do I take seriously the hue and cry of non-hunters who say they don’t want to be endangered on their Sunday afternoon hikes by hunters in the woods with guns. They have nothing to worry about. Besides, even with legalized Sunday hunting, they’ll still have dozens of Sundays to ramble the forests and fields when the weather is better. Why not give hunters a few?

It's time to tie big numbers and all the rest together. I just heard that Theodore Roosevelt went to Africa on safari during 1909-1910 to collect some world class wildlife, and shot a whopping 4,533 animals during the 365 days he was there. Some of them had to be cats. I'm betting he even hunted on Sunday. And no species became extinct.

That about wraps up my scribbles for 2011. Thank you for reading.

Field Dressing – No Bones About It

by Steve Sorensen
(Originally published in the Warren Times Observer, December 17, 2011.)

I don’t mean to insult anyone,
but the odds are you don’t know
how to field dress a deer.

I’ve never taken a deer to a butcher until this year when I took one to Jim Seder on the Big Four Road not far from my home. I took it to him partly because I didn’t have time to do it myself, partly because the weather was too warm to hang it in my garage, and partly because of what Jim told me a few weeks before the rifle season.

I had run into Jim at Wendy’s Café in Russell, PA, and he said, “Stop by and I’ll show you how NOT to field dress a deer? I’d say 90 per cent of hunters don’t know.” He wasn’t kidding or exaggerating.

At first, I didn’t believe it. 90 per cent? Really? I wouldn’t have believed 50 per cent, because when I grew up my dad taught me. It was fundamental to learning how to hunt.

When I stopped by Jim’s shop I saw what he was talking about. In fairness, some examples might be the work of new hunters who were trying to figure out for the first time what to do. But 90 per cent of the deer aren’t brought in by new hunters. So, I don’t mean to insult anyone, and it was surprising to me, but the odds are you don’t know how to field dress a deer.

Maybe you don’t want to bloody-up your hands and sleeves, or you’re a little squeamish. Maybe you didn’t pay attention in biology class and don’t understand the anatomy of the animal, or you don’t have a sharp knife. (My knife, the Havalon knife, takes that excuse away because it uses replaceable surgical scalpel blades.) Whatever the reason, the vast majority of hunters who turn their deer over to a venison processor apparently don’t know their way around a deer’s innards.

During the half hour I hung around Seder’s shop I saw almost every field dressing mistake hunters can make. Here they are in two categories:

Category #1 – Not doing enough:
1. This is the one I didn’t see, but once in a while a hunter will leave all the guts in. Every butcher has seen this, and most butchers refuse to take a deer that hasn’t been field dressed.

2. Some hunters remove only the abdominal organs (stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys). That leaves everything in front of the diaphragm (heart and lungs), and everything in the pelvis.

3. Some also remove the heart and lungs, but leave everything in the pelvis – the sex organs, the rectum, and the bladder. Do you want the contaminants associated with those organs near the hams of your deer? I don’t.

Category #2 – Doing too much:
1. Some hunters tear out the tenderloins, the small muscles inside the abdomen, on either side of the spine. I’ve heard them called “the fish” – they’re about the size and shape of an ordinary trout. Don’t rip them out with the gutpile – they’re the tenderest and best meat on the deer.

2. Some hunters cut the pelvic bone – what old-timers called the “aitch” bone – with a saw or hatchet. It’s totally unnecessary despite what you read in magazines, and despite what’s included in the fancy field dressing knife set you might find under the Christmas tree. Could it help cool the meat faster? Not really. Plenty of air will get in there to cool the meat if you properly remove the rectum, bladder and sex organs.

3. Some hunters go even further, severing the hip sockets on the hind quarters. Do that and you’ll lose up to 20 per cent of your hams because you’re exposing the meat to bacteria and drying. On the front end, there’s no reason to cut the breastbone either. That will dull your knife and risk an accident. You never need to cut a bone while field dressing.

Make four easy cuts -- no bones about it!
All you need are four cuts, all in soft tissue, all with a knife, and none with a saw or hatchet. You simply pull everything out after you make these easy cuts:
1. Around the vent and sex organs.
2. Belly, from the vent to the breastbone.
3. Diaphragm – left and right sides.
4. Gullet – esophagus and windpipe.

Always remember that proper field dressing leads to great tasting venison. If you want step-by-step instructions, I've written about that at the Havalon website. Check it out at: How To Field Dress Deer Like a Pro.

