ON HUNTING

Very interesting article in the NYTimes on a small movement to recruit children to hunting. It’s about this guy who’s on a mission to save the dwindling “sport” of hunting by encouraging children to hunt. Mostly, what interests me is the question of whether hunting actually encourages an environmental ethic. If you teach a kid to stalk and shoot a deer, does she also learn to appreciate the wilderness that deer represents? I know that many of my formative experiences in nature revolved around fishing, and though I’ve never tried it I imagine hunting could have a similar impact.

This article also touches on the culture wars, or the red/blue divide, or whatever you want to call it. I’m going to go out on a limb and wager that from the perspective of most NYTimes readers, hunters are gun-toting maniacs who voted for Bush. The article does nothing to mitigate this prejudice, making sure to include salient details about the activist in question like his complete financial reliance on his wife’s grueling job at Walmart (oh great, now I’m guilty. Thanks a lot, liberal news media!). On the other hand, the guy’s website seems to reveal him as the kind of hunter who relishes a trophy, not the kind that eats everything he shoots and thanks his prey for the gift of its meat. I am not against hunting, but I find a picture of a child smiling next to a dead moose strung up by its hind legs disturbing. To me, that doesn’t demonstrate respect for wildlife.

I think the best way to make rational, informed decisions about our impact on nature is to gain a thorough, personal understanding of it. A solid grounding in the science of biology (not the half-assed intelligent design version) is a necessity, of course, but to feel it, to remember it when you’re engaging in drunken bar debate or buying groceries or puzzling over the correct operation of your district’s voting apparatus, I think you actually have to encounter nature. First hand. And hunting is a way to do that, a way more direct, more personal than any hike or nature walk.

Actually, I don’t “think” that. I believe it. I have no evidence and cannot cite any research, and to be honest, I have met very few people who hunt over the course of my bicoastal life. Maybe everyone who owns a rifle actually shoots snakes and douses their lawns with insecticide and would gladly sacrifice every bug, lizard, and weird creepy crawly to have open forest replete with meaty targets. But even if that’s true, I believe hunting and fishing have the potential to facilitate an appreciation for nature.