photo by Bruce Gronbeck

HALLELUJAH CHORUS OUTLAWED IN IOWA!

In the past few months, we’ve all been asked to reexamine the tone of our rhetoric, to bring it down a notch, to stop labeling those with whom we disagree as the enemy. However, the sound of guns blasting along our fence line, the orange haute couture, and the beer cans and shell casings strewn all over the roadside––these can move me from mindful to completely out of my mind in minutes. My rhetoric is anything but empty. I spew, I sputter, I descend into the gutter.

My dad hunted. He let me shoot cans off the fence posts on my grandpa’s farm. I can’t recall anyone in our neighborhood who didn’t hunt.

One time my dad called me down to the basement where he was dressing out some squirrels he’d shot. “Look at this,” he said. He held a squirrel up. Apparently he’d already slit it around its “waist” because he proceeded to pull half that fur coat up and half down, skinning it in one swift move. “Pants and a shirt,” he said. I have no idea how my 9-year-old self recovered from that. I don’t recall any specific trauma.

My adult self is not so able to accept the pain and suffering imparted to innocent animals for no good reason. While these “humanitarians” cull the herd to “prevent the deer from starving,” the ones they don’t quite kill run down my driveway and die in front of the house. Or my dogs carry home the entrails after the hunters grab a few roasts and leave the rest to rot. We watch a family of deer tiptoe across our meadow and slide silently down beyond the pond. There’s a barrage of shooting, and I am sickened.

During construction, our roofer asked to hunt on our land, and I declined.

“Why not?!” he demanded.

I wasn’t up for discussing the merits of hunting with this guy so I simply said, “We have dogs. It’s too dangerous.”

He stood with his hands on his bony hips. “What if I hunt on your neighbor’s land and shoot a pheasant, and it flies into your field?” he asked. His tone dared me to deny him access to this mythical wounded bird.

“Guess you’re out of luck,” I said. He was unabashedly disgusted with me.

The next week, my friend drove out to check the progress on our nearly completed house. When she got back to town, she called me and asked if I’d given permission for someone to hunt. My blood reversed its flow.  She said a man was loading his guns into the back of a truck by our garage. She told him she was quite sure we did not allow hunting. He said, “I wasn’t hunting.” He must have had a nasty dermatological issue because my friend noticed that his feet were covered with feathers. She got his license number. Shocking who it turned out to be.

My friend probably shouldn’t have confronted a stranger with a gun. That’s what my husband seemed to think when I did the same thing. I was walking in the wetlands and saw two men constructing a deer stand in one of our trees. They kept at it as I walked up to them.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked.

The one in the tree kept hammering. The one holding the ladder in place looked very nervous. He told his buddy they’d better go.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked again.

The tree guy jumped down to the ground. Remember those kids in Deliverance? If one of them had grown up, he’d have been this guy.

“Putting up a tree stand,” he said, adding a non-verbal “dummy.”

“Got to take that down, “ I said. His friend became even more nervous and started collecting their tools and a couple of guns.

“You have frickin’ got to be kidding me,” he yelled.

“I’m frickin’ not,” I said.  He said he didn’t believe this was my property. I invited him to check out the plat sometime.

“One of us is taking that down. If you want it, take it with you,” I said, walking away, tightening the spot between my shoulder blades, waiting for the impact.

This particular tree was a good mile from any road. A neighbor told me this guy walks in along the creek so as not to be detected.

When I returned home and shared my adventure with my husband, he inquired as to whether confronting a not quite fully assembled man who had guns was to be advised. Well, of course not! That’s just what the scoundrel was counting on. And within the hour, guess who knocked at the door and asked to see the plat? I brought it outside, he read it, he left, swearing all the way to his car.

After carrying a post-hole driver along our swampy west boundary and putting No Hunting signs every 30 feet, I knew I was not going to win any county elections after that. In turn, my neighbors constructed a deer blind the size of a four-plex apartment building just outside our fence.

So, here was my reasoning: if I could alert the deer in our woods, maybe they’d lay low and not venture out where hunters could shoot them. I walked to the center of our 20-acre forest and sat on a downed tree. I placed my boombox on the tree trunk, turned the volume all the way up, and hit “Play.” The CD began to whir and within seconds, Handel’s Messiah shook the forest. "Aaaa-le-luuuuuu-yuh! Aaaa-le-luuuuuu-yuh!" It was glorious. It was so glorious.  “. .  . And He shall be redee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeem-ed…” floated up through the treetops and echoed down through the ravine, letting the deer know something is amiss––you’d better hunker down. And then I, a happy troubadour, strolled along the fence line with my boombox still blasting––“And He shall reign forever and eh-eh-ver….”

Did you know that it’s illegal to play music for the deer during hunting season? “Get out!” you’re saying. That’s what I said when the conservation officer drove down our driveway, and joined me as I walked the dogs, long after my musical offering had ended. Yup, you cannot do anything that will interfere with hunters killing animals even if you do it on your own property, even if it presents no actual barrier to them. You cannot influence the animals to not be killed.

To enhance my disbelief, the officer handed me a pamphlet which explained that playing the Messiah in my own woods when my nearest neighbor is a mile away is against the law. There is a pamphlet for this! Apparently, this comes up often enough to warrant a pamphlet. In Iowa County. Iowa.

Really, what could be more Christian than playing the Messiah for hunters as they sit in those cold, lonely deer blinds? Ingrates. Philistines. Oh––but not the enemy.