The bounds of polite society dictate that on most topics we keep our opinions to ourselves. Hunting, however, isn’t one of those topics.
On a recent work-related road trip a friend and colleague wasn’t shy about telling me how she felt about my hunting obsession. I’m used to it, and often make a point of not bringing it up just to avoid the discussion, if I sense it’s pointless. But in this case I may have brought it on myself when I commented how the light in the late afternoon, that golden, long shadowed time, evokes the contentment I usually feel at the end of a long day in the field.
I brought it up, so I should have known it was coming. Maybe I provoked it on purpose. It was a long drive after all, and a little debate can be the perfect antidote to boredom and drowsiness behind the wheel.
Most of the ensuing conversation is lost to faded memory. But I remember this, a question my friend asked about my relationship with the animals I hunt: “Why can’t we just get along?”
The answer, of course, is that we’re not supposed to.
Humans are sometimes confused about our relationship with wildlife, but wild critters don’t share this quandary. A deer in the woods, when it senses our approach, runs away. That’s what deer do. In humans, deer perceive a threat, a predator. It doesn’t want to get along with us. It wants to get away.
Our intentions have no affect on our predator/prey relationship with wildlife. It’s not as if a deer notes that a human is wearing Patagonia fleece rather than Realtree and assumes it’s a non-threatening vegan. As far as wildlife is concerned, humans, even PETA types, are hunters.
Who would want it any other way? Years ago, during a period of persistent unemployment, some traveling missionaries became aware that I was often home, in my bath robe, in the middle of the day. Additionally, being young and foolish meant I was often up for a vigorous debate with strangers about religion. The missionaries usually brought me pamphlets, and the cover of one depicted a group humans gathered at a table for a feast. Near the table various wild beasts reclined in the grass. There was a lion, and nuzzled up against it was a lamb. Everyone, apparently, was getting along.
The nice young people who were trying to save my soul asked if I liked the image, if I thought I’d like to live in a world like that, a world where we all “got along?”
I must have turned a little crazy at that point as I recall it was the last of their visits. “No” I probably shouted. I want my deer to run when they see me, and my lions to eat lambs, or even me if given the chance, though I have no desire to die such a death. Old age is my preferred departure technique.
It’s the elusiveness of wildlife, and my sense of the other that makes it so appealing in the first place. There’s a reason a running deer disappearing over a ridge line stirs the soul in a way a petting zoo fawn never will. Or that chukar mean more to me than chickens.
There’s much to be said for “getting along.” Certainly the world would be a better place if our species developed better non-violent methods to resolve our differences. Wildlife, and the wild, is another matter. This is the other, the place where I find harmony when I activate those predatory instincts that wild animals instinctively perceive in me. My non-hunting friend suggested our species ought to evolve beyond our role as hunter into something I imagine, more in tune with that pamphlet art. But I maintain the same, slightly crazed reaction.
Polite society will just have to get used to it.