When I was young I only ever killed two animals. The first was a finch when I was ten; the second, a pheasant when I was twelve. With the finch, I was at a water park and I swatted it with my towel as it flew by. I didn't think I would hit it, and I felt terrible when I did. The pheasant I shot with my .22. Once again, I didn't think I would hit it. Once I was an adult, on my mission, I killed more than two animals...but I felt it was out of necessity. I killed 128 scorpions, four rats, two mice, a giant spider, and two bats. I only felt bad about the bats...
So the first time I went hunting with an actual intent to kill I was 26 years old. We were up in Minnesota, and I went out for the opener with my brothers- and father-in-law. I stood alone on a tree stand for almost eight hours with my rifle cradled in my arm, watching the snow fall and never seeing a single deer. It was gorgeous. I loved it!
Two years later I went again. I saw three deer--I shot one. It was remarkably easy to do. I didn't have hunter's regret until a day or two later: I killed a deer! I thought. I killed a doe that could have lived a full life if it weren't for me! Chrissa thought I was silly, but that's the way I felt. Besides, I was a bit disturbed by the power I felt when the gun went off, or my satisfaction when it died immediately.
Eventually, I got over it. Like my boss says: When you think about something long enough, you'll figure out a way to justify it. But the truth is I came to see I was being a hypocrite. If I feel bad for killing this deer, why don't I feel bad for the hundreds of cows and thousands of chickens I've eaten? Just because it wasn't me who killed them? How naive...
When it comes down to it I don't enjoy killing things, large or small. But I did enjoy the hunt and I did enjoy having deer meat for three months afterwards--free, natural, and lean. I hunted for the meat, but I would be lying if I said there wasn't sport to it as well.
8 years ago
1 comments:
I'm with you -- I have conflicting feelings about hunting as well. On one hand, I think it's good for humans to work for the food that they eat and it's good for them to have an appreciation and realization that an actual living animal died. That's something that's all too easy to forget when you buy get your meat on the plastic-wrapped styrofoam plate in your grocer's meat fridge. You don't ever see those big doe eyes looking up at you when you go pick up a steak from Safeway.
On the other hand, the deer probably lived a better life than most animal that ends up in those meat lockers and probably died more humanely. Plus you are eating, as you said, natural, lean -- and organic -- meat. And you did so sustainably. So I think that you can eat that deer meat with a cleaner conscience than all of those other cows and chickens you've eaten. But at the same time, it's good that you felt bad about taking that doe's life. Killing isn't fun, but is a necessity, and the fact that you haven't lost sight of that means that you've still got a good grip on what it means to be human.
Post a Comment