Amazingly, I'm not sure I ever read this essay. I'm so glad you republished it.
For complicated and unchosen reasons, we've been away from hunting for a couple of years now. We just ate the last of the venison from the culinary hunt you did in 2025, and I've been feeling very wistful about the lack of wild meat in my life. And this essaymade me remember how much of it is about the closeness to life & death, the sense of deep responsibility, and how what I really miss is the fact that something *significant* happened so that I could eat this marvelous thing.
Be respectful of nature, following the rules/laws, is where we stand. We always eat what we harvest. It’s great that you are out there educating because there is so much misinformation in and about the hunting culture, it’s as varied as anything else.
At my age, my dad and brother taught me everything I needed to know about hunting, fishing and survival .and why we tried to add food to our tsble and cold storage. Rows of sealer jars all prepared with love by my mom and dad so we ate thru the winter.... it meant we all survived..and my mother would soak the ducks in salt water overnight, and the next night we dined like royalty..Wild game and fish my dad or brother successfully harvested, and veggies from our backyard garden, apples from the wild trees where we hunted partridge and rabbits, .pike, pickerel, bass and a a good night might produce 50 or more mudpout...
Years ago, hunting was hunting... It meant you walked the land, you read the signs, you knew your game and your surroundings. We used wooden decoys, in burlap bags, wooden leaky rowboats, coal oil lights, everything was flannel, wool, rubber and canvas.
Our game had a better than equal chance against the average hunter.
My gripe is that today there is no chance for so many of the "wild" animals we consume.
Bring back the word "Hunt", take away all the gizmos, gadgets, technology, dogs, and baiting...personally I think baiting should be banned, everywhere. That is not "hunting". ..
The game I have had the honour of adding to my freezer have all had a much better than average chance of survival past the hunting season....against me..
With the help of the amazing group I "hunt" with, with the huge extra effort of my son, and nephew, and the others helping me as age takes its toll, I still manage to find fresh wild game in my freezer, without firing a shot..Thank you for honoring the true tradition of hunting, gathering.
Ha. I don’t hunt but I know and have been around hunters. Not a problem for me when their attitude is yours: Make it fast and clean with no suffering.
I respect vegetarians unless they get in my face about me not being one. Then my response is, “At least animals are killed before we cut them up to eat them. Plants? They are living things but we rip their parts off while they are still alive. Think about that.”
The truth is we have to eat living things to live.
I am not a hunter, but I happily live with one. I don't like my responsibility of having to put animals down when their time has come and I want to keep them from pain or misery. I'm just not built for hunting I guess. But I do enjoy going out with my husband to track or hunker down or spot something. I am good at seeing white antelope bottoms at a distance. Laughing, I am, but it's true. I always need to move my hand across the dead animals, just thanking and appreciating them, I guess. Feeling wonder to be so close to wonderful animals. And It's wonderful how well you express yourself. You must help many hunters who occasionally question themselves about hunting, the thrill, loving of being out there and getting their own meat. So, thank you. This is a fine essay.
I love this. I hadn’t read it before. The same goes for farmers. Born and raised farmgirl growing both crops and animals. People ask how I can process my own chickens. How can I take them so trusting of me and slit their throats? They often look at my tiny frame, my ability to clean up and look downright glamorous and also know how much I love my birds.
I look them straight in the eye and say “my birds had the most beautiful life and the only bad moment that ended their life was so swift they didn’t even see it coming. We could all only wish to have that. The chicken you eat from the store was most likely to have lived a miserable cramped life deep down knowing in its soul that something was terribly wrong. Eating a less than ideal food stressed from being too close to its neighbor in probably horrid indoor conditions. Nope, my birds got to be chickens eating bugs and digging in the dirt to dust bathe. They got greeted by me a couple times of days as they wander around carefree. I always treat them with love and respect. That meat is more nutritional than the crap you buy in the store because the animal isn’t stressed it’s entire life.”
This usually ends their question. The same goes for hunting. They live and die free. It’s all we living beings can hope for.
