Oh, willful waste

When I was a kid growing up on the farm in Connecticut I was a wasteful little brat. Time and time again, I would attempt to hide things under the rim of my plate that I didn’t want to eat. Time and time again, my Grandmother — whose family name was “Hawkeye” because she never missed anything — would find crusts of bread, bits of spinach and beets I stashed away.

One time, when she discovered an especially large cache of crusts under my plate, she put her lovely old arms around me and said, “Oh, willful waste, oh, willful want, how I long for that crust of bread I once threw away…”

This was during the Great Depression, mind you, and so what Grammy was saying was vital to the survival of many thousands of people. We lived on a farm; food wasn’t a problem, but I always remember that lovely little warning, “Oh, willful waste…”

Unfortunately, there are those who pursue our game animals who do not have that understanding or philosophy. The deer in the photo above is one example. Whoever shot that little buck did a good job of it; he — or she — made a strong lung shot during the recent archery season that probably stopped the deer quickly. So why didn’t he or she gut it out and tag it…?

That was the question Kellie Landers and her husband Gary asked themselves when they came upon the deer while horseback riding near their home in Sisters.

“It was a neighborhood deer,” Kellie said, as she walked around the corpse photographing the stinking remains. “I can remember seeing this little guy in our backyard not more than a week ago,” she said to her husband, Gary.

“This isn’t hunting!” She exclaimed, getting hotter under the collar by the moment. “This is just killing…”

With that, Kellie went back home, picked up the telephone, and called the Bend office of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW). According to Kellie, the response she got was “Oh, that couldn’t be one of my hunters that did that…”

“Maybe not,” Kellie angrily replied, “but whoever killed that deer should have tagged it and not left it for turkey vulture and coyote food. Sure it’s small, sure it was a ‘pet’ deer. But it was still legal game and should have been tagged and taken home; I think it was just used for target practice!”

Kellie says the reply to that statement was, “Well, maybe the hunter couldn’t find it.”

“What!” Kellie replied, “A lung shot, and the hunter couldn’t track the deer to where it dropped. It was bleeding like a stuck pig, and couldn’t have gone far.”

Whatever the reason the deer was killed and left to rot; it wasn’t good publicity for the hunting community, especially almost within the city limits of Sisters.

I have found piles of mallards that were legal game left to rot on the ODFW Summer Lake Wildlife Management Area. I also went out hunting with a guy (once) who shot a mule deer doe and left it because it was not legal game.

I can recall in the 1970s when I was a bystander in a conversation between two hunters who were thrilled with killing a cougar and two does down near Fort Rock one Sunday afternoon. These guys were members of the church I belong to and from my perspective, they were way out on a limb. Hunting on Sunday was frowned upon and wasteful killing of wildlife is not very sportsman-like, in my book.

About two weeks after this event, the President of the church, Spencer W. Kimball, came out with a strong statement about hunting on Sundays, so-called “sport-hunting” and wasting our natural resources.

Sure it was coincidental, but his missive brought back that lovely old saying of my Grandmother’s, “Oh, willful want, oh, willful waste...”