What’s the Harm in Hunting?

I went out into the mountains of Colorado with much the same motivations--to learn whether I'd be capable of hunting with the belief that it is a more moral act to take responsibility for the death of what I eat.

The hunter safety course was quite interesting, and I'm curious to know if you've been through one yet Alyssa? If not, will you write again about your experiences when you do? I presume it is a requirement.

The Colorado hunter safety course stressed the distinction of conservation vs preservation (with bias toward the former). The instructors I had were also very vocal about their disdain for animal rights activists. I did feel they setup straw men in their arguments, but wasn't inclined to challenge them and get into a debate either as I don't feel qualified to defend any position in the argument.

My actual experience hunting was intense and wonderful. I spent more time out in the backcountry than I ever did in the course of backpacking, and it was much harder work because of the extra equipment. I was also heartbroken to see how much the forests of the Rockies are dying due to bark beetle, aspen blight and Chronic Wasting Disease. I did not ever take a shot because I never got the chance. The one friend who killed an elk this year in Colorado wasn't able to eat it because it tested positive for the CWD.

So that is to say, I'm highly doubtful there will be any elk in the Rockies in another decade, as things are going. I expect a catastrophic wildfire spanning the U.S. Rockies from Mexico to Canada :(

I remember once going on a culling trip with a game ranger in Malawi where game has to be carefully managed to maintain any kind of balance given the rampant population growth and small areas relegated to game. Elephant destroy habitat rapidly for other species in small areas.
  As he shot down a big bull elephant with a high powered rifle I looked over and saw the tears streaming down his face... It is sobering, heart breaking and horrifying to end life if you are in any way in touch with yourSelf. He told me that the day it no longer affected him this way is the day we would no longer do it because then he would have lost touch with his humanity. If killing is fun, satisfying, enjoyable etc... then there is a problem - what does that say about someone?
The only time that it is "moral" to kill is when it is to save a habitat AND when it breaks your heart to do so. Killing anything without this sense of deep sadness, without any real reason to do so is immoral. Most of what I hear is trite, self serving rationalizations. Can we transcend our animal predatory instincts and really live into our true humanity? Or are we just animals that will eventually cause our own extinction through our clever ability to rationalize anything we do out of our self entitlement? The movie "Powder" is a good portrayal of this.

Everything feeds off of something else - this is a condition of life - can we do it, whenever we do it, with a deep sense of reverence, gratitude and compassion. This has never been my experience of hunters in general. They are usually people who just like feeding their predatory extinct and enjoy the hunt and the kill and are defensive and full of rationalizations about their lust to kill.... but then the big game of Africa has been decimated by the ego's of men who are insecure show offs with a need for power and domination.

I absolutely agree - coming to terms with hunting is so potentially dangerous, and is NOT an intellectual exercise but rather requires the voice of one's heart and soul to guide actions and choices ... I am so sick of intellectual rationalizations and reasoning behind both hunting issues and vegetarian/vegan issues ... We truly have lost touch with life and death in a very real way.... So disconnected. Thank you for writing this response to that article.

Without evidence based reason, we are lost: ethics is an objective, the best objective, and objectives require more than 'heart & soul'... they require reason. Destroying consciousness is bad because ethics matters: that is as scientific as the claim that heart attacks are bad... there is health science and being moral is part of being healthy, ergo, reason is the way forward! Hunting should be illegal.

We are wondering why YES! Magazine has included this article
which seems so clearly unfriendly to animals.
We believe that Killing of Animals is "evil' in our day.
It is not at all necessary to eat animals - we know this now.
See Will Tuttle's book: World Peace Diet.

Thank you.

Judith Beck

Thanks for your comment, Judith. We very much appreciate your perspective. You might be interested in checking out the point/counterpoint set of articles published in our Spring issue, Can Animals Save Us?, that address two different perspectives on consuming meat. This one is from a vegan perspective: http://www.yesmagazine.org/[…]/humane-meat-no-such-thing

I agree with Judith in questioning why YES would include this article about hunting. Eating animals is not necessary to live. A plant-based diet is healthier and of course, kinder to animals.

