The statewide opening day of deer season is Nov. 27 and continues through Dec. 11. During this season you can harvest an antlered (male) or antler-less (female) whitetail deer with a permit.

The hunting season of 2021 is a year of firsts. This will be the first season which you can hunt male or female deer on opening day. With this change many people suspect that a lot more deer will be harvested, bringing in the questions of ethics.

The ethics of deer hunting is a taboo topic for many people, but needs to be talked about more.

Many people have the wrong idea of what actually happens when you go hunting. I believe these ideas stem from the “hunting shows” you see when you flip through the channels on your TV.

These TV shows don’t show the before or after of the harvesting of a deer, putting a bad taste in people’s mouths. This happens because all the show depicts is the killing of deer.

The show will jump from hunter to hunter showing them being excited about just killing a deer. When I step back and look at just what they are showing I understand why people look down on the sport of hunting.

This is because they ask: why is someone jumping up and down with excitement after killing something?

The answer is actually in the preparation beforehand. From tracking to putting up a stand to wearing the right clothes to being extremely quiet and then making a good shot is a difficult task to achieve.

So when a weekend of preparation and after a week of new memories that are made with your hunting buddies the climax of the trip always ends with getting a deer.

When you see someone excited about getting a deer it isn’t celebrating because of the killing but a celebration because the success of a well-thought-out plan and an end to a great week with your family or friends.

For me and most hunters the actual killing of the deer is our least favorite part. The before and after is when lifelong memories are made and when the freezer is filled with the healthiest and freshest meat you can get.

In my experience an experienced hunter’s main goal is to respect the animal they harvest by taking ethical shots and treating the deer afterwards with respect. In other words you would wait for a better shot on the animal so it feels less pain and you don’t injure it.

Another aspect of showing respect to the animal is processing its meat correctly. This means you don’t leave any meat for waste. Every deer my family harvests we process ourselves meaning we do everything from field dress to putting the meat on the dinner table.

This way you know what meat you are getting and where it is coming from. If done correctly you should be able to take meat from the freezer and put it directly into the frying pan free of bacteria, skin, etc.

Next time you see a family member or friend that hunts ask them what their favorite hunting story is and most of the time they will reply with a story that has nothing to do with hunting at all but something that happened before or after the hunt. That is the appeal to hunting, and why I think that hunting is less brutal and more ethical than media depicts it.