I might add with the emergence of grocery stores, people have become so detached from their food sources that it’s hard for them to see anything but the end product no matter how it got to that point. Big agriculture is anything but pretty for the smallest of pollinators to the mass harvesting. Thank you but I’ll keep it simple and small.
One thing I learned when I started eating the animals my hawks catch, is that killing game is not the end of the hunt but one step in a process, which is the full circle of activity that includes the killing and everything that happens before and after it. The process isn’t concluded by the death of an animal.
This helped me understand why the killing seems so significant and, well, final, to those who aren’t familiar with the whole process. It starts with thoughts and preparations for the hunt (informed by memories of the last hunt), and moves smoothly along until you’re cleaning the dishes weeks later.
It’s a process every bit as much about life as the death that occurs within it.
Here’s a note from a hunting journal I kept when my kids were small. It brings this point home to me.
I was fortunate enough to read this the first time around, I enjoyed it then, and my take on it hasn't changed a lick.
This is not a rebuttal to the essay... just thread of thought.
It's always been a little interesting to me how much time we spend, as hunters (and a lesser extent, fishermen), justifying what we do... rationalizing the reality that an integral part of what we do is killing animals.
Of course, sometimes we do need to spin a little PR... educate... reconcile some misconceptions. And sure, there's a certain evangelical element to it, right? We'll preach the gospel of where our food comes from, and the truth that all food carries a blood price. Beef to beans, something dies so we can eat. It's logical. Practical. (cue Supertramp)
Some folks get it, and some simply don't want to.
It comes back though, always, to the sticky question of why we (hunters) do it though, if we don't have to. There are millions of acres dedicated to raising food in this country. You can go out and buy meat (usually more economically than hunting) if you want it. If you have the means, you can even buy meat that is every bit as organically clean as wild game, raised ethically and sustainably. You don't have to go out and shoot up the wildlife. Folks seem to have an easier time accepting the "mindless professional" in the slaughterhouse with his pneumatic gun or sticking knife than the hunter trying his luck and skill in nature. That guy does it for a job. We do it for "fun".
And that's what it boils down to, isn't it? Whether someone simply doesn't understand hunting, or whether they actively revile it, the sticking point is that we do it for fun. So we end up going down this convoluted, philosophical trail of separating the act of hunting from killing, and trying to explain that one is a vital part of the other and it's not some psychopathic bloodlust. Maybe we trot out some Ortega y Gassett ("One does not hunt in order to kill...etc.") or maybe we make it more personal and talk about the juxtaposed emotions we feel when we kill an animal. We might talk about how we "utilize" the animal we kill, or we could get off into the ideals of wildlife management or funding.
But what hangs people up, and what's pretty hard to explain away, is that we hunt because we enjoy it. Call it "fun", or "sport", or "divertissement" if you like... but that's why we're out there. That's why we spend our time and our money to do it. And that's why some people simply don't understand.
Well said Hank Shaw! As usual you said it much better than I ever could. Love how you stated it is not stupidity but more a lack of knowledge of what hunting is all about. As far as the eating my term is " everything but the oink" when I am able to harvest a deer. I still get a side eye from some of my hunting friends when keeping heart, liver, tongue and caul fat. Kidneys are next on the list. I change their minds just a bit more every time they try something made with the "wobbly bits". I sometimes feel the non-hunters appreciate using every part more than some of my hunting friends.
Change nothing... It hits the point perfectly... No matter the game... there is a moment of reverence when a life is taken... silent prayers, the last bite (personal fave), the hootin and hollerin, even pictures, are all a tribute to the life that has been given.. each a little different in their own way, but all are a celebration of sorts for the animal... Same as the ones who never gave the shot, or moved last second negating a shot...... Most of us remember all of them ... as we should...
Having worked most of my life as a chef, hunting for me has always been about putting food on the table. There's no "thrill" in killing animals for me; what thrills me is in getting a well-placed shot that makes a deer drop on the spot, and knowing there was a minimum of suffering for the animal. There have also been times when I was hunting that I was so awed by what I was seeing, that I didn't even shoot & just marveled at what I was seeing (like the first time I saw a gobbler in full strut mode at close range!). Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the hunting experience!