To Alyssa:

Your effort to derive an abstract moral position for hunting or not hunting based on an outing to "kill us some quail" led to what was, in my view, some simplistic and facile conclusions.

For the record, I have been vegan since 1972.

It makes a lot of difference if you NEED to hunt to feed yourself and your family. The indigenous people here did ceremonies and fasted before hunting. If you had fasted, given up sexual relations for three days, done a sweat lodge, called to the spirit of the quail before setting out and then made an offering and thanked the spirit of the quail on killing a bird, I would have taken your essay a lot more seriously. As it was, there was actually nothing at stake in your expedition other than deciding whether or not you could carry out the act of killing.

Your argument would be better served if you did not try to frame it as an either/or question. It gets a lot more complicated and a lot more meaningful if you talk about questions of degree. Of course "if someone eats, something else has to die." Rather than fast to the death to maintain a pure moral position, I choose to eat as far down the food chain as I can to minimize my impact. I like that decision! I can live - and live well - in this world and not kill any animals. So could you, if you so desired.

Your point that agricultural fields displace wild habitat is well taken. Your attempt to hold me responsible when a farmer runs over a turtle with a tractor I feel is not. All human activity displaces wild habitat. In our area, residential development is the worst offender, much of it for second homes. The point is not "Well, you do it, too!" More useful, I think, would be to seek where the balance lies between human activity and wild habitat. The Cherokees farmed AND hunted AND still lived in a world that was largely wild. It can be done. Wild areas are necessary for a lot of other reasons besides meat production.

You wisely noted that humans can no longer meet our dietary needs by hunting alone. If everyone accepted the position that hunting is indeed "moral" and hunted wild animals to extinction, how "moral" would that be? But you did not take up the questions of sport hunting, run around in the woods in a four-wheel drive hunting, get drunk with my buddies hunting, or shooting wolves from helicopters hunting. The hunting question is a lot more nuanced than "moral" and "not".

And since we can't meet humans' protein needs by hunting, most human meat-eating is supported by livestock raising. There are a lot of issues that could be examined there. Feedlots, for one. Ranching has a huge impact on wild habitat in the western states. That's a good issue: the effects of eating meat on the depletion of game animals.

And, since people do eat meat off the farm or the ranch today, it has been shown that living vegan has a lot less environmental impact that being carnivorous. Doesn't that count for something in the moral spectrum?

So, when you don't need to, I don't understand why you try to justify your right to kill wild animals. Hunting does keep alive skills that may be needed again some day. And I do agree that it is important that people be as involved as possible in the processes that bring food to their table. In your case, however, that would mean spending more time at the abattoir than in the woods. Other people, ex-hunters among them, have taken up the skill of tracking. This allows them to appreciate animals and their world without feeling the need to kill them.

But, in the end, it's your decision and your karma. I would hope that your connection to the animals would move you to work to limit human population and unreasonable consumption and to become engaged in saving rapidly diminishing wild habitat. (If you like moral tangles, you'll just love the issue of human population control!)

I sincerely wish you success in figuring all this out for yourself.

Blessed be -

David Wheeler

I agree that hunting is not necessary for us to live: currently of course we can get our food from other sources. However, saying it isn’t necessary is different from saying we shouldn’t do it. As I stated in my article, there are many reasons to do it: to foster reverence for life and death, reverence for the land (which drives us to protect it), and reduction of need for agriculture by getting food from wild sources. Raising chickens, bees, and growing gardens in our backyards are excellent ways to reduce our need for industrial-sourced food in addition to sustainably harvesting and hunting.
I mention in my article that we should be thoughtful hunters, and only hunt sustainably. I am certainly not saying that we should replace our current meat production levels with hunted meat. If we were to only get our meat from hunting, we would have to eat a lot less of it, too, almost to the point of veganism, and that would be great by me. My article was not about livestock, nor was it about trophy hunting, it was about hunting respectfully and sustainably for food. In this article I am only advocating that there should continue to be a place in society for this type of hunting.
I highly respect those such as yourself who chose to remain vegan. Vegan agriculture feeds more people with less land. We both agree that humans should displace less land (for livestock and agriculture as well as things such as golf courses and second homes). I completely agree that humans need to find a balance with nature and that overpopulation may stand in the way of this balance for many years. I agree that agriculture will eventually have a place in that balance, but I also believe there is place for hunting in the lives of those who care for animals and the environment. As for the rituals one chooses to respect the animal (fasting, praying, etc.) I believe those are a personal matter not to be judged from the outside.
Thank you for your response, I agree that this is a nuanced topic, and it is one I’m sure I will revisit throughout my life.

