A friend once asked me what I would do if I could never hunt again. I could tell you how soul crushing it would be, how impoverished my existence would be. But that would be a lie.
I have to be honest with you: I’d be fine. At least in the kitchen.
Remember most of my life has been spent without hunting. I have been hunting for more than 20 years, but I started as an adult. I have lived quite happily without chasing mammals and birds for my supper.
I’d likely eat less meat, bought from good purveyors – mostly at farmers’ markets where I can talk with the farmers. I might buy a hog, maybe a bunch of what I call Gucci chickens, birds raised slowly, with lots of room to wander and eat bugs and things. I’d seek out grass-fed beef or bison, buy a few heritage breed turkeys and ducks, and some rabbits, here and there.
Yes, I’d miss those unique flavors: Ruffed grouse and woodcock, wild quail, pintail ducks and specklebelly geese, squirrels – especially squirrels. But I’d get by.
This is what would happen, or so I imagine sitting here now.
I would likely put my guns away for good. I enjoy shooting skeet and sporting clays, as well as plinking targets with a rifle, but not so much that I’d do it without a hunt in the back of my mind. I have other things to do. I’d probably fish a lot more.
I would spend more time in cities, as I am right now in St. Paul. I grew up in the shadow of New York, the nation’s greatest city to my mind. I am, at my core, an urban person, at least by birth and upbringing. Where others I know talk about the wild places they explored as children, my best stories are about exploring Manhattan as a pre-teen (it was a different time then), about braving the infamous Forty Deuce, as 42nd Street was once known before it became a Disneyland for Iowa tourists.
To be sure, I have wild places from my childhood to cherish. Block Island first among them. I even had a few close to my boyhood home in Westfield, New Jersey: the woodlot by Roosevelt Junior High, Echo Lake Park, the Watchung Mountains. I think it’s these memories in the semi-wild of the Northeast that allowed me to be receptive to the allure of hunting.
But I love cities to this day. Not getting around in them, but once I am there, the spell takes hold. There is no more invigorating place to live than Manhattan, at least to my mind. But as a hunter, it’s hell. Were I forced to hang up my guns, I might see my way toward living there again, as I did briefly in my late 20s, when my girlfriend lived on 80th and York.
Of all the things I would lose were I forced to give up hunting, my connection to the land would be chief among them. I won’t kid myself by telling myself that I’d still be as active in conservation, or that I’d spend as much money on wildlife even if I were no longer a hunter. Again, I could tell you that, but I’d be lying. I know myself.
Hunting is taking a role on Nature’s stage as an actor. Not hunting sends you to the audience. The immersive experience that is hunting – even moreso than fishing – is transformational. You see things and smell things you would not otherwise. Your hearing sharpens, as does your eye for movement and color. You slow down in wild places, seeking that which you pursue.
I would lose this were I prevented from hunting. I know it. The act of entering Nature with the express purpose of finding something good to eat changes the experience fundamentally. Mushroom hunting and foraging approach this, but remember that foraging is defined as hunting that which does not move. I can walk directly to my patches of berries or tubers or whatever and, if I am there at the right time, harvest while drinking a beer and playing Public Enemy, if I so chose.
Mushroom hunting is the closest experience to “real” hunting, as you never really know where and when you will find them; sometimes you know when, sometimes where, but rarely both.
Hunting requires that a hunter notice things. We are there to see the proverbial canaries die, if something in our local ecosystem goes awry. We have our wild spots we watch, and we spent inordinate amounts of time in them, and not always in pursuit of tasty critters. Many times we will wander a hunting spot in the offseason just to see how it is doing. And then there’s always scouting, to see what might await us once the season does open.
I’d still hold onto a slice of this as a mushroom hunter, but not as widely and not as deeply.
Hunting makes me a more complete human. It connects me to ancestors spanning back eons, and to the fact that, like it or not, we are part of the fabric of the wild world, hunting, winning, losing, wandering, wondering and above all, thinking about this place we live in, which is far larger – and more important – than even Mighty New York.
Take away my ability to play that role on Nature’s stage, and, week by week, year by year, my ability to do so would atrophy. I’d revert to what I was before I began this pursuit: A perfectly OK specimen of Homo sapiens, but nothing special.
So I think I’ll keep on hunting, thank you very much.
This is the exact sentiment the world needs to hear about why we hunt, Hank. You’ve once again spoken the thoughts of my own mind. This essay needs to be an op-ed in every newspaper, a link which is shared on every social media channel, and the spoken lyrics to a super popular graduation tune.
I hunted when a young man, and I cherish the memories that came from getting out in wild places during difficult times of year and day, and from having my senses heightened by the hunt. At a certain point, though, I realized I could do all that without the kill, the meat-eating, and the associated baggage of hunting. For me, hunting was a means to an end, and I learned to reach the ends without it.