The Self-Evident Rightness of Hunting

by Steve Sorensen
(Originally published in the Warren Times Observer, December 3, 2011.)

Man is the predator who
wants to minimize suffering.

I saw the fur and stopped. Why was that animal just lying there?

Its fur looked perfect. I stared for a minute or two, then inched closer. Was it breathing? I magnified it through my rifle scope until sure there was no sign of life.

It was a dead raccoon. Without touching it, I made a closer inspection. Was it in a trap? No. Had it been bleeding? No. Was there any sign of a struggle? No. It looked as though it just fell over, dead.

A healthy raccoon preys on worms, grubs, and in season, the occupants of bird nests. This one will do no more of that. Its once bright eyes were crusty – a telltale sign of canine distemper, a cruel worker in Mother Nature’s death squad.

A few days later I discovered another dead raccoon about a quarter mile from the first. This masked marauder had sought comfort inside the base of a hollow tree before expiring. Likely another case of distemper.

Hunters are involved in only a minority of animal deaths, so it’s often a mystery how an animal died. When people see a dead animal it feels like an injustice. Certain animals – like a majestic eagle – get more of our sympathy.

A few weeks ago I captured five images of a mature bald eagle on one of my trail cameras. In every picture he was walking on the ground. That in itself is unusual for an eagle. There was no food source there, nothing for him to scavenge. But in all five photos he was holding a wing as though it was injured. How long can an eagle, a bird unaccustomed to life on the ground, survive with only one good wing? I don’t know. I only know that eagles kill, and eagles die.

Birds of prey live far more dangerously than ground-based predators. They don’t sneak up on a squirrel like a coyote or a bobcat does. An owl or a hawk will dive-bomb that squirrel. As the bushytail scampers for safety, the bird makes a high-speed turn to sink his talons into the squirrel’s backstraps.

Disastrously, in the midst of that split-second flight adjustment, it will sometimes whack a wing against a tree limb. A broken wing will quickly turn a predator into prey.

During deer season hunters are predators whose prey has big brown eyes. Irrationally, many people feel more sympathy for animals with big brown eyes than ones with little brown eyes, but animals with little brown eyes die in far greater numbers. They die every day for other animals to live.

Unlike deer, most of them die unwitnessed, with nary a trace of evidence for people to observe. No one grieves for them. They aren’t even preserved in memory, like a whitetail on the wall. But it’s the way life, and death, works.

When wild animals succumb to disease or predators, they usually suffer. On the other hand, when they die from bullets or arrows, they usually die a quick, merciful death. One difference between man and animals is that man is the predator who wants to minimize suffering.

I don’t say it as an attempt to justify hunting. If you ask a room full of hunters why they hunt, every hunter might have his own justification.

Many hunt to spend time outdoors with friends or family. Others hunt to continue a tradition passed down from fathers and grandfathers. Some enjoy the satisfaction of providing their own meat or the challenge of outwitting a wild animal. Some are hunting for solitude. Why someone hunts is a personal matter.

Many hunt simply because they feel a natural urge to do so, and it doesn’t need to make sense to someone who doesn’t hunt.

The famous naturalist and environmentalist Aldo Leopold said it this way: “The instinct that finds delight in the sight and pursuit of game is bred into the very fiber of the race.” Hunting is a way of life. Hunting needs no defense because the rightness of hunting has always been self-evident for the eagle, for the raccoon, for all hunters. Hunters don’t question it any more than we question the truth that all men are created equal.

Seven Mistakes Your Taxidermist Can’t Fix

by Steve Sorensen
(Originally published in the Warren Times Observer, November 19, 2011.)

Your part is to provide
lifelike raw materials for
your taxidermist to work with.

Have you heard the one about the boy who shot a nice gobbler? His dad was proud and decided to get the big bird mounted. So, he plucked it, collected the feathers in a big pillowcase, and took the pillowcase to the local taxidermist. You can guess the rest of the story.

That’s a mistake none of us would make. Right?

Right. But we might make other mistakes the taxidermist can’t fix. A first-rate mount begins with you. Here’s what to avoid:

1. Going cheap. Some guys shop around for the cheapest taxidermist, unaware that inferior materials might be the reason for the lower price. Other hunters have a buddy who’s a budding taxidermist and will do it for just the cost of materials. Nothing against your buddy, but if he someday turns pro he’ll probably hope you don’t tell people he did it. A veteran taxidermist will get the right size form and put eyes, ears, and antlers into proper relationship.

