Wisconsin’s gun deer reason begins Saturday and runs through November 27.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

The dates of the 2022 gun season, which opens by tradition on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, are the second-earliest in the rotating calendar sequence. That means gun hunters this year should benefit from more rut-associated deer movement than usual.

According to the Wisconsin DNR (Dept. of Natural Resources):

As of 10 a.m. Nov. 18, sales for gun, bow, crossbow, sports and patron licenses reached 665,661. Of that total, 310,862 are for gun privileges only.

It’s important for all hunters to do their part to keep Wisconsin a safe place to hunt by following these firearm safety rules:

• T – Treat every firearm as if it is loaded
• A – Always point the muzzle in a safe direction
• B – Be certain of your target, what’s before it and what’s beyond it
• K – Keep your finger outside your trigger guard until you are safe to shoot

I’m not a hunter, but I’m a staunch supporter.

Columnist, author, and ordained minister Doug Giles IS a hunter. Here’s a photo of a brown bear he shot in Alaska in 2010.

Giles, a favorite of mine, doesn’t write as much as he used to. But when Giles did, hunting was always an interesting topic.

In August of 2008 Giles gave his 10 reasons why he loves hunting:

10. When I’m out hunting the locations are usually so remote that my necessary evil, i.e. cell phone and my buddies’ cell phones, do not work and thus, depending on the length of the hunt, I have a 3-14 day timeframe to be left the heck alone. Thank you, Jesus. No doubt some of you are thinking, “I can’t live, if living is without you” in relation to your electronic appendage. Trust me, you’ll survive, and believe it or not—and this might hurt some of you egoists—but the world will continue to turn without your input.

9. Our sport is 99.9% devoid of nasty, whiny man-hating stretch pant wearing mullet sporting anti-American nerve-grating feminists, lesbos and nutty liberals. Yep, around the campfire and in the field the lunatic left’s yarbling is non-existence. Why the absence of the left’s asininity out in the brush? The answer is simple: The tree humpers don’t hunt, which is awesome! For my God and country loving tribe, this makes the air smell fresher, the food taste better, the wine taste sweeter, the buzz last longer, the stars shine brighter, the voice of God clearer, and the trip overwhelmingly blissful with such jackanapes missing from our mix. Yep, the hunting camp is a traditional values paradise.

8. Less noise. One of the things I hate about city life is the noise. Daily I find myself walking around yelling like Yosemite Sam, ”I hate noise . . . can’t stand noise . . . noise . . . noise . . . noise!” which inadvertently adds to the racket, which explains much of my life. Where I live (Miami) everything is frickin’ noisy. Horns honkin’, people yelling on their cell phones, folks fighting, screaming and complaining in English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese and Yiddish—and that’s just in the foyer of our church. By the way, can Starbucks get a coffee steamer that doesn’t sound like a wild boar being gutted with a dull chainsaw? Is that too much to ask? Out in the field and away from the concrete the hunter enjoys the magical perk of peace and quiet.

7. Art by God. The hunter gets an ocular overload as he is fortunate to behold the handiwork of the Creator in an intimate and intimidating way. Yes, away from the manmade stercore tauri one gets to behold the Designer showing off his flora and fauna in a funkalicious fashion. Explosive colors, an endless variety of birds, animals, fish, reptiles, freaky insects, threatening mountains, trickling and raging rivers, and brilliant stars are the canvas God rolls out and slaps the onlooking hunter with. I know this will upset some indoor Nancy boy pastors, but I get more God out of nature than I do your dull church service. The hunter understands what King David meant in Psalm 23 when he says that God “makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.” Call me crazy, but God’s art crushes any Abstract/Modern art which usually looks like someone whipped their butt on a piece of paper, framed it and called it good.

6. Hunting revives the hunter’s primal roots. Just getting out in the wild reconnects me with my original spiritual and physical moorings. When God created Adam and Eve, He made certain that their initial crib didn’t have cable TV or a home association. Yep, God didn’t want His kids’ first experiences to be lame and tame. Adam and Eve were made to be wild, not mild, and were purposely crafted to interface 24/7 with wild beasts. Lucky bastards!

Non-hunter: If you or your kids are screwed up, one of the many reasons could be that you have separated yourself and your brood from what they need, namely regular doses of the irregular wild. Try it. it’s magical. There is something that the undomesticated does to a person that no Lysol-disinfected, five star hotel on South Beach, slow cruise to Nassau, or a 3-day hell trip to Disneyland could provide—and the hunter is stubbornly locked onto this fact. Yes, you can go to Disneyland, and we’ll go to Africa or Texas or Maine or Alaska.