First of all I’m not surprised that this essay stood the test of time. It’s an excellent piece and still captures how most hunters feel and I doubt your workflow transitions from hunter to butcher to chef were likely to change over that period of time.
I like how you illustrate the joy of a successful hunt. It is one of the most primal successes we will ever experience and depending on the manner of the hunt the success may well have been earned the hard way.
I tend to have a similar transition after the shot, but almost fearful at times. I mostly hunt in Texas. That means I have a clock ticking in my head that starts almost immediately after the shot is taken on many hunts and like the normal flow of time it will wait for no one.
Amazingly, I'm not sure I ever read this essay. I'm so glad you republished it.
For complicated and unchosen reasons, we've been away from hunting for a couple of years now. We just ate the last of the venison from the culinary hunt you did in 2025, and I've been feeling very wistful about the lack of wild meat in my life. And this essaymade me remember how much of it is about the closeness to life & death, the sense of deep responsibility, and how what I really miss is the fact that something *significant* happened so that I could eat this marvelous thing.
Thanks for resharing.
God this is so good. Its so difficult to articulate the web of complex emotions around the killing part of hunting, and I'm very glad we've got you.
Be respectful of nature, following the rules/laws, is where we stand. We always eat what we harvest. It’s great that you are out there educating because there is so much misinformation in and about the hunting culture, it’s as varied as anything else.
At my age, my dad and brother taught me everything I needed to know about hunting, fishing and survival .and why we tried to add food to our tsble and cold storage. Rows of sealer jars all prepared with love by my mom and dad so we ate thru the winter.... it meant we all survived..and my mother would soak the ducks in salt water overnight, and the next night we dined like royalty..Wild game and fish my dad or brother successfully harvested, and veggies from our backyard garden, apples from the wild trees where we hunted partridge and rabbits, .pike, pickerel, bass and a a good night might produce 50 or more mudpout...
Years ago, hunting was hunting... It meant you walked the land, you read the signs, you knew your game and your surroundings. We used wooden decoys, in burlap bags, wooden leaky rowboats, coal oil lights, everything was flannel, wool, rubber and canvas.
Our game had a better than equal chance against the average hunter.
My gripe is that today there is no chance for so many of the "wild" animals we consume.
Bring back the word "Hunt", take away all the gizmos, gadgets, technology, dogs, and baiting...personally I think baiting should be banned, everywhere. That is not "hunting". ..
The game I have had the honour of adding to my freezer have all had a much better than average chance of survival past the hunting season....against me..
With the help of the amazing group I "hunt" with, with the huge extra effort of my son, and nephew, and the others helping me as age takes its toll, I still manage to find fresh wild game in my freezer, without firing a shot..Thank you for honoring the true tradition of hunting, gathering.
Eldon Gaw, Ottawa, Canada
Ha. I don’t hunt but I know and have been around hunters. Not a problem for me when their attitude is yours: Make it fast and clean with no suffering.
I respect vegetarians unless they get in my face about me not being one. Then my response is, “At least animals are killed before we cut them up to eat them. Plants? They are living things but we rip their parts off while they are still alive. Think about that.”
The truth is we have to eat living things to live.
I am not a hunter, but I happily live with one. I don't like my responsibility of having to put animals down when their time has come and I want to keep them from pain or misery. I'm just not built for hunting I guess. But I do enjoy going out with my husband to track or hunker down or spot something. I am good at seeing white antelope bottoms at a distance. Laughing, I am, but it's true. I always need to move my hand across the dead animals, just thanking and appreciating them, I guess. Feeling wonder to be so close to wonderful animals. And It's wonderful how well you express yourself. You must help many hunters who occasionally question themselves about hunting, the thrill, loving of being out there and getting their own meat. So, thank you. This is a fine essay.
Smiling.