Next time, Alyssa, just remember to preface your trip with fasting and a sweat lodge to be able *really* note the gravity of your actions...

As noted by David: "If you had fasted, given up sexual relations for three days, done a sweat lodge, called to the spirit of the quail before setting out and then made an offering and thanked the spirit of the quail on killing a bird, I would have taken your essay a lot more seriously. "

[In hunting,] there's the element of marksmanship (as you alluded to above). There's an element of self-reliance (for those who eat what they hunt). There's an element of ecosystem understanding and earth-awareness (knowing seasons, habits, trails... watching sunrises, sunsets, shadows and wind). There's adrenalin rush. Most likely there are some very primitive instincts and urges working below the level of conscious awareness. No doubt there are elements of power, some darker than others. It can be a rite of passage. It can be a tool for cultural and inter-generational bonding/teaching. I believe the best hunter will understand that by taking a life, he/she also commits to honoring that life through his/her own living, with passion, vigor, resourcefulness and no complaining. Is it absolutely necessary -- to hunt, kill and eat an animal for food? Who's to say? Is it absolutely necessary that any one person live? It depends upon the perspective. Prey will do it's best to elude the hunter. Hunter will do his/her best to kill and consume the prey. There is death and destruction, and life continues as well. These are things I have experienced as a hunter. There are lots of things to judge about hunting and hunters. I don't do it often, probably because we grow and harvest most of the meat we eat -- it's easier and more reliable. To those who believe killing an animal is wrong I ask: "Is it better to kill a plant instead? Why kill anything else at all? Why don't you just stop eating?" Problem solved. If we want to live, we must regularly kill and destroy things we consume. Maybe we should focus on how we kill and how we live rather than on what we kill to live. Live consciously and well, teach by example, lead with questions, learn by listening and stop beating on each other.

Many thoughtful comments here so far, which is encouraging to see.

I am a former decades-long vegetarian who had to return to incorporating animal protein into my diet for health reasons. Some may not want to accept that a vegan or vegetarian diet is not suitable for every human body on the planet (I did not, when I was a vegetarian), but myself and a number of people I know who are former vegans and vegetarians would disagree, because our bodies have told us differently.

When I accepted the fact that I needed some amount of animal flesh for the return and maintenance of my health, I decided to accept full responsibility for this fact and become a hunter. It has been a fascinating and challenging journey, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to provide clean and healthy meat to myself, my family and friends in a way that deepens my connection to Earth and the cycle of life.

Inspired by my indigenous ancestors, I incorporate a great deal of ceremony and prayer in preparing for and in carrying through with the hunt. Hunting is not an idle sport for me, it is a movement of the sacred in one of its most ancient and poignant forms.

As long as my Earthly vehicle needs animal protein, I will head to the forests and fields with a respectful prayer in my heart for the deer and elk whose life I may reluctantly end. In my need for meat I am no different than the mountain lion or bear that I share my mountain home with. Where we are different is that I can choose to take life with gratitude, and awe, as well as some remorse.

As a vegan-turned-hunter whose writing and research efforts are focused on hunting, I'm fascinated by articles like this one. There seems to be quite a surge in interest in hunting, particularly among people who did not grow up in hunting traditions but who think seriously about what they eat. In recent months and years, for instance, there have been articles in the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune, Canada's National Post, and more.

