Photo by Ron Sinfelt

It hadn't quite reached mob-scene level, but the crowd was less than happy. They'd assembled at the invitation of the state's wildlife biologists to discuss deer management in general and deer hunting regulations specifically. Typically, those who were happy about the status quo had stayed home. Most of those who'd come had an axe to grind.

After the introductions, the deer specialist started giving his presentation. Or he tried to, anyway. Members of the grouchy crowd kept interrupting, particularly one obnoxious, red-faced fellow wearing a dirty John Deere cap who seemed particularly intent on being heard. For 30 minutes, he interrupted and/or contradicted everything the young deer biologist had to say. Finally, the wildlife guy got a bellyful of it, and the next time the guy butted in, the biologist took a deep breath and let him have it.

"Sonny, I've been hunting deer since before you were born," the guy in the John Deere cap started saying. "I've got 45 years of experience in the deer woods, and -- "

"No, sir, you don't," the biologist said loudly and forcefully, shutting the heckler up and drowning him out at the same time. "What you have is one year of experience 45 times, and there's a hell of a lot of difference."

That's a fairly common story among wildlife management professionals. Having hung around and worked around wildlife biologists most of my life, I've heard it a dozen times in various forms all over the country. Sometimes it'll be turkeys, sometimes waterfowl, sometimes deer. Every once in a while it'll be something like pheasants or elk. But whatever the species mentioned in the tale, the punch line is always the same, give or take a few years of experience on the part of the guy doing the heckling.

That story is so popular because it rings so true -- I have no doubt that it actually happened somewhere -- and as it demonstrates one of the major problems wildlife managers face today, word got around. Today it's been adopted and adapted by wildlifers all over the country, probably all over the world. And just because it didn't happen personally to the wildlife biologists who are now telling it doesn't make it any less true. The story has achieved the status of urban legend (although in this case the term "urban" is probably inappropriate).

If you've ever been to one of these public wildlife meetings, you know how confrontational they can sometimes be. It seems like the red-faced guy in the John Deere cap is present at every one. Sometimes he's drunk, but usually he's just mad.

To be fair, his anger is sometimes justified. And justified or not, it's almost always understandable. Hunters are passionate about hunting, and because most of us eventually learn enough about the tricks of the hunt to actually start being fairly successful, we get a wrong idea: We start believing that because we're pretty good hunters, we're also pretty good deer biologists. And often we disagree with the ideas and the methods of the professional wildlifers in our neck of the woods.

A veteran biologist friend of mine puts it this way: "Anybody who's ever killed three gray squirrels in the same morning thinks he's a wildlife biologist." But the thing is, we're not. The majority of hunters, whether we specialize in deer, ducks, turkey, or small game, will have more in common with the guy in the John Deere cap than with the professional wildlife biologist. You may have hunted deer 45 years, and you may have enough big deer racks to cover the side of a barn. You may be able to look at a chunk of real estate and accurately pick out the best deer travel ways. But none of that makes you a good deer biologist.