2. Slitting the throat. That’s just one way your knife can ruin a trophy. Many years ago I saw a newspaper photo of a proud hunter with a high, wide 8-point. You could see, just below the buck’s white throat patch, where the hunter slit the throat to “bleed it out.” Never do that. You’ll cut through hair and the taxidermist can’t fix it without replacing that section of hide. Besides, putting a knife to the throat of a live deer is a good way to get badly injured. Antlers and hooves hurt. If he isn’t dead, shoot him again. Field dressing will let the blood out.

3. Handling carelessly in the field. Treat the animal with respect. If you must drag a deer, drag it on both sides. Otherwise, the animal may look worn on one side. Better yet, drag it on a plastic sled or a tarp. And for goodness sake, drag it with the grain of the hair, not against it. Yes, I’ve seen a hunter drag deer by the back legs, and it ain’t pretty. Remember, deer hair is hollow – it kinks when it bends and it’s easy to break.

4. Being a show-off. Be proud, but don’t get carried away. Get good photos and make a few phone calls, but don’t drive all over town with your buck. If you must haul a deer very far in the back of a pickup, stop somewhere and roll it over to make sure heat isn’t trapped on the bottom. Protect it from the wind – you don’t want to drive airborne road grime into the hair.

5. Leaving the skin on. A deer hide traps heat, and heat stimulates the growth of bacteria. Once bacteria get into the hair follicles the hair will begin to slip and your trophy will be ruined. Warm weather accelerates the process. So, skin him as soon as possible. The meat and the hide will cool more quickly – better for eating and better for mounting.

6. Getting knife crazy. Improper skinning can damage your trophy. At best, it gives the taxidermist extra work. So, don’t make any cuts in the head and neck. Don’t cut up the front of the deer’s neck. Never cut from the outside in; always cut from the inside out. When you separate the head from the carcass leave plenty of skin. Let your taxidermist skin the head. He knows how to do the eyelids, nose and lips.

7. Being ignorant about taxidermy. Actually, this is something your taxidermist can fix – if you stop by his shop before going hunting and ask him how to handle your buck from the field to his shop. He can do a better job if you take his advice.

Taxidermy is an art form that recreates a lifelike appearance. Your part is to provide the taxidermist with lifelike raw material.

Ideally, the relationship between the hunter and the taxidermist is a two-way mutual admiration society. If he admires the raw materials you bring him, you’re more likely to admire the mount he returns to you. And so will others when they see it on your wall.
***
News about hunters’ back tags:
Hunters’ complaints about wearing back tags might end soon. On Tuesday, November 15, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a law repealing the rule. The vote was 46-3. Gov. Corbett says he will sign it. New laws take effect 60 days after his signature. So, this may be the last year Pennsylvania hunters need to display our tags on the middle of our backs.

The Complete OutdoorsWOMAN

by Steve Sorensen
(Originally published in the Warren Times Observer, November 5, 2011.)

Everywhere we shined a light,
we saw a shadow. The bear could be
hiding in any one of them.

“Honey, I just saw a bear!” Dick was calling his wife on the cellphone. “I saw one too,” Audrey replied, “and I shot it!”

That’s how the evening of Friday, October 28 started for Dick and Audrey Zimmerman, Wally Ciukaj, and me. The tracking job in New York’s Chautauqua County began at about 8:00 with Wally taking the lead. Sometimes we saw lots of blood, other times we struggled to find drops the size of a pinhead.

The night was pitch black. As if on cue, coyotes added an eerie ambiance with their yipping and howling on the hillside. After about 400 yards we found Audrey’s arrow, but the trail continued for another 200 yards until it entered a tangle of felled treetops.

Everywhere we shined a light, we saw a shadow. The bear could be hiding in any one of them. Trying to keep his eye on the blood, Wally struggled to climb over the web of twisted limbs. He stood up, shined his flashlight under a log, and whispered. “There he is.” The bear had hidden himself, but had turned to watch his backtrail.

Dick shined his light at the spot, and the bear blinked. It was alive. Suddenly Wally realized he was seven feet from a wounded bear.

Slowly Wally backed away. We had no choice but to mark the spot and return in the morning. A few minutes later we heard a loud moan. Bear hunters recognize it as the “death moan.” We felt confident it was over, but we could barely see anything in the jumble. In the darkness it was impossible to retrieve him, so we made plans to return in the morning.