Thanks to YES! for contributing to the expanding conversation.

Hello all,
I am a hunter and have been since I was two years of age. Hunting is a way of life. I am not blood thirsty or kill for the sake of killing, nor do I waste what I kill. I am not a "trophy hunter", I could care less how big the antlers are or if it has any. I get tired of portraying hunting as evil, because it is not. You may also think it is no longer needed, but it is. Without hunters you would have over-population that would lead to disease and crop damage. Hunting teaches responsibility, patients, and conservation. Many of you will never witness a young boy or girls eyes light up when they have shot their first deer, squirrel, or hog. Hunting is something that reaches the soul and makes memories that last a lifetime. Thats not to say there are no "bad" hunters because there are. But more than often hunters do more for the environment than many of you will ever do. The licenses we buy help conservation efforts. The first ever national river(The Buffalo River in Arkansas) was in fact saved from becoming a reservoir by a landowner(that was a hunter) who hand friends in congress. I would encourage many of you to try and go hunting. You may find like the author that its not some treacherous deed. I cannot put in words what the experience is like for me every time I go, but hunting is about more than what you think.

I wish Alyssa Johnson well as a journalist, but her article is philosophically naiive. Here are the salient flaws, some of which originate with Ken:

The subtitle to the article reveals its question-begging premise: that hunting is “an expression of our most fundamental relationship with nature.” The term ‘fundamental’ is ambiguous and can be construed in two ways: (1) in the sense of “historic” or “traditional”, or (2) in the sense of “natural” or “essential”. Understood in the first sense, it is obviously true. Understood in the second sense, this is precisely the debate in question—whether hunting is a NECESSARY “expression” of being human.

“No one, regardless of their food choices, is completely innocent of the harm caused by our current food system…. For us to live, others will die.” This is hardly a good argument (justification) for CAFO animal “farming”.

“Man uses dog for his keen sense of smell, dog uses man for his intellect and firearms.” The latter clause in this sentence (dog uses man…) is just nonsense.

Ken's “sobering experience” of killing a grouse when he was fourteen “set off a lifetime of scientific moral contemplation that led him to a very strict stance”. Moral contemplation is not “scientific.”

With the quail “I was participating in the process of life and death—a process that would happen whether I liked it or not.” The quail death was NOT an inevitable “process”; it was a CHOICE.

Vegans do not by “pass responsibility from consumer to farmer to CEO to stockholder.” On the contrary, by not supporting the CAFO industry, they ARE NOT responsible for the deaths so caused. There is no “complicity” here on the part of vegans.

“Hunting is brutal, but so are the indirect environmental effects of building cities of skyscrapers, mining rare earth metals for electronics, and building wind turbines. We are killing animals either way—hunting is just more direct. Ken would say, more honest.” Again, this is ethical nonsense. That hunting is “more direct” is precisely the point: it is DISCRETIONARY killing—and hence AVOIDABLE.

“To live on this earth requires causing harm, and participating through hunting creates a deep connection to nature that is very fulfilling.” Fulfilling for whom? So you can't feel a ‘connection to nature’ without destroying it?

“Hunting leaves them [the animals we hunt] in their natural homes.” If we take them to our tables, we are not leaving them in their natural homes.

“Hunting goes a long way toward protecting and improving animal life.” Is this a stretch, or what?

“A couple weeks later, I had dinner at the Reids’ to make sure it was for a good cause.” This rationalization puts the cart before the horse: Eating the animal may pragmatically reduce “waste”, but it doesn't morally JUSTIFY the killing. It is at least arguable that the killing is only justifiable if eating it is REQUIRED (i.e., there is no alternative food source).

Wow Mr. Hansen, that's some pretty narrow blinders you have on...
Fundamental: without "hunting" humans would not be here today. I argue that is fundamental. Thousands of years of hunting likely leaves a genetic trace, which is my conclusion after hunting and contemplating hunting for most of my 45+ years. Again, fundamental, once to humans, now to me.

