When all is said and done after the hunting super bowl these coming days, let's remember that the outdoor sportsmen and women are our front line of defense on the environment and natural habitats. Yes, hunters and fishermen/women have a invested interest in keeping the surrounding natural habitats healthy and clean. Polluted waters and over developed land use is not conducive to outdoor sporting and in the end, this concern benefits us all. We learned this early on when we seeded some of our acerage to comply with the land conservation program we were involved with here on the farm. Most of the native seed for forbes and grasses came from an organization called Wings Over Wisconsin. This organization's main focus is to get large land owners to plant some of their tillable acres to native prairie plant species to encourage the growth of the wild fowl population for hunting. In addition, native plant species are reestablished (most of them lost to agriculture), soil heath is restored and the ground water table can be purified.

Maybe a different view can be had this year about the super-hype of the hunting season, the blur of blaze orange, and the ubiquitous " welcome hunters" signs seen at every country tavern.