After a few hours of fitful sleep we awakened to fresh snow. It’s a good thing we had completed the tracking job because the fresh snow obliterated the trail. We met at 7:30 AM, hiked to the spot we left the previous night, and found Audrey’s bear, as we expected, dead.

Now we faced the challenge of getting him out of that mess and up the hill. With four of us there, we completed the task in about an hour.

Audrey Zimmerman is the complete outdoorswoman. Dick says, “If you sent her and any of the female ‘celebrity’ hunters into the woods with bows in their hands and treestands on her backs, my money would be on Audrey to return first with a deer.” I’d say that’s a safe bet. Most male hunters would take a back seat to her.

Audrey is an expert archer who has won many 3D archery tournaments. Currently she is the Archery Shooters Association Shooter of the Year, and the International Bowhunting Organization National Champion, Amateur Women’s Division. She has also won a state championship and several other titles.

Besides all the championships, Audrey is an outstanding hunter with lots of bucks, some turkeys, a couple of coyotes, and now a bear under all those championship belts.

This New York black bear is the third animal she has taken already this season. Next up, a really big buck? I wouldn’t bet against it.

In the Year 1959….

by Steve Sorensen
(Originally published in the Warren Times Observer, October 22, 2011.)

Not everyone could get a “doe tag,”
and hunters considered an antlerless
deer a mere consolation prize.

I was rooting around in the basement at a local estate sale recently and came across a copy of the Warren Observer dated June 25, 1959. (In the evolution of newspapering, about 30 titles have served Warren County over the years.)

Naturally, I looked for an outdoor column, and I found one. Buried among Hot Stove League reports, wedding announcements, and ads for obscure local businesses including “Sorensen’s Shoe Repair” (I haven’t figured out who that was), I noticed a piece titled “The Pennsylvania Deer.” It might be the most contemporary sounding article in that musty old rag.

No columnist’s name is attached to it. Maybe outdoor columns were different back then. It reads more like a news story than a “where-to” or “how-to” piece, or an opinion column. It concluded, “We offer this as a collection of scientific facts to be considered by all concerned.” It showed that much has changed, but a lot has stayed the same.

It focused on some of the same issues we still talk about today – the damage whitetails do to their habitat, the buck-to-doe ratio in the deer herd, the scarcity of mature bucks, antler development – topics hunters will discuss again and again in this year’s hunting camps.

The column shows that Pennsylvania deer controversies were raging 40 years before Gary Alt, a pariah in the minds of many deer hunters today, took over the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s deer program. Back in 1959, he was just a kid.

For hunters, things were different back in 1959. I was still eagerly anticipating my first foray into the deer woods. Back then antlerless season was just one day. Not everyone could get a “doe tag,” and many hunters who didn’t object to shooting does considered an antlerless deer a mere consolation prize after failing to harvest a buck.

Few kids today look forward to hunting as eagerly as I did, but with our new mentoring program kids now have an opportunity to hunt long before reaching age 12. Archery hunting is much more popular, crossbows are now legal, doe season runs concurrently with buck season, antler point restrictions are in place for adult hunters, and we’re no longer limited to just one deer per year.

Regarding dollars, the column stated the value of a deer was “as much as $181 in business income.” (That number was derived from the economics of deer hunting in two counties.) It added that “When deer are found on private land, as a major share of them are, the cost is one hundred percent covered by the landowner, who provides cover, feed, and suffers the land damage.”

What’s the point? The profits some businesses enjoyed were a cost to the farmers whose crops were raided by deer. The column spoke of the forest not being able to provide enough food for whitetails: “… maturing forests and expanding herds send the animals into farmlands for food.”

Some people today remember that time as the good old days of deer hunting, but the column said “Authorities doubt if we can continue this luxury of a low kill under such circumstances.” I remember a decade later when the PGC issued regular post-season reports of record kills. Apparently deer managers back then wanted to see the kill increase every year, but it still wasn’t enough to keep the deer herd in balance with its habitat.

For deer, it mentioned several biological truths that have been amply proven in more recent research:
“Well fed does will produce an average of two fawns, but if food is scarce the average drops to one or less.”

“The body growth requirements are fulfilled first, and then antler growth.”

“To feed them you must have some balance between the range and herd.”

For me, maybe what was most interesting in that 52 year old newspaper column was that I expected the Pennsylvania Game Commission to be the source of the information. It wasn’t. It came from the U.S. Extension Service, the Pennsylvania State University, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture – not from the PGC.