It starts with a patch of ground. A few trees are selectively cut for firewood to keep the hunter warm on cold winter nights. The downed tops provide an instant windfall of nutrition to earthbound herbivores and protection from raptors for small mammals. The maze of branches will protect next year’s growth from browsing deer, creating a micro sanctuary.

The following spring the open over-story will allow more sunlight to reach the forest floor, prompting a lush carpet of herbaceous plants, food for the deer, turkeys and a host of other game and non-game wildlife. The freshly cut stumps will grow sprouts, providing deer and snowshoe hare with woody browse for the ensuing fall and winter. Eventually it will grow into a dense copse of underbrush, providing cover for turkeys, grouse, and other ground- and shrub-nesting songbirds.

Meanwhile, the oaks and an old apple tree, freed from competition, will grow taller and produce more mast for squirrels, foxes and turkeys. Dead snags left behind will provide lodging for woodpeckers, chickadees or maybe an owl that will find hunting easier.

Perhaps a small plot is cleared, the soil lightly turned over and planted with a crop. But it’s not a mono-culture industrial crop like corn, sown from road to road for human consumption or the ethanol gas additives that foul carburetors, destroy two-cycle engines and deplete the soil of nutrients; or like the soybeans planted after the land has been sprayed with herbicides to remove any and all competing plants, tilled deeply and treated with tons of fertilizer to the point where no invertebrates can survive to sustain insectivorous birds and small mammals.

It’s a wildlife plot, planted with a blend of seeds that will provide food for a host of wild species from grasshoppers, crickets and beetles to moles and voles, songbirds, and furred and feathered game. This crop is not for human consumption. The nutrition it provides must first be elevated to the next trophic level. Plants take up nutrients from the soil, which are consumed by animals and become flesh, protein. It is this the hunter seeks.

This land, carefully managed by its steward, will produce a sustained yield. Unlike the industrial crops that displace all living things, except themselves, from the land to provide a single season’s yield, the managed forest and food plot will provide indefinitely. And like the small farmer and the orchardist, the hunter can take a small portion of that yield, indefinitely.

The hunter asks for only a small tribute for his efforts. Perhaps a deer, a turkey or a brace of grouse will fall to the hunter’s gun this season. More will be taken by predators, disease or senescence. Still more will survive to replace themselves. This ground, if properly cared for, will provide in perpetuity.

This is the way of the modern hunter-conservationists who understand the true meaning of their avocation. They use the land and the resources on it wisely, taking only enough so that what remains can replenish itself and spill out onto neighboring properties for others to enjoy, whether it be on the dinner table or merely through the camera lens.

Bob Humphrey is a freelance writer and registered Maine Guide who lives in Pownal. He can be reached at:

bhunt@maine.rr.com

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