Unfortunately not much is "necessary" to just "being" human. But maybe, just maybe, being a part of life, and death, instead of watching it from the stands, increases the understanding of what the necessary expressions of being human, and being alive, really are.

Obviously, hunting is not necessary for modern humans to stay alive. However, your immediate jump from Alyssa alluding that modern agriculture kills animals, to all animals raised in CAFOs, belies your attempt at reasoned argument. She has, in no way, argued for CAFOs. Neither do reasoned hunters. Agriculture developed to support more people, more people, both vegetarians and omnivores, means more agriculture. The clearing and annual tilling/harvesting killed and kills hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of animals and displaced all the natives. I am not saying this is bad, no judgement here, just the fact that the vegetation that vegetarians now live on comes from fields that have killed animals and kill them every year. Unless you go to the forest and harvest all your own plant-based food, you are involved in the killing of animals through agriculture! There is no way around it. An unless you plan on taking our human population back to nomadic tribes of HUNTER/gatherers, there is no way around the need for agriculture.

Dog and man: The original joining of wolves and man was a mutually beneficial arrangement. It still is. Hunter's (and those with support dogs such as seeing eye dogs) have both an emotional and a skill symbiosis. Non-hunters have a primarily emotional symbiotic relationship. Mutually beneficial non-the-less. Without humans there would be no dogs...just wolves. If you don't think dogs try to manipulate (i.e. USE) their owners, I doubt you have ever owned a dog. Have you ever seen a hunting dog hunt. If that isn't the closest thing to canine happiness, I don't know what is. It's genetic, maybe kind of like human hunters, or maybe like a domestic cat that plays with the dying bird before it is dropped on your doorstep. I wonder Mr. Hansen if you have kids and have seen genetics at play, your traits realized in your children before they are even cognizant of themselves. Yes, we have humans have some limited ability to toy with our genetic manifestations, but I question how much, really, when I consider human kind as a whole. Your statement that the relationships between dog and human is "nonsense" once again is a very limited perception..

Mr. Hansen, you also state emphasize the quail death was NOT inevitable, also implying it was NOT NATURAL. So, do you mean to imply that the quail will live forever. Could it be that the reason that quail sat so tight and was the last one to leave was that it was weaker than the others and would have starved or frozen to death during the winter in which it was shot. Is a weeks long starvation less cruel than a shot from a shotgun. And what is not natural about a human collecting food. We use the shotgun because it is more effective and more humane. We apply moral and ethical guidelines to our hunting, something only humans do. But I argue, vehemently, it is still natural, and much less cruel than the natural death of more than 40% (or more) of hatched quail that freeze to death or are eaten alive by predators. We as humans have made hunting less cruel to meet our uniquely human morals and ethics. The fact that your morals and ethics regarding hunting are somewhat different than mine, does not make you right and me wrong. If you want to think you way, I am fine with that, I respect it, and I don't make fun of it, but don't force your morals and ethics on me, because I chose to be partake in the natural process instead of just watching.

Maybe "analytical" moral thinking would have been a better term than "scientific". But one can study morals "scientifically", and doing so to one's own morals and ethics is sobering and sometimes downright scary.

As stated above, nearly all, if not all vegans eat vegetables purchased from the store. Stores get those vegetables from farms, farms displace native animals (killing them), and kill every year with harvest. That killing can and should be reasonably minimized, but there is absolutely no way we can support the people on this planet without widespread agriculture. By eating any food grown in row crops (and other types too) you are involved in the killing of animals...period. That is the point. Hunter's accept that, face it, and in some ways gratefully acknowledge our part in the circle of life. Saying vegan and vegetarians (as a whole) don't have a part in the death of animals is flat out false. And again, immediately jumping to CAFOs is completely out of line here. Oh yeah, and if I, as a hunter, am taking my protien, as meat, meat from a bird or large mammal, I too am not supporting CAFOs and am getting my protien from a species that is as in tune with nature as one can get...therefore, my "protien" gathering impact may well be subsantially less than yours, if you are getting your protien from soy grown in fields. The only things I leave are footprints.

