It’s been many moons since there has been a blazing display of Autumn around here.

If you put your finger on a map of Wisconsin, dead center, it will poke a town named Mosinee, where my Dad was raised. When I was 10, we moved there from Lafayette.

Deer hunting isn’t a sport there, it’s grocery shopping. Boys age 12 and above were excused from school the week before Thanksgiving to hunt.

My brother, dad, uncle, cousins, friends and I made a hunting party of 12. We’d eat breakfast before dawn, load-up and head out; conducting organized ambushes with every boy given specific responsibilities, and trusted to carry a loaded rifle safely among the group. Mine was a surplus British Army .303 Enfield.

At lunch, we’d head back, wash down a bowl of chili with a beer, take a nip of blackberry brandy to warm the heart, and head back out. At 4:30, we’d hang the venison, clean guns, chow-down, and go barhopping; smoking, drinking, and shooting pool.

35 years ago, the Wisconsin drinking age was 18. Children were allowed in bars, and if their parents bought them alcohol, it was legal for them to drink. In my family, if you were old enough to hunt, you were old enough to hoist.

It was a rite of passage. When you accepted adult responsibilities, adult privileges accompanied them. Rugged masculinity was valued and inculcated.

But that was a different world.

Our current, feminized, mollycoddling world, driven by mass paranoia, is dedicated to the proposition that even adults can’t handle adult privileges. Today’s boys are no less responsible, capable, or masculine than my generation; they’re just not afforded the honor of being allowed to prove it.

Doing so, in what used to be the annual hunt, was once my favorite Fall tradition.

Mike VanOuse

Lafayette