The hunt causes one’s senses to come alive, and as a result they’re taken to a higher level by simply pursuing the prey. Yes, the eyes, ears, nose, feet and hands kick into high gear like they don’t when you’re standing in the snaking stooge line at McDonald’s waiting for their new McCrap sandwich before you return to your office cubicle to inhale the stale, fart-laden, re-circulated office “air.”

5. Hunting takes the funk out of dysfunctional families.

What I’ve seen in 30 plus years out in the hunting fields is this: The family that hunts together stays together. Hunting requires communication between the hunting parties. Most families communicate with each other about as often as Bill has sex with Hillary. Hunting cures this (the communication part, not the Bill and Hillary stuff).

There’s a lot that goes into being a successful hunter, and it demands plenty of quality time spent between the tribe discussing safety, terrain, conservation, the particular animals to be pursued, and choices of weapons, boots, clothes, bullets, bows/arrows . . . you get the point, don’t ‘cha? After all the aforementioned prelim stuff is done with, then the hunt commences, which includes sitting, walking, stalking, and then relaxing around the sacred campfire, where it’s just you guys talking, laughing and anticipating the next day, and—excuse my redundancy—you are all together. The hunter understands this: Family is everything, all else is BS.

4. Hunting provides veggies for the vegans.

I love the fact that the PETA vegans couldn’t eat their salad or their edamame burger if it weren’t for the blistering fact that farmers/hunters have to shoot animals so that the vapid vegan can smugly eat his garbanzo bean patty. Earth to PETA: Animals prey on your in-demand, sassy, non-animal grub—and the farmers don’t like it, and they shoot them. Do you need a tissue?

Yes, the “save the animal” dipsticks who don’t eat meat wouldn’t have their holy lettuce if it were not for farmers shooting PETA’s “friends” like the rabbits, deer, wild hogs and other critters that decimate the vegetarians’ victuals. However, I wouldn’t let it bug you now, PETA. Before you eat your salad just smoke another doobie and forget about the fact that for you to have your cute little baby carrot that it entailed a farmer putting the bam to Bambi. Oh, the irony.

3. Hunting provides massive amounts of food for the poor.

Unlike the liberal blowhards who talk about helping the poor, many hunters practically do it by feeding them. The hunter, who generally speaking is a conservative, is supposed to be, according to the Mange Stream Media, a calloused living heart donor. However, the reality is that we provide a massive, benevolent source of high-protein, low-fat food to the poor at our own expense. Put that in your hookah and smoke it, morons.

Here’s the truth, weepy “save the poor” hypocrites: The “evil” group known to you as hunters gives away hundreds of thousands of pounds of the best meat on the planet at their expense to the poorest among us. In the last couple of years alone my buddies and I have paid for the hunting, butchering and processing of conservatively 10,000 pounds of sweet venison for the poor in Africa and at risk kids, Christian ministries, and abused and battered women here in the U.S of A. That’s 10,000 plus pounds of meat just between a few guys in the last few years. How do you, the “loving liberal,” stack up against that? Not very well, I’ll bet.

2. Hunters put their money where their mouth is.

The yarbling libs and PETA are a full of sheeta crowd that would love to make us all believe that they are true stewards of nature and that hunters are Agent Orange to animals and land. However, if the truth can still be told, it’s the hunter who doles out nearly three hundred million bucks a year in special surtaxes on guns, ammo, camo underwear and other outdoor supplies which goes to state conservation programs. The tree humpers don’t pay these taxes, girlfriend, the hunters do. The hunters. The hunters. The hunters.

That’s probably enough 411 for the brainwashed crowd for now on how the hunter is the true conservationist who puts his money where his mouth is. Maybe later I’ll write about how the hunters’ hard earned capital is what saves the swamps, underwrites wildlife research, and has kept many species around the planet from going extinct—not PETA.

1. Hunters are the salt of the earth.

Every group has their jerks, and it’s true that everybody sucks, but as far as I’m concerned, hunters suck less. Matter of fact, I’d say that 95% of the people I have met in the hallowed hunting camp have been upright, pleasant, courteous, grateful, hard working, God- and country-loving, family oriented folks with whom it was my deepest pleasure to be able to share a few days pursuing game.

Please share with fellow hunters. And be safe.