Hunting is discretionary and therefore avoidable: Hmm...yes I suppose you are correct. So is walking. So is driving. Those that commit suicide think life is discretionary. Point being, because something is descretionary does not make it bad. What bothers you is the killing. That's fine, but it doesn't bother me because the killing provides life and the process of sustaining life is fullfilling to me. Hunting is no more cruel (actually less so) than nature. I am part of nature. I am killing more humanely than nature does because I have the ability to do so. In generay, agriculture as it IS conducted in the world today, kills more slowly by diplacement and injury, than my shooting with a shotgun. There is no way around that. If you want to change agriculture, that's fine, but then you must be ready to radically reduce the human population. Once you have tackled that problem, then come to me and I'll work with you on reducing the collateral natural damage of modern agriculture. Again, I emphasize, I am not against modern agriculture as it is a result of the needs of people (and don't think that this means I support CAFOs). My meat comes from my property, grass fed beef, and the game I shoot. If I could afford more land and keep my day job at the same time, I would work toward sustainable farming for myselft on my own property, but that ain't feasible in the world I live in today.

Hunting protecting animal life: No it is not a stretch. You clearly don't understand natural populations. A significant number of natural animal populations (actually most in some populations) die each year. By pulling some animals out of the population, killing them quickly and efficiently, other animals do not die a slow death of starvation, freezing to death, or being eaten by others. Again, your tart comments show a lack of understanding and a standing on personal beliefs, not natural processes.

Can I feel a connection to nature without destroying it: Wow, so hunters are destroying nature. Every legally regulated hunted species in the world has expanded its numbers. A simple fact. So your exaggerated claim that hunting destroys nature is absurd. It kills individuals of a population, yes, but in the process can actually make some populations more healthy, and at worst, keeps populations from boom and bust natural cycles. In more direct response to your question, yes, I can appreciate nature without hunting. However, the act of knowing the animal well enough to get close enough to harvest (kill if you want) it and take it home to eat, makes me feel much, much closer to the nature I am involved with, instead of watching. I must learn more to successfully get the animal, and bottom line, for better or worse, bringing home the meat provides me a deep level of satisfaction. Earning lots of money does this for others, but not for me.
  
Bottom line, I don't mind in the slightest folks being vegetarian or vegan, but when you lay your beliefs over hunting because you think the killing, the death, is unnatural, then you are pushing your personal feelings over mine, and not only is it inappropriate, it ain't
right. I don't want to watch, I want to participate. Sorry if it offends. Please realize your attempts to stop my hunting offends me.

I liked this article. I hunted when I was very young but gave it up in high school. I became a Buddhist and cut back a lot on meat consumption in favor of more gardening and fruit production. As I had to clear more trees to make way for more gardening area so that my family could better wean ourselves from the poisonous, corporate-produced food rampant in our society, the resident squirrel population ballooned to disproportionate levels. They are consuming our apples, pears, tomatoes, soon-to-be grapes and cherries, even hot peppers. Thus, the considerable expenses it takes to maintain a sustainable permaculture are for naught. So, I am teaching my daughter conservation/preservation with an emphasis on balance and reverence for the environment. My daughter even likes squirrel, though we harvest carefully. Like the hunters described in this article, respect for life is paramount. "Eat what you kill and kill what you eat" is a lesson she will never forget.

Hunting is better than factory farming, of course; however, vegan diets are better by far and don't involve murdering someone... someone with consciousness comparable to that of a human child... someone possibly with their own children relying on them.
-sure, hunting is a 'fundamental human thing which connects us with our nature' and so is slavery. Rape is natural. Murder & theft are natural... these things are avoidable and should be avoided for the sake of ethic though. Being good is more important than being natural!

