Op-Ed: Say goodbye to hunting rights

By Stephen Griffin

As I have mentioned on occasion in my columns, I dearly love to go hunting. I have rarely been happier than the 30 years of spending that week following Thanksgiving living in a tent and sleeping on the ground with my dad in our Gallia County deer camp.

We arrived home after the last day of the season and much to my mother's chagrin, all grubby and smelly, wearing the dirtiest clothes imaginable, but smiling like a Cheshire cat. While I have missed it terribly since Pop's passing eight years ago, I firmly believe that those days are in great danger of vanishing forever - not only for me, but for all of you as well.

When Ohio's deer season opens on Dec. 1, I hope to be afield somewhere here in Highland County in an attempt to put some of nature's finest venison in my freezer for the winter. I plan to savor every sight, every sound and every smell of that whitetail hunt because after Barack Obama is sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2009, as I fully expect him to be, his administration will sound the death knell for all hunting and gun ownership by the end of his first term.

...I am not attempting to frighten you, just prepare you for what is going to transpire.

Click here to read the entire op-ed in the Hillsboro Times-Gazette.