To the Editor:

I write this letter as I am listening to the sound of gunshots. It is hunting season and yes we go through this ritual of sporadic gunfire every fall.

I live in a beautiful semi-rural area just outside of the village of Potsdam, really about four miles from the center of the village. Driving out this way does have a countryside look and feel about it because there are woods and fields, a pasture or two with cows and many homes, some old, some more recent and some brand new. This describes the landscape of many locations in what we call the North Country.

We have lived in our home since 2000. In this time we have been joined by four new homes on our road alone and two more just south of us. We seem to be living in a growing community. Most people around here have at least five acres. Some have more land but we all border our neighbors. Our properties flow together from our backyards.

The animals that have lived here before we all moved in have been pushed into smaller and smaller wild spaces and some have completely disappeared from the area. The bobcats for sure and fishers probably since I don't see their tracks anymore when I hike my property. But we all do have deer roaming across our land.

Because there are now many families in my small neck of what used to be the wild woods, hunting around here, even though it appears like good ground for the sport, is becoming even more risky. No one goes around from door-to-door to tell neighbors not to go out into their woods on any given day because there will be hunters. Like this morning, there is the sudden sound of a gunshot, or two or three ringing throughout the land. The 500-foot minimum for a shooting range between the shooter and a house, a barn or even a school is easily crossed from one property to the next. The sense of forest cover is deceptively false. Homeowners have a right to be out on their property, any part of their property without the fear of being accidently shot.

The truth is, there are too many people to safely hunt around so many homes. Like the animals being pushed out, so too is the man or woman who truly enjoys hunting and eating the wild game they catch. This primordial and annual occupation has its place in our human makeup and is not to be discredited. Better to eat an animal which has lived free and for which the consumer has had to come to terms in dealing with the life and death struggle than to come home with a sanitized package of meat from the grocery store where the loss of life is never a consideration when eating the stew meat.

Nevertheless, facing the reality that it is becoming more of a gamble to hunt in the old areas as homes continue to be built and the population grows has to be a consideration where hunting is allowed. It simply is not safe to assume there is no one out walking or working on their wooded land. Hopefully there will be enough open, uninhabited land where people can continue to hunt and provide good food for themselves without endangering innocent bystanders. But just avoiding the conversation about the increase in human population, the loss of wild areas and the continued acceptance of hunting near homes is not the way to proceed into the changing future.

Patricia Hart

Potsdam