     Toby, not only did you just inappropriately anthropomorphize all non-human animals (calling them "someone") your argument immediately failed you as equated hunting/killing to murder.
     Is the driver of the car that inevitably smashing through thousands of bugs a murderer? Does the osprey murder the fish to feed it's chicks? Are farmers murderers as they must remove native vegetation to plant their crops and by doing so are perpetually displacing native animals and lowering the carrying capacity of the land and setting up a unavoidable starvation? When you walk on a trail and unknowingly squish an ant or other creature by unfortunate accident, did you commit a "murder"? Of course not. The osprey must kill or it's chicks will die, the farmer must farm the land and displace native animals or he/she has no crops to eat or sell. In all these instances one creature most assuredly deprived (sometimes willfully) another living thing of life, but to consider these acts equivalent murder is an pure idology devoid of logic.
     You go on with a completely unveiled attempt to equate murder to hunting and by extension hunting to slavery, rape, and theft as things that are on a equally negative natural tier and no longer necessary. Interesting that you picked those specific “natural” tendencies for your comparison. Usurpation of such ugly and emotionally inspiring terms will only be considered appropriate by those that already hold the short sided belief that hunting (and fishing) is an ethically wrong act for a human to engage in.
     You finish your comment with “Being good is more important than being natural.” You seem to have convinced yourself that you can step beyond the death that connects all living things. I assure you that it is an impossible quest you have chosen.
    Personally, I would reverse your words and contend that to be natural is to be good. Why? To avoid harm to other creatures for you own survival is not only impossible, as the article briefly discusses, but to own that death instead of trying to convince yourself that you are beyond it, may be the only way to truly understand the plight of other creatures and how best we can work together to protect and maintain this world for all of us.

Toby says: slavery, rape, murder, and theft are fundamental...and natural...and hunting is murdering someone...

for emphasis:

slavery, rape, murder, and theft are fundamental and natural...hunting is murdering someone.

I uhh...well I...um...holy smoke...ahhh...wow!

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one Toby.

Toby,

As animals, we all make choices about what foods we eat. Some of us attempt to "feel better" about the foods we eat by claiming to eat food wherein no other animal was harmed during the production or acquisition of that food. Our human brain allows us to think beyond basic survival and attempt to exist on a higher moral plain. Many people believe it is this which separates and elevates us above "lower creatures." You however, have shown just how low of a creature you are by drawing a connection between hunting, a means of acquiring food, and several of the most aggregious crimes committed by humans. You compare hunting to rape, murder, slavery and theft. By doing so, you have insulted every sexual assault victim, every mother who has had to attend the funeral of a murdered child, every person of African descent whose ancestors were ripped from their homeland and forced to toil under the whip of their masters. It seems to me that it is you who needs to work through your ideas of good and bad and just what it means to have ethics.

There is no way an Eskimo can live without hunting/fishing. Of course not all people need wild game,or meat. As a hunter we eat far less meat than 95% of the population, simply because hunting season isn't year round and because its in the fall and winter its hard trekking for days on end and often not finding any meat animals. And we waste NONE of the animal.

As a family we produce no garbage. We compost kitchen scraps, are not materialistic, use freecycle, and forage for wild foods. So its suggesting that all people who hunt are bad or don't need to hunt that is concern for me. My family has lived in the rural west since 1850, in a small home that gets passed down.

Our diet is 90% fruits, vegetable and grains. No processed foods. Think 1940 or earlier. Lets not forget that city/suburban folks cause more damage to wildlife with all their pollutants and shipping their garbage to rural areas than rural ethical hunters.

Did you even know that it was groups like Ducks Unlimited who made it so you have to have a hunting license so that those monies go to buy and keep wild life refuges where no hunting is allowed.

This was an excellent article for students in my high school class to read and discuss in our unit on ethics. My take on vegans vs hunters is simple. All vegans can continue to eat as you wish, just don't feel it's your political right or responsibility to tell me or legislate that I can neither hunt or fish within prescribed season and bag limits based on wildlife and fisheries science, not philosophy.

I too enjoy unigue and delicious taste of quail, dove, pheasant, and ducks that I have shot and prepared myself, but the hunt, not the killing is a richer human experience. Same for fish and fishing.

