A Life-Long Hunter
Captain John C. Sigler (Ret.) - JD
Osceola Turkey - Florida
I have hunted most of my life, here in the States and
elsewhere.
My father introduced me to hunting
by taking me rabbit hunting with him and his friends as a young boy. He gave me
an old Ithica 16-gauge side-by-side to use that was almost as big as I was. I
still have that shotgun in my safe. I was probably 10 years old at the time.
He taught me to love the woods and
the marsh, respect the animals, and to love the outdoors. He taught me to enjoy
a cold morning's sunrise, the sound of ducks waking-up in the morning, the
sight of Canada geese pitching into a field just before sunset, and to cherish
the memory of a doe bringing her fawn out to feed on a snowy November morning.
He taught me to obey the game laws,
play by the rules and never, ever take more than the limit. He taught me to
carefully choose my shot and to ensure a clean harvest. In other words, he
taught me to be an ethical hunter.
He also taught me that hunting is an
integral part of who we are as American citizens, and that hunting is an
important part of both our history and our heritage. He taught me about
subsistence hunting and told stories of his life as a farm boy, growing up as a
teen on the Eastern Shore of Maryland during the Depression years.
And he told me stories from his youth when market hunters
still prowled the Chesapeake Bay in their punt gun skiffs in search of rafts of
ducks to be sold in the markets in Baltimore. He used those stories to drive
home his lessons on ethical hunting, telling me he understood the hard-scrabble
economic factors that drove the market hunters but was appalled by the
decimation of those once great flocks of birds.
But at the base of my father's love of hunting and his love
of the outdoors that he shared with me were the kindred concepts and feelings
of freedom and responsibility engendered by those experiences. He firmly
believed in American freedom and passed that belief on to me.
The Right
to Hunt
While the ability to enter the property of another to
hunt is a privilege rather than a right, my father believed, and I believe,
that Americans do have and should have the right to hunt.
I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically
support the efforts of NRA-ILA to pass constitutional amendments at the state
level guaranteeing the right to hunt, including our own Senate Bill 303
introduced by Senator Wilson in the 152nd Delaware General Assembly.
Likewise, I wholeheartedly and
enthusiastically support NRA-ILA's efforts to ensure access to public lands for
hunting and ILA's initiatives designed to encourage private landowners to open
their lands to the public for hunting.
And I applaud and support NRA-ILA in
getting H.R. 615, the Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act, and H.R.
764, the Trust the Science Act, through the U.S. House of Representatives and
into the Senate.
Here in Delaware, I wrote and helped
to pass bills allowing Sunday Hunting, Handgun Hunting, and Pistol Caliber
Rifle Hunting. I also drafted a bill
that would have required all Delaware high schools to offer Hunter Education
classes as an elective mush the same as they already offer Driver Education
classes. Unfortunately that bill was "dead on arrival", killed in its infancy
by the Democrat majority of both houses of the Delaware General Assembly.(Please see 2A Grassroots Activist Page for more
details).
Hunting
as a Family
Ingrid and I have frequently hunted together both here in the
United States and in Scotland, Argentina, South Africa and Zambia. We have
found that hunting together brings us closer in spirit and makes our marriage
of fifty (50) years that much stronger.
We both believe in eating what we harvest and have found that
one of the best parts of the adventure is trying new dishes made with the game
we have harvested.
Every year for many years, Ingrid and I celebrated our wedding anniversary together with an end-of-season mixed
bag released-bird hunt of quail, chukar, and pheasant.
Our Duty
It is our duty to protect our hunting traditions,
history and heritage. It is our duty to educate young hunters and to bring
young hunters into the fold.
NRA has done that. It is our duty to see that NRA continues
to be a leader in this arena.