Student escapes to woods to hunt on late-fall days

For me, Saturdays consist of Ohio State Buckeyes games, naps, Bobcat games, more naps, a party on Mill Street and then sleep.

For my roommate, it's up before dawn, breakfast, a ride on his four-wheeler, climbing up a tree and waiting.

He is a hunter.

Cody Bower, a civil engineering major from Logan, has been my roommate for two years and soon to be three. He is a pretty simple guy. He loves his family, football, hamburgers, Kenny Chesney and The Great Outdoors. So naturally he is a hunter and deer are his target.

For the last four weeks Bower has been in his tree stand stalking a 10-point buck on his dad's farmland. Each week he comes back empty-handed (he did shoot a doe that we made into steaks for dinner), but each week he heads back out to try again.

"To me, hunting is a chance to get away," Bower said. "I always come back from hunting less tense. It's something about waking up with the woods in the morning and putting it to bed at night that keeps me sane."

Bower was 10 years old when he shot his first deer. It was muzzleloader season, and he and his dad were hidden behind a pile of brush. Four mature deer had wandered into the field they were patrolling and it was time to shoot. Bower was to fire at the largest of the four while his dad was going to take the second biggest.

Bower pulled the trigger with his dad standing right above him and dropped the deer with one shot. He jumped for joy and knocked his dad's gun into the air, firing it into a tree branch. It was a scary mistake, but Bower had shot his first deer and now he was hooked on that adrenaline rush.

"First you have to decide if you want that deer, if it's old enough and mature enough," Bower said. "You can hear your heart beating in your ears and your adrenaline starts pumping. Then I have to control the adrenaline, take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger."

Hunting has been a tradition in the Bower house for as long as Bower can remember. They hunt the deer together, process the deer into steaks, burgers and jerky together, and eat it together. There is even the Bower tradition where after you shoot your first animal, blood from it is wiped underneath your eyes as a symbol of respect for Mother Nature just as the Native Americans did with war paint.

"It's a sport, but it's more of a way of life," Bower said. "It's time to spend with friends and family. There is a respect for Mother Nature. I never leave one to lay; there is always a use for it."

This is why Bower gets upset when PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) publishes articles on its Web site claiming, "Why Sport Hunting is Cruel and Unnecessary." PETA's main point concerning hunting is that about half of animals that are shot with a crossbow are merely wounded and not killed, and that in fact is cruel.

"Every year there is more and more of them," Bower said. "And each year there are fewer hunters and more deer. That's what PETA people don't realize; we try and control their populations because there aren't enough natural predators to control it themselves."

Bower doesn't plan on ever eliminating hunting from his way of life. In fact, he wants to pass on the tradition to as many people as he can. He said that once he has children of his own, he will teach them to hunt as early as age 5 or 6.

Maybe I will join him once and see how relaxing it actually is, but the Buckeyes and Bobcats better be on a bye weekend and I better have slept for days before hand.

No animals were hurt in the writing of this column.