An Opening Day Series, Part 1: Why Consider Hunting?
I didn’t grow up in a hunting household. But I did grow up appreciating the woodlands.
[Content warning—this essay is about hunting. It isn’t graphic, but it does reflect on a rightfully sensitive subject.]
My grandparent’s West Michigan forest was a never-ending source of fun. We’d make days of scaling upturned roots and caverns of windthrow, losing shoes in the insatiable muck, wading the creek in search of the ends, and peering for salamanders under just about anything. Of all the enticements, deer encounters meant most to me, even as I grew older. To stumble across one and for it to sense your presence, to lock eyes — stillness and connection, respect, empathy, and compassion all bundled into one intense but soft moment, only interrupted by the brief flick of its tail. And then for the doe or the buck or the fawn, whatever it was that instance, to stay; that seemed like a pinnacle, an apex. These weren’t brazen deer, used to the tourist’s hand. I liked to think that there was an element of trust when they stayed put. Communion. So, how did I move from there to having a venison-freezer in the basement? Did I abandon standing in wonder and care to pursue something more violent?
I didn’t grow up in a hunting household, but I did grow up in a household attuned to virtue and ethics. Compassion for the other, restraint in not taking more than you need, an appreciation for the outdoors, and the encouragement of curiosity for the myriad and complex ways the world works. As my brother and I would leave elementary school, we’d saunter, aimlessly and slowly. Heads down, we’d kick at biota, following whatever creature paths we might uncover. Dad would wait in the parking lot, sitting in the Plymouth with the faux-woodgrain-paneling we so enjoyed peeling away, watching, waiting, never rushing us, never honking, never complaining.
To an extent, because of this environment, and perhaps to an extent also due to my presumptions and personality, the core idea of hunting, taking a life, repulsed me. To look through a scope, behold a deer, and then pull a trigger seemed unnecessary and something through which I’d take no pleasure. It seemed to be a valid option only within the circumstances of legitimate hunger and need for food. And I wasn’t excessively hungry. My needs were met. My disinterest in hunting stemmed from a personal connection to the spry four-legged woodlanders and an inclination to avoid unnecessary harm. Eventually, this connection and inclination would play a role in bringing me full circle.
I sat in the back of the lecture hall. Careers in Biology was an easy evening class; it was long, but all you had to do was pay attention, and you’d pass with flying colors. That night, a guest speaker presented on wolf-reintroduction efforts in Michigan. When the spirited dialogue quieted, it was clear who in that room came from hunting backgrounds. And it was clear that they had a grounded understanding of conservation, healthy ecosystems, and population dynamics. These young, environmentally-minded conservationists understood hunting to be a form of connecting to a place and working towards healthy ecological patterns. They didn’t care about trophies or big-game vacations. To them, it wasn’t about domination or taking life wantonly or pointlessly — they had a fuller picture than I did of balance in the more-than-human world and what responsible participation could look like.
Again, while later working as an environmental educator, taking elementary students out into the forests to learn, I encountered the same. The kids in camo jackets almost always had more of an interest in and a better grasp of the workings of the natural world around them than their peers.
I had thought hunting created an unnecessary, competitive divide between the natural world and humans. I began to entertain the idea that I had it backwards — hunting might bring the two together, benefiting both.
Further, experience on farms taught me about sustenance. By sustenance I mean what feeds humans and what feeds that which feeds humans, things like plants, soil, and livestock. You can’t examine those processes long before finding that life compels death. The two kiss. Talk to mystics, indigenous folks, or even ecologists, and this isn’t news, but it is something our Western culture tends to shy away from.
Where it seems like that isn’t the case — as if life cycles of feeding, regeneration, and energy cycling don’t necessitate processes of death, breakdown, and decay, there’s a false veil of disconnect. Whether a solely plant-based diet or a supermarket subsistence in which production methods are never encountered, death is foundational even if unseen. Fossil fuels, peat mining, dried blood as pest repellant, bonemeal as an input, even the sources of energy and infrastructure behind “vertical veganic farming”, all elements of life and death.
You can’t escape it, but you can do your best considering the circumstances. I was starting to view “the best” in terms of minimizing disconnect, developing awareness, and trying to aim for patterns of consumption that create localized, comprehendible cycles that work together. Each step towards those cycles is a step away from what are often massive and hazy production schemes rife with extraction, waste, and hidden costs lurking in the shadows.
These small cycles describe practices that can look a lot like hunting deer. It’s healthy, local food, fed and sustained without requiring additional inputs. The deer population as a whole benefits from human engagement, countering the sickness and suffering that come with overpopulation. It draws individuals into active relationships with their places and calls for attention to wildlife patterns and sign. It can be a quieting practice, involving patience, but also obtaining a yield. That is all good. It doesn’t need to be a celebration of violence. There can be care and connection, and a very real reminder that what you eat becomes you. Doing the harvesting yourself and participating in the entire process leaves an obligation to steward that energy well because you’re intimately aware of what it cost. It can feed you affordably, feed community, and feed a culture of meeting needs locally, at an appropriate scale, and with others.
For these reasons, I developed an interest in hunting. Not just any hunting: tender, sober, resourceful hunting, and with others committed to respectful practices that preserve dignity. I still questioned whether I’d be able to pull a trigger when it came down to it, and even less so feel afterwards that it was the right thing to do, but I was primed to learn more. How could I make the leap from curiosity towards competency?
Stick around; our next write-up introduces an answer to that question—an accessible, supportive, mentorship-based guild model for folks curious about hunting who didn’t necessarily grow up around it.
