All Good Things Must Come To An End

   To my dismay, I recently lost the permission to use firearms on what have been my "stomping grounds" ever since I took my first deer 8 years ago... I have grown up hunting on a few properties that border one another (including mine), they aren't very big, all 5-20 acre pieces of land, but altogether add up to around 100 acres. After the arrival of new neighbors from Boston two years ago, all of these properties have slowly been degraded to "archery only" areas. This isn't because I have been putting anyone in danger, it is simply because these new neighbors don't the slightest idea about guns in general, and voice their opinions to my other neighbors that let me hunt, and eventually have managed to get their way.
    Don't get me wrong, I love to bow hunt, but I can't exactly hunt geese, rabbits, squirrels, or anything that isn't normally hunted with archery equipment without things getting really expensive really quickly, not to mention the fact that it is 10 times harder to do it with a bow. And trying to hunt deer in rifle season is not like hunting them in bow season, this time of year the deer spook from the slightest things, and aren't forgiving at all. We used to have a really fun deer drive that my two younger brothers and I would do in the evenings, where two of us would push a whole bunch of deer by the other brother, and after one or two were down, we would work together to field dress and get them back to the house. That is definitely one of many traditions we had that will no longer be possible because of the archery only policy. So even though there is the "why can't you just do it with a bow?" point of view, many things will never be the same because of this.
    I wish I could sit down to talk with my neighbors and explain to them that they don't need to be afraid to be in the woods, but that simply won't happen, we have talked to them many times to try to explain what we do, and they honestly don't have a clue. It sure is sad to watch everything wither away like this, because even though it's "only guns" being revoked now, it started out as "just high-powered rifles", so who knows how long I will actually be able to hunt here. But I'm trying to forget about it, I will have my driver's license by next season, so hopefully I can hunt some other places and not worry about this mess. I have been hunting for 8 years here, and have made countless memories with family and friends, or even just by myself, that continue to stick in my mind like they happened yesterday, but all of a sudden, even though I'm still here, the land is still here, and the game is still here, the opportunity is not.