My urban students, many who have never spent anytime outdoors, have no connection to the natural world. People who hunt and fish "get it" when we discuss the ethics of habitat conservation and saving unimproved wild places. The record of these groups is not in dispute.

I think YES magazine showed great courage in publishing this young woman's article and highlighted how dogma and propaganda sometimes substitutes for common sense when discussing human's relationship with the natural world and where and when they participate in the food chain and food supply. Excuse me but I have some salmon steaks I prepared from a fish I caught yesterday to grill.....:)

Alyssa, thanks for your wonderful article. I live in Minneapolis, and am an avid hunter, angler, and environmentalist and political progressive. We need more environmentalists hunting and more hunters (there have always been some) being part of the environmemtal movement. I'm teaching my young daughters to hunt and it is a positive familiy activity as well.

I grew up hunting - mostly rabbits in Tasmania with a single shot 22 rifle. I had a dog that I trained myself to seek and flush and retrieve. To me being out in nature with a friend and our two dogs was an experience I wish every young boy could enjoy. It would take too long to explain how I came by my views on hunting, but here are some of my principles.
I never shoot unless I am sure that the field is safe and clear of other people.
I never shoot unless I have a clear view of the game because I do not like to think I have hurt or maimed an animal. I once spent a whole day digging a rabbit I had shot, but which didn't die on the spot, from a burned out tree root in the midst of a blackberry briar patch because I could not live with myself if it died a suffering death.
If a clear shot doesn't present itself I would prefer to not fire a shot at all. I think of the hunt as rabbit one, hunter zero. My quarry was just too smart today.
I respect the wisdom and the senses of my quarry. Different game teach me to hone my stealth skills and my sense of wind direction, my knowledge of the seasons, the plants that are growing etc even better than them if I am to be successful.
And lastly I never kill an animal unless I am going to eat it and use as much of it as possible. As a kid, my cat got the liver, my family got the carcass and I even stretched and dried and sold the skins.
I never shoot for fun unless its at a paper or a clay target.
When I moved to Alaska and began hunting bigger animals like Blacktail deer, I met many Kodiak brown bears in situations where I could have killed one, but I would never even want to get a permit for bear, they are too magnificent and I can't eat one and I don't want a skin on my wall or floor, so, if I can't use it, I choose to just admire and respect them.
A great movie that portrays my kind of philosophy towards other living things is "Islands in the Stream" starring George C. Scott

I grew up hunting - mostly rabbits in Tasmania with a single shot 22 rifle. I had a dog that I trained myself to seek and flush and retrieve. To me being out in nature with a friend and our two dogs was an experience I wish every young boy could enjoy. It would take too long to explain how I came by my views on hunting, but here are some of my principles.
I never shoot unless I am sure that the field is safe and clear of other people.
I never shoot unless I have a clear view of the game because I do not like to think I have hurt or maimed an animal. I once spent a whole day digging a rabbit I had shot, but which didn't die on the spot, from a burned out tree root in the midst of a blackberry briar patch because I could not live with myself if it died a suffering death.
If a clear shot doesn't present itself I would prefer to not fire a shot at all. I think of the hunt as rabbit one, hunter zero. My quarry was just too smart today.
I respect the wisdom and the senses of my quarry. Different game teach me to hone my stealth skills and my sense of wind direction, my knowledge of the seasons, the plants that are growing etc even better than them if I am to be successful.
And lastly I never kill an animal unless I am going to eat it and use as much of it as possible. As a kid, my cat got the liver, my family got the carcass and I even stretched and dried and sold the skins.
I never shoot for fun unless its at a paper or a clay target.
When I moved to Alaska and began hunting bigger animals like Blacktail deer, I met many Kodiak brown bears in situations where I could have killed one, but I would never even want to get a permit for bear, they are too magnificent and I can't eat one and I don't want a skin on my wall or floor, so, if I can't use it, I choose to just admire and respect them.
A great movie that portrays my kind of philosophy towards other living things is "Islands in the Stream" starring George C. Scott