DEL.ICIO.USGEORGIA OUTDOOR SPORTS
Georgia hunters try to keep their heritage alive
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, November 16, 2008
RAYLE — He was roused from the down cocoon of his sleeping bag at 4:30 a.m., a time that is but a rumor to many 15-year-olds.
Fed a quick breakfast of Pop-Tarts, clad in cotton and camouflage, Mike Johnson was semi-conscious on the short ride from the hunt camp to the lonely woods.
Ben Gray/bgray@ajc.com/
Dave Johnson of Cumming sits below his tree stand and waits for deer early on a recent Saturday morning. He and his family hunt on 300 acres they rent with others near Rayle, east of Atlanta between Athens and Augusta.
Of the three boys in his family, Mike is the youngest. He is also the slowest to take to hunting. Video games and fishing are more his speed.
Mike’s got company. The popularity of hunting is waning nationwide, and as Georgia becomes more and more urban, fewer people are taking to the woods with cradled rifle.
There were 343,633 licensed resident Georgia hunters in 1986, and 291,804 two decades later — a 15 percent drop in a rapidly growing overall population. One in four Georgia hunters were minors in 1986. In 10 years, that dwindled to one in 10.
In the face of the trend, it’s important to families such as the Johnsons that the tradition be passed to the next generation.
So, here was Mike, in the pre-dawn darkness, half asleep, perched high in a cold tree stand with every shift of his weight sounding like a relative thunderclap. Staying still, melting into the forest, doesn’t come naturally to a teenager.
As the sun began to pierce the trees, a movement below caught Mike’s eye. A wave of adrenaline swept over the boredom. Running past, not more than 10 yards away, was a deer — a good buck with a battle-worn, broken rack.
Only the day before, his brother Matt had an even larger buck in range. But just the motion of turning to take aim sent it bounding to safety.
Now it was Mike’s turn. His first deer, and the coming-of-age moment it represented, was in his sights. The animal had stopped, about 30 yards away, nose up sampling the frosty breeze. It seemed to be looking right at Mike.
Careful now. Ignore that drumming in your chest. Don’t rush. But don’t freeze up. Do it like Dad told you to …
Welcome to the prime of deer season in Georgia. Archers and muzzle-loading primitive hunters already have had their day. For over two months beginning in mid-October, modern firearm hunters take to the woods. (Firearm hunting is prohibited in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb and much of Fulton counties.)
The topic stirs a range of emotion, from disgust within the anti-hunting crowd to a defiant pride among those who keep the sport going.
Mike’s dad, Dave Johnson, said those on the other side of the debate don’t grasp the importance he places in the time he spends hunting with his family.
“No. 1, the kids are learning something every day they are out in the woods,” he said. “At home, inside, playing a video game, they’re learning nothing.”
Mark Whitney, chief of game management for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said there are many reasons hunting is in decline.
“People are more impatient today,” he said. “There is less rural country than there used to be. And the more urbanized we get, the less exposure people have to wildlife in general and the methods to live with them and control them in particular.”
Johnson — a lifetime hunter from Cumming, by way of upstate New York — has another method of measuring the state of the sport.
“You see less hunters,” he said after a morning in the woods. “When I first started coming out here (mid-1990s), it could sound like a war zone. What did we hear today — 20 shots?”
Hunting remains the one tool for controlling the white-tailed deer population, Whitney said.
Every year, the goal is to reduce by 30 percent to 40 percent a Georgia deer population thought to be around 1 million. Thanks to a generous state limit of 12 deer per hunter, a total of 319,377 were taken during the 2006-07 season. But as the number of hunters continues to fall, Whitney said, the deer population could get harder to control.
To those who hunt, the sport is about more than being an agent of numbers control or about putting a little meat on the table. Hunting is a way of life that connects generations, a rite that defines and binds families.
In his weekday life, Johnson is a senior systems programmer for UPS. Based at an Alpharetta office complex inhabited by 2,000 workers, Johnson knows of only one other among them who hunts. “People look at you a little strangely when you tell them you’re a hunter,” he said.
One of his cherished keepsakes is a photograph of his great-great-grandfather in Kentucky posing with his blackpowder rifle and three hunting hounds. It’s important to him that his wife and sons share in the heritage. Like many hunters, he has an almost evangelical streak when it comes to trying to regrow his sport.
“I think we are starting to see some kids get back into it,” Johnson said. “For so long, they’ve been taught that hunting is bad, that guns are bad.”
His boys’ rooms are filled with trophies — the skins of a bear and wild boar, along with mounted deer, antelope, fish and wildfowl.
During hunting season, Johnson’s weekends are for retreating to the 300 acres he and a small group of hunters lease near Rayle, between Athens and Augusta.
Togetherness is required. The family bunks in a tin-roofed shack with floors so uneven you can get seasick walking them. The interior walls are a patchwork of plywood and cardboard. The outhouse is, well, primal. But one can rough it only so much — there is satellite TV.
Hunt, eat a biscuit at the Poss-umm Cafe, watch a little college football, hunt some more — the perfect Saturday. Then follow that up with a little more hunting Sunday.
Johnson’s oldest son, Brian, 21, was a natural. He fell into the lifestyle. Middle son Matt, 16, already has shot two deer this season.
Dad doesn’t take that many deer anymore — he has shot plenty in his life. Just being in the woods, spending time with his family and his thoughts, seems to be adventure enough.
Then there is Mike, up there by himself in that tree stand, sighting in a first deer, his finger slowly wrapping the trigger …
Dave Johnson marked the time — the shot boomed through the trees at 7:52 a.m. He knew it came from where he had left Mike.
He always had told his youngest son that when the moment came — when the deer was down — to wait in the tree stand. Just wait, and Dad would be there to help him claim the kill.
Excitement overrode caution. Mike scrambled down the tree stand ladder and over to the deer. Pretty sure it was dead, he began dragging it back toward the parked truck.
Eventually, his father caught up.
“Mike, did you do that?” he said with a broad smile.
“Yeah!”
Dad clamped a 10-second bear hug on him.
“Do you get the same kind of charge from a video game as when you saw that deer?”
“Never,” Mike answered.
Was a lifelong hunter born that Sunday?
“I’m not sure whether he’ll do it or not when he goes away to college and then is off on his own,” his father said.
Bringing down the deer was a rush. But Mike cared little for the messy business of field dressing — eviscerating — the animal.
That night back home this much was certain: Mike and his brother Matt were
in charge of the entree. Venison steak, heavily seasoned and broiled. His deer, his dinner.
There’s a deeper kind of hunger that sets in after a day of hunting, Dave Johnson said. And he couldn’t remember any meal tasting better than this.
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