COMMENTARY: THE JOYS OF HUNTING ON PUBLIC PROPERTY.

Byline: Jim Matthews Special to the Daily News

It has become an Independence Day ritual for me to get up before first light, take a .22-caliber rimfire rifle and a handful of ammunition and go hunting for cottontail rabbits.

I can't help but reflect on the importance of this act.

Hunting is approached with a certain reverence and ritual. But the fact that California's first hunting season of the year for mammals and furbearers opens July 1 - in time to celebrate our nation's birthday - is something that has taken on a greater importance because it embodies so much of what makes this country strong.

I will be hunting game that by law is owned by all of us on public land - in the San Bernardino National Forest, not far from my home. Our freedoms still intact, we have privileges my ancestors from England and Germany did not share. I have a stake in the ownership of this country, both in the ability to vote freely in selecting our leadership and to call these public lands and the wildlife therein my own. These are things that are still novel concepts in much of the world.

It is usually just starting to transition from total darkness to that first hint of sunlight when I carry the .22 out to my truck and start the engine. I'll think of how my grandfather would have been considered a poacher had he hunted rabbits, stealing out on the moors of an English estate to pot a family dinner.

It was his ancestors who first settled on these shores and rebelled against oppressive government and set pen to parchment in defining a new form of government. Wildlife and most land are privately owned throughout Europe; the American concept that wildlife is publicly owned and that hunting is a right of every man is radical in much of the developed world.

Each year I spend too much time musing about these things while I'm still-hunting along the brushy hillsides for rabbits. I seldom get many shots off, even though there is an abundance of game.

Inevitably I'll start thinking about a barbecue slated for later in the day and begin focusing on the task at hand. The hunter's blood flowing through my veins takes over for a while, and I'm absorbed in the process that has shaped mankind well before there were governments. I hunt with my eyes and ears, even sniffing the air, and my mind is clear and attentive.

I'll usually position myself above an intersection of trails and sit down with the binoculars and start looking for rabbits like I would for deer.

The goal is usually three rabbits, though the limit is five. But two will probably be enough; I will stop at that number and be back home before 7 a.m. There, I will piece out the carcasses and put them in marinade.

Later that afternoon - the neighborhood alive with family and friends and laughing children - I will stand over the grill, smelling the fresh meat, and look at the American flags hanging on the houses and smile.