What Has Happened to It?

It is an erie morning for me.  The weather is perfect and the air is still.  Not a sound, no traffic.  I never thought I would see this day come.  Ever since I can remember I have waited, anxiously for this day each year.  I read about what I should do, prepared myself and my equipment for the event and visualized success.  During my years as a warden, it meant a weekend of work, hundreds of  miles on rough roads in the hills, talking to lots of armed people.  I enjoyed the excitement of it all.  But around here it seems to be over.  No sounds of shots in the surrounding mountains, no people in red fluorescent clothing, no antlers exposed in the back if pickup trucks.  It is the opening of the 2011 deer hunt.  To see a deer is rare, a buck even rarer.  If you do see any, they will be in a subdivision.  The biologists don't know where they went.  The old excuses like winter range destruction, predators, weather, chronic wasting disease or anything else don't answer the question.  The kids are probably playing with their phones as the old man desperately scans the hills.  At least the family could get together and ride OHV's and drink beer.  That will end next year when the DWR breaks up the state into micro units.  Then, even if you own private ground with some deer, you can't hunt it unless you draw out on it.  But for the hunters with big money, there will always be a place for you to buy a deer if you have enough $$.  Apparently, commercialization of wildlife is legal if the State does it.  It is over.  Thanks Utah Wildlife Resources.