"Go afield with a good attitude, with respect for the wildlife you hunt and for the forest and fields of which you walk. Immerse yourself in the outdoor experience. It will cleanse your soul and make you a better person".- Fred Bear
-Sometime after 6 am, I’m not sure. I don’t want to check my
phone to see, because I really don’t care. It’s cold, damn cold. I awoke in the
cabin at 4:30 am and began the process of getting to the top of the mountain.
The tree stand was waiting for me, frozen, coated in ice like everything else
in the woods. I’m strapped in and sitting, watching, waiting. The sun is trying
to make its way over another ridge, miles from my perch. Hmmm, must be closer
to 7am. When emerging light becomes more than just a backdrop and starts to
illuminate the woods I begin to feel more relaxed and yet more tense at the
same time. Relaxed because this is my element, tense because my senses are
heightened; the slightest motion or sound commands my attention. It could be any
moment now. A few minutes pass and the overcast challenged sun is reinforced by
the snow on the ground. I ask myself, “could I see well enough to make the
shot…at this moment?” Then a muffled blast reaches my ear from somewhere in the
distance. It doesn’t always take long to hear that first shot. Someone else
walks into the woods and spooks a bedded deer, which ran 100 yards, where a
blaze orange figure awaited it, maybe even expected it. Its rifle season in
Pennsylvania and the woods are alive.
What makes a person hunt?
Ask hunters, why do you do it? You’ll most like hear many
versions of the same few answers; for food, for the experience, for constructive
use of my time. Some, and I believe especially those who have hunted their
entire life as a family tradition, might say “if I have to explain it, you
wouldn’t understand.” You might, and I sincerely hope not, find someone so bold
as to say they do it only for the “trophy.”
If you don’t hunt, or know anyone who does, chances are your
only exposure to this activity is on TV. I’ve probably made this point before,
but the TV hunting personalities (they’re not all created equal), are not
always the best representation of hunting. Just ask yourself the question, “how
does this person get to be a paid TV hunter?” Well, it is endorsements. You see
it all the time if you’re watching close enough. The earlier footage of their
careers was more about the method, the game, the experience, and the simple
truth; you don’t always get your quarry. Then due to quite a bit of marketing
effort, the footage catches the attention of manufacturers who think that hunter
might be a good representative for their brand. Here comes the money…and the
pressure to produce. Would YOU want to pay someone to endorse YOUR product if
THEY couldn’t get the desired results??? No way. Instead of real hunting the
now “professional hunter” will take to high fenced ranches and private properties
with feeders. All they need to do is show up and wait for the buck they paid
for, a gargantuan beast of epic whitetail legends that grew so big because he
was fed nutrients he couldn’t have obtained on his own in the wild. The magic
of editing makes it glamorous….maybe even exciting. But it’s not realistic, and
to me, it’s not hunting. And if it is, it is not very sporting.
But as usual, I digress.
The motivation to hunt is a personal one. Perhaps like religious
or political views. What we can clearly understand is that 5% of the U.S. population
is hunters. This is not much, and unfortunately on the decline. We as a society
have gotten away from this activity, and yes, that is a bad thing.
I recently read an amazing book by Allen Morris Jones titled
‘A Quiet Place of Violence; Hunting and Ethics in the Missouri River Breaks.’ With only a mere 5% of America hunting, that
leaves a lot of others. The majority are neutral to hunting, while a sizable
portion is anti-hunting. The fight to preserve the tradition and opportunity
for future hunters is underway. Jones discusses ethics in his work because the
anti-hunting argument is predicated largely on the idea that they are on the
moral high ground. Ethics can be debated, what cannot be debated is the big
picture. This is where Jones masterfully introduces readers to what so many
have so easily forgotten, the cycle of life.
If you asked me personally, why Tom, do you hunt? In the
past I would have said, “To connect with nature.” After reading AQPV I found a
better way of expressing it, and that is, ‘To Participate in Nature.’ Jones
begins his book by sharing with us what we all learned in grade school, the
life cycle. Small organisms and plants grow, animals eat the plants, predators
eat those animals, and predators die, returning to the earth and contributing
to organic and plant growth. Scientific fact points out, and so does Jones,
that for each and every step to occur, death must occur. In fact, the only
thing that ensures the cycle of life continues….is death.
Steven Rinella, an accomplished outdoor author, hunter, and
TV personality once made the point that given the entire history of modern man,
a non-hunting lifestyle is still experimental. I agree, how can we so easily
dismiss thousands upon thousands of years of food acquisition through hunting,
when our “grocer” system has existed for what, a few hundred years? On a
similar note it is accepted that man being a top level predator was a catalyst
to our dominion and subsequent evolution over other species. If you’ve ever
read the book ‘Ishmael’ by Daniel Quinn, and I suggest you do, you will read
that from an anthropological point of view mankind’s first mistake was putting
food under lock and key, instead of continuing working together for food as a
community, through hunting and gathering. The way I see it, we stepped out of
our natural role as predators, started to bend Mother Nature to our own will,
by domesticating animals and cultivating our own food, society was formed and
we shot ourselves in the foot.
In his own way Jones defends that point stating that complexities
brought on by society, and technology have displaced us from nature, it
alienates us from the “process” as he calls it. He further shows us the
difference between hunters and those who are just nature enthusiasts. He uses
an example of a hiker. For someone who has a passion for walking through the
woods or mountains, the scenery is merely an object to be enjoyed and observed,
whereas the hunter participates in the process of nature. The hiker eventually goes home,
he or she may recall that deer they saw and say, “what a pretty animal.” The
hunter seeks to understand the deer, its habits, and its instincts; and
competes against it with their own instincts. They don’t see the deer as a
pretty ornament, but for what it truly is, a living, breathing, thinking source
of nourishment. Together, with that deer, the hunter becomes involved in a
relationship, as Jones puts it, “bigger than them and the deer combined.”
AQPV goes much deeper on many aspects of hunting including
sporting aspects of hunting, archery vs rifle hunting, religion, and philosophy. Who knew 5% of our
population could tap into something so deep, something so vital to the entirety
of humanity and our place in this world?
I’d like to think somewhere in every hunter is that carnal
instinct to return to the process that made us. That whatever their response to
our ‘Why Hunt?’ question, it comes from somewhere deep inside. I’d like to think one day
anti-hunters will realize hunters are connecting to something deeper than they can
understand. Also that it is hunters who protect the lands and the animals
through conservation. We are stewards of the land and water. If it wasn’t for us sportsmen,
certain activist groups would have nothing to try and "save," lest they want to
switch their cause to housing developments and urban sprawl.
Why do we hunt? I didn’t answer that question, never meant
to. I just wanted to give readers a little fruit for thought, and get the ball rolling.
–It’s got to be close to 9:30 am. I am cold but have
resolved to sit and wait, I’m confident in my location. A strange noise at the
top of the ridge, brush moves, four doe run out. Damn, they’re on the move. What
to do? A good quarterback doesn’t throw to the receiver, he throws to where the
receiver is about to be. I set the sight between two limbs of a forked tree
further down the hill, where I think the doe will pass by. The first doe trots behind it; I "bark" for attention, the
deer stops for a split second…the same split second that I squeeze the trigger.
Now the real work begins…
