It’s not simply about shooting and killing

America is cooking turkeys as though they grow on trees, making today a logical opportunity to respond to a letter I received last week demanding that I explain why hunters kill animals.

The short answer is simple: Eating animals without killing them would be cruel and messy.

But I suspect a larger answer is expected for the following query:

Dear Mr. Landers,

I read your last couple of stories about deer hunting and this season I have a question for you. It is one I have asked of many hunters, both those whom I know and strangers, and I have yet to get an answer.

What I want to know about hunting, other than for the absolute necessity to put food on the table, is what does the hunter enjoy about KILLING? I am not being cranky or nasty, I just want to understand.

Every hunter tells me the same things: that they hunt to get away from “the wife” and the kids for a few days, to enjoy the camaraderie with their buddies, to sleep under the stars, to sneak up unawares on an animal and on and on. But all of this could still be done while hunting with a camera. So, why the need to kill something?

Before I met my husband, he was an avid hunter. It took him years to get his first elk, which became his last. He said the sight of that magnificent animal lying dead by his hand sickened him and he could never shoot at another. This seems to me to be a more normal response than happiness and pleasure at causing death.

So, what is the answer, what do hunters enjoy about killing?

Thank you,

Karen

Indeed, Karen’s question seems civil, but since she’s rejected every other hunter’s explanation, I have better odds of drawing a one-in-a-lifetime bighorn sheep permit than persuading her into thinking that sportsmen are anything but a low life form.

But like any good hunter, I’ll take a stab at it.

First, I don’t know a hunter who “enjoys” killing. There must be jerks who do, but no respectable hunter “enjoys” dispatching a critter in the way we enjoy a kiss or the taste of a sinful dessert.

Don’t confuse blood lust with a high-five for a shot that drops an animal painlessly in its tracks. The thrill isn’t in doing it, but rather in doing it right.

The lethal impact of a bullet or arrow is a split second among the hours, days or maybe years a hunter devotes to filling a tag and then packing, butchering, cooking and serving the harvest. Hunters aren’t lying when they say it’s all about the scouting, the campout, the challenge of decoying or stalking game and getting away with their friends.

And while some people need an excuse to get away from “the wife” and kids, most hunting is done WITH family members.

The goal to kill cleanly and consume the meat, however, is what creates the intensity. It’s a natural instinct that goes to the core of the relationship between predator and prey. There’s nothing shameful about hunting when done within ethical and legal bounds.

Karen suggests that hunters could get their satisfaction by shooting animals with a camera. Indeed, I have soared with the euphoria of capturing a bull elk on film in that rare moment when light, landscape and focus comes into perfect synch with a wild subject.

But perhaps the only way I can explain the difference in intensity between hunting and photographing is to point out that millions of sportsmen are compelled to contribute volunteer time and billions of dollars to conserving game species.

Photographers are not.

Sportsmen buy licenses and join habitat conservation groups such as Ducks Unlimited and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and they supported legislation requiring them to pay excise taxes on their hunting and fishing equipment for the benefit of their sports and the perpetuation of wildlife.

Non-sportsmen have failed to support proposals for similar conservation-based excise taxes on photo gear, binoculars and backpacking equipment.

Hunting fosters a sense of stewardship. Sportsmen kill and feast on individual animals while sacrificing to perpetuate their species.

I’m glad Karen’s husband dabbled in hunting long enough to know that it can take years to bag an elk. And even though he was not comfortable with the result of pulling the trigger, he should at least understand how some hunters would be happy to have success at something for which they have worked so hard.

I admire the game I kill and I thank God for the privilege of eating the purest, healthiest meat on earth.

Having a slaughterhouse worker kill your chicken does not put you on higher moral ground than a hunter. Nor does being a vegetarian who feasts on grains or vegetables produced by machinery that decapitates nesting birds and mangles rodents.

People who let their pet cats roam outside kill more birds than all the legal hunters in the nation. Do cat owners do this because they enjoy killing? At least hunters live by rules and take responsibility for the blood on their hands.

I’ve never understood the escalating scale of guilt some people associate with creature killing. We can cheer at swatting a mosquito and salivate at bonking a salmon or dropping a lobster in boiling water. But hunters are supposed to be ashamed for turning the lights out on a deer?

Sportsmen are accustomed to this sort of discrimination.

Cooks all over the world are delighting their families and customers by converting animal flesh into meals, yet hunters are the ones who must continually justify the pre-requisite to fine dining.