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Autumn Brings Culture Shock for ‘Rurbanites’

By Patrick DurkinOctober 14, 2022

Back when people read newspapers and turned with interest to the “Letters to the Editor” page, you knew to watch each fall for complaints from newly arrived “rurbanites” who were shocked to find bowhunters perched in nearby woodlots.

The term “rurbanite” was coined around 1950 to describe folks who live in the country but work in a nearby city. As the writer Frank Atwood wrote in the Hartford Courant that year: “If you’re a farmer in any Connecticut community, chances are your next-door neighbor is a ‘rurbanite.’ He lives in the country. He may call his home a ‘farm,’ but he gets most of his income selling insurance, or working as a toolmaker in a brass factory, or teaching school or working on the road for the state highway department.”

Autumn Brings Culture Shock For 'rurbanites'
Backyard deer are common sights in “rurban” settings across the United States.

These days, of course, many rurbanites work from home and seldom commute to an office building in a nearby city. Heck, their employer’s office might be a thousand miles away, and they chose their home for its proximity to abundant water, and its distance from hurricanes and forest fires.

 Whatever a rurbanite’s reason for moving, these gentle, civilized folks believe moving to “the country” would mean peaceful sunrises and tranquil sunsets on the porch. And then autumn arrives, and they hear waterfowlers’ shotgun blasts echoing across nearby riverbottoms, and they see camo-clad bowhunters parking trucks in nearby driveways or beside field-edge gates.

Oh, the horror, right? The rurbanites suddenly realize their neighbors, and their neighbors’ friends and families, are hunters. Geez, you think you know somebody and then …

The rurbanites are scared and dumbfounded. Logic might tell them the odds of being struck by a wayward arrow or shotgun pellet is far less than crashing their SUV into a deer or farm tractor. Still, their thoughts ricochet elsewhere.

They spin ever-deeper worries, wondering why we haven’t evolved further as a society. How ironic, they think, that the more they detest guns, distrust hunters, scorn compound bows, and question meat eating, the more they’re forced to live among those who think hunting and meat consumption are as natural as sunrise, the fall equinox and migrating geese.

Autumn Brings Culture Shock For 'rurbanites'
Many newly rurban neighbors soon learn that backyard deer bring challenges they never expected.

Do the new arrivals try to unravel the irony, mesh with their new settings, and appreciate the new world around them? Do they consider that their newly built house killed and now prevents the creation of far more wild things than a hunter or trapper could kill in a lifetime?

Do they wonder if they’ve confused “evolving” with “denying.”

Probably not. Rurban vegetarians, of course, probably have the most ground to cover, especially if their chosen lifestyle is more about philosophical thoughts than the healthful choices. They’ve out-thought themselves into believing their lifestyle is somewhere above the rest of us.

Somehow they’ve overlooked the fact that the human mouth, eyes and digestive system are those of an omnivore, not herbivore. Yes, it makes some folks squeamish, but our bodily needs and functions require us to eat meat and plants alike.

Chemical engineering might let us replace some meat-obtained protein with store-bought supplements, but there’s the rub some people ignore. A vegetarian lifestyle requires affluence. There’s no vegetarians in soup lines, after all.

 But we do find increasingly more vegetarians in rural areas and suburbia’s edges. And with them often comes a smugness that they’re making life better for us, their simple neighbors; that we’re all bettered by the rurbanites’ growing presence and urban attitudes. They might not say it, but they’re thinking they can help their neighbors evolve.

Meanwhile, their neighbors probably wish the rurbanites would return to the city whence they came, build more high-rise condominiums, and live in awe of chirping crickets and pooping pigeons.

That’s spite talking, however, and it’s not realistic. With each day, rural landscapes and the value systems of their longtime residents are steadily being cleared, built upon, and converted into lawns by those coveting private chunks of nature.

Wildlife will not benefit from more basements, bigger homes, and driveways for spotless trucks that never leave the pavement. And yet hunters will increasingly be asked to justify their activities to those who see more utility in buying vitamins than in stalking deer.

Autumn Brings Culture Shock For 'rurbanites'
New opportunities are now in place for Arkansas bowhunters to help reduce overcrowding of deer in local communities.

Sadly, there’s little or no dialogue between these sides. Neither likes listening to the other, so convinced are we of our convictions. One side, however, still has science, reality and natural history in its corner.

As you encounter new rurbanites or reunite with more established transplants, don’t tell them to go eat tofu. You probably aren’t what they expected to find, so don’t confirm their worst fears. Stay patient, keep hunting, and be neighborly. Make them feel welcome in their new neighborhood, and assure them you’re not going anywhere.

Eventually the reasonable folks among rural immigrants will view hunters as a traditional part of their newfound homes. It might not happen overnight, and it might not be universal, but it will prove the natural way of the rurban world.

Patrick Durkin
President at Wisconsin Outdoor Communicators Association
Patrick Durkin is a lifelong bowhunter and full-time freelance outdoor writer/editor who lives in Waupaca, Wisconsin. He has covered hunting, fishing and outdoor issues since 1983. His work appears regularly in national hunting publications, and his weekly outdoors column has appeared regularly in over 20 Wisconsin newspapers since 1984.
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