For the past few months I've been chasing big mule deer near my home in southeastern Colorado. As many of you know, mule deer are hard to capture on trail cam. The reason being is the habitat these wide-racked beasts call home is vast and open. There are few things to funnel their movements, and by nature these savvy beasts don't tend to pattern as well as other game animals.

Of special concern to me were the non-hunters who might believe the eyesore indicative of standard practice—a misunderstanding that would breed contempt and amplify the schism between hunter and non-hunter outdoor enthusiasts. But like the belief that all hunters trash the forest, the separation of these two groups is misleading. Our commonalities far outweigh our differences.  

To simplify my message, I’m going to clump people into two neatly labeled groups while completely ignoring the complexity that comprises an individual. Labels may be shortcuts to thinking, but in this case, they are necessary for brevity.

 So the non-hunter outdoor crew will be “Granolas,” and we hunters will be called “Bambi-Killers.” Both may have a negative connotation, but nothing can take away the power of a word quite as effectively as repetition. 

I’ve heard hunters utter the word “Granolas” (or some variation of) with disdain on numerous occasions. Beneath a camo cap, they cast a wary eye toward a hiker clad in bright clothing like a boxer sizing up the competition… then they say something like, “They just shouldn’t be in the woods in the fall,” and might even follow it up with a scornful “tree-huggin’ hippie,” type remark—which is amusing partly because no Granola I’ve ever met, has really taken offense to being called a “hippy” or a “tree-hugger”—It’s like someone calling a hunter a “hunter.”   

A Granola might look at a Bambi-Killer and see some ignorant blood-thirsty Neanderthal coming to destroy the natural beauty of public land. They might say “It just seems cruel.” Hunting has been described as “psychotic” and “deranged.” Even though Granolas constantly exalt the virtues of the natural world, they ignore the fact that few daily human activities are more natural than hunting. Hunting helped us migrate out of the caves, evolve and contrive a language.  Language eventually led us to create words like “natural.”

These are extreme viewpoints, but whatever your perspective, if you are an outdoorsperson, you probably fit somewhere within the Granola/Bambi-Killer continuum. The adverse emotions are just symptoms of an amnesia infecting both groups coupled with a slight dose of pigheadedness. And of course, I am not the first to say this.

In a press release extolling shared values, Sierra Club’s Jon Schwedler stated, “Sportsmen were some of the first conservationists, and have always been an important part of the Sierra Club. Our founder, John Muir, worked closely with Teddy Roosevelt to protect America’s wild legacy. Now it’s crucial that sportsmen and environmentalists work together more closely so we can help save the forests, plains, lakes, rivers and streams we all enjoy.  Working together we can ensure that our nation’s outdoor legacy lives on for future generations of sportsmen.”

Sportsmen put conservation on the map. Both hunters and environmentalists share many of the same goals—though there are plenty points of departure. Wolf reintroduction can get extremely heated, as can the legitimacy of trophy-hunting along with a bastion of other issues. But, generally speaking, both groups love and want to protect our natural places. Period.

I could go into the litany of statistics and anecdotes about how these two philosophies converge, but this would get way too long, and it has been done before. Instead, I just want to call an in-the-field truce. I ask whoever you are, on any part of the continuum, to recognize the right of the other to be there.

Yep, that’s it.

If I happen to be hunting with you, don’t whisper negative comments to me about the brightly clothed hiker you’ve never even spoken to. I don’t want to hear a baseless judgment. If you are out photographing the fall leaves, don’t pass my camouflage-clad self swearing under your breath about the hunter who is raising hell in your woods.  I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but the odds are in favor of our values existing solidly on common ground…

Oh ya, and to all those who enjoy the sanctuary of natural places—pick up your trash! I’ll be doing my best to do the same.