Utah's nimrods merit a salute

The archers and muzzle-loaders have taken their best shots. Now, the rifle hunters are setting their sights on Oct. 18, the day the annual deer hunt starts at first light.

Some 70,000 hunters will head for Utah's hills this year. That's more folks in orange than at LaVell Edwards Stadium. And a third of those — 23,000 — will likely get a deer.

We wish them well. And we caution them to be careful.

In Utah, there is never room for tomfoolery and silly risk-taking around rifles.

On the other hand, in Utah there will always be plenty of room for the sport of hunting itself.

Years ago, sports pages called hunters "nimrods" — the name of a mighty hunter in Genesis. Today, deer hunters are living through a less lofty era. Hunting expenses have risen while the true need for the meat has declined. And the fact most sportsmen are more interested in action than adverbs means the flow of ink has tended to favor animal-rights groups and the anti-hunting crowd more than hunters in recent years.

Still, hunters do have their champions. In novels such as "Islands in the Stream," Ernest Hemingway — winner of the Nobel Prize — made the case that sportsmen love wildlife and revere the great outdoors as much as any naturalist. And Utah's poet laureate, Ken Brewer — a sensitive soul with a Ph.D. — is an avid hunter. He's a "nimrod" capable of writing a sonnet about mallard ducks in the morning, bagging his limit of the things in the afternoon and then serving them up that evening in a four-star fricassee.

Some defenders of the deer hunt argue that hunting is a socially acceptable outlet for rambunctious men. Others claim that hunters help out wildlife officials by thinning the herds.

And the distinction between putting a bullet between the eyes of a steer in a slaughter house for profit and a putting a bullet through a deer hardly merits a distinction.

Still, from our point of view, the most persuasive defense of deer and bird hunting is the fact it is a thread woven deep into the fabric of society, especially society west of Kansas City.

On the Goshute Reservation near Wendover, tribal members are allowed to hunt at will year-round. If a family has friends coming to dinner tomorrow, they are perfectly justified in bagging an antelope today.

That is how it should be. Hunting and fishing are an integral part of native culture. They come with the territory.

What hunting opponents and animal-rights advocates fail to appreciate is the fact hunting is also an integral part of mainstream America. Hunting is in the American grain.

Hunters are us.

We wish all deer hunters a dose of success this year — a dose of legal, safe and sober success.