Waste Not or Hunt Not

It is no big secret that I grew up hunting, practically every male in my family did. Duck hunting was the vast majority of it, and it was an annual reunion of guys in my family from all across the country, and it was more about the comradery and practical jokes, and occasionally we would get a duck, and we used the duck, nearly all of it. The feathers were used to hand tie fishing flies for trout fishing in the spring in the mountains....
We were brought up to respect nature, and to take ONLY what we would use, hunting was not for trophies to stick on a wall, and I admit, growing up there were times when hunting actually provided the meat for some members of our extended family that would otherwise go with out.
A few years back I traded in my shotgun for a Nikon, and I still duck hunt, I still dress in head to toe on occasion in camouflage, and trek through slushy marshes in 15 degree weather in the hopes of getting one good shot... Only now with a camera...
Which is why I am sickened by the behavior of a particular neighbor of mine, and I had taken pictures to post, be declined to do so.
For the Second year in a row, this "hunter" has taken a deer. (in this case the buck is so small it is more like a German Shepard with some twigs in its head) And for the second year in a row, this majestic, and beautiful creature has been laying in their front yard for 3 days now. Cut open and gutted, it spent two days draped across a picnic table with its legs stretched towards the heavens stiff as a board with its tongue dangling out the side of its mouth, and its fur drenched with matted blood from what is obviously a poor Field dressing job.
Last year, a doe, a deer, a female deer (could not resist singing the song in my head) layed out in the front yard for weeks partially covered with a ragged blue tarp, which did nothing to combat the smell of rotting flesh.
Aside from the sight of a dead, deer laying on a picnic table, abdomen butchered open, laying out for 3 days (and probably many more days to come), and the smell that goes along with it after it had been hung from a tree by hooks through its back legs, and the throat slit so all the blood can drain out it into the yard, the fact this guy has no intentions of using any of the meat (which went bad shortly after not being properly butchered the day it was taken) all he is interested in is placing another deer head on the walls of his house which are all ready covered in dozens of deer, opossum, racoons, coyote, ground hogs, fox, beaver, and a chicken (yes a taxidermy chicken graces the wall of the living room).
This wanton destruction of a life, for no reason at all outside of a cheaply and poorly done trophy, is the paramount of disgusting.
I always felt bad when I took a duck, or the occasional squirrel, but I used as much as possible of the animal, wasting very very little. What could not be consumed or reused was generally used to fertilize garden plots. (nothing makes 'maters grow better than burying left overs from cleaning fresh fish below where you will be planting the next spring, at least until the mercury levels got to high in our lakes and rivers)
My lovely wife, who had all ready had enough off seeing this poor deer by Saturday afternoon had went ahead and called the health department this morning, and was actually laughed at. Of course, the health inspectors will probably not be laughing too much when the come out next week and have to deal with the stench associated with 160 pounds of rotting meat. But if one were to ask the mighty hunter, the rotting process makes it easier to get the skin off of it so he can stuff the head and put it on his wall. Of course, the other 155 pounds of bone, skin, fur, meat will be tossed into his city garbage can after being chopped up with an ax so it can all fit in the can..