A whole new tourism idea for Vermont:

By Manfried Rieder Starhemberg

Folks, I do not eat game because it tastes gamy, my idea of the "wild outdoors" is a night at a Howard Johnson's and I certainly would never hurt Bambi. But - living in northern Vermont I have to recognize that I am surrounded by seasonal hunters and gatherers and while in the rest of the country they call the gatherers "pickers" and the hunters are a two week a year nuisance, well, Vermonters live and breathe the out of doors. And not just for the few days of the hunting season neither - they gather around the fire or the table at the pub and tell never ending hunting stories from New years after the tree has been de-needled until the beginning of the annual hunt. If they don't talk about it, they buy guns, swap guns, long to go to gun shows, some spend weeks of oiling and cleaning the arsenal, others have their own loading equipment and brass polishing gizmo. The rest of them play with their knifes, find new different looking suspenders, add to the collection of loud flannel shirts and polish their boots.Few forget to send in the annual NRA membership dues. Thankfully, I have my own camouflage, from proper hat to checkered shirt so that I am able to sneak through town, buy my groceries and make it home safely as I try to blend in with the locals. Driving a mean old green 4-wheel drive Range rover with the appropriate amount of dents, rust and the big lights in front also helps.

See anyone?

So, having fallen in love with Vermont I feel that I should contribute to the general welfare of the state and I propose a whole new tourism concept; The "Deer hunter for a Day" concept which should be easily marketable to all those gray and desperately sullen millionaire layers, dentists, stock brokers currently not in jail and every current or former politician that has grown too old to engage in the pursuit of sex.

I feel that my beloved Newport would make a fine testing site for the Flannel and Suspender experience. There is plenty of room downtown to rent a cheap store front locale and staff it with a wholesome Vermont country girl in appropriate attire which could be modeled after any episode of the Little House on the Prairie. Then we decorate the outside with a minimum of two big wooden wagon wheels and one large sleigh or three or four smaller toboggans. A pair or two of old wooden skies (crossed of course) will have to be over the door and the regulation broken-down snowshoes can easily be found at the next church bazaar.

Inside we need an old wooden desk with a lot of burn marks and rings made by beer or coffee mugs. A large uncomfortable bench and a few unstable kitchen chairs will round up the furnishings. This we call the Tourist Hunting Blind.

Now we are almost in business. In Vermont tradition we organizers of this new venue will all call for a meeting at Jasper's in downtown Newport City to plan strategy. My plan is simple. We all donate our old hunting clothes the goodwill people would not take and label them by size. They cannot be cleaned under any circumstances. Next we need some non-functional guns, old shotguns with rusted up mechanisms would be preferred but we can certainly take the noise making stuff out of that old 22 and it would serve very well.All this must be enshrined in a gun cabinet. Yes, aunt Gwendolyn's unused jam cupboard would do nicely. Out of courtesy to our expected guests I would actually suggest we buy a few pair of black rubber boots. This mainly so as not to soil the floors of our tourist transport vehicles. Those will need some contemplation. Arguably it would be best if they had at least some mechanical functionality so it might be best to take the snowplow off the old rusted up GMC on the left rear of the barn. You see where I am getting at here; We need authentic hunting vehicles. They cannot start every time, this would take some of the suspense right out of it. The old trucks must also be authentically rusty and muddy because they will be the backdrop of many a cherished photo our guests will hand down for generations to come.

Now that we have the infrastructure well in hand we have to plan excursions for our guests. Most of those who will participate have favorite hunting grounds and since we will do everything but hunt, it should be easy to establish a fire pit, a cooler full of beer and blackberry brandy or even Vermont Applejack. What to grill on the fire will be left to the imagination of the individual tour guide and his sense of humor.

The way I figure it is, when our guests arrive, having been lured up here by tasteful advertisements in the New Yorker, we let them put on the hunting clothes, buy them breakfast at the nearest diner and drag them into the woods for a day of "The authentic Vermont country experience". It will be perfectly o.k. if our guides smoke, chew tobacco or use genuine country language. For those of them who might have forgot of how she is spoke there will be refresher courses after the first-aid training session. 

Lodgings for our visitors should ideally also be provided by the guides and their family if they own a farm, old building way back in the countryside, preferably with a functioning outhouse or know how to trespass at an unused campsite. If it becomes a huge success, we will have the means to buy some old farm houses for just that purpose and dilapidated them until they are suitable rustic.

Well, this is the general outline. I figure we could charge about $ 600.-/day of which half will go to the guide because he is providing transportation and lodging. The other half will keep our office and advertising paid and the authentic Vermont farm woman office manager will get a good salary as well. I assume that the state of Vermont will also give us some money to offset the cost of advertising and I expect a huge tax break since we are advocating Eco-tourism at its finest with no intrusive hotels, water  parks, disco pubs or polluting marina facilities to build and sustain.

Green tourism in the green mountains. All we are missing is that big plywood moose with the hole in the face where people can stick their head into to have their picture taken when they are all garbed out as deerstalkers with their ancient shotguns poised and ready.