I love this. I hadn’t read it before. The same goes for farmers. Born and raised farmgirl growing both crops and animals. People ask how I can process my own chickens. How can I take them so trusting of me and slit their throats? They often look at my tiny frame, my ability to clean up and look downright glamorous and also know how much I love my birds.
I look them straight in the eye and say “my birds had the most beautiful life and the only bad moment that ended their life was so swift they didn’t even see it coming. We could all only wish to have that. The chicken you eat from the store was most likely to have lived a miserable cramped life deep down knowing in its soul that something was terribly wrong. Eating a less than ideal food stressed from being too close to its neighbor in probably horrid indoor conditions. Nope, my birds got to be chickens eating bugs and digging in the dirt to dust bathe. They got greeted by me a couple times of days as they wander around carefree. I always treat them with love and respect. That meat is more nutritional than the crap you buy in the store because the animal isn’t stressed it’s entire life.”
This usually ends their question. The same goes for hunting. They live and die free. It’s all we living beings can hope for.
I might add with the emergence of grocery stores, people have become so detached from their food sources that it’s hard for them to see anything but the end product no matter how it got to that point. Big agriculture is anything but pretty for the smallest of pollinators to the mass harvesting. Thank you but I’ll keep it simple and small.
One thing I learned when I started eating the animals my hawks catch, is that killing game is not the end of the hunt but one step in a process, which is the full circle of activity that includes the killing and everything that happens before and after it. The process isn’t concluded by the death of an animal.
This helped me understand why the killing seems so significant and, well, final, to those who aren’t familiar with the whole process. It starts with thoughts and preparations for the hunt (informed by memories of the last hunt), and moves smoothly along until you’re cleaning the dishes weeks later.
It’s a process every bit as much about life as the death that occurs within it.
Here’s a note from a hunting journal I kept when my kids were small. It brings this point home to me.
https://mattmullenix.substack.com/p/in-season-e54-nov-15?r=s021q&utm_medium=ios
Thank you, Hank. I had not previously seen this. I’m very glad you chose to “resurface” it. I feel the same…🙂👍
I was fortunate enough to read this the first time around, I enjoyed it then, and my take on it hasn't changed a lick.
This is not a rebuttal to the essay... just thread of thought.
It's always been a little interesting to me how much time we spend, as hunters (and a lesser extent, fishermen), justifying what we do... rationalizing the reality that an integral part of what we do is killing animals.
Of course, sometimes we do need to spin a little PR... educate... reconcile some misconceptions. And sure, there's a certain evangelical element to it, right? We'll preach the gospel of where our food comes from, and the truth that all food carries a blood price. Beef to beans, something dies so we can eat. It's logical. Practical. (cue Supertramp)
Some folks get it, and some simply don't want to.
It comes back though, always, to the sticky question of why we (hunters) do it though, if we don't have to. There are millions of acres dedicated to raising food in this country. You can go out and buy meat (usually more economically than hunting) if you want it. If you have the means, you can even buy meat that is every bit as organically clean as wild game, raised ethically and sustainably. You don't have to go out and shoot up the wildlife. Folks seem to have an easier time accepting the "mindless professional" in the slaughterhouse with his pneumatic gun or sticking knife than the hunter trying his luck and skill in nature. That guy does it for a job. We do it for "fun".
And that's what it boils down to, isn't it? Whether someone simply doesn't understand hunting, or whether they actively revile it, the sticking point is that we do it for fun. So we end up going down this convoluted, philosophical trail of separating the act of hunting from killing, and trying to explain that one is a vital part of the other and it's not some psychopathic bloodlust. Maybe we trot out some Ortega y Gassett ("One does not hunt in order to kill...etc.") or maybe we make it more personal and talk about the juxtaposed emotions we feel when we kill an animal. We might talk about how we "utilize" the animal we kill, or we could get off into the ideals of wildlife management or funding.
But what hangs people up, and what's pretty hard to explain away, is that we hunt because we enjoy it. Call it "fun", or "sport", or "divertissement" if you like... but that's why we're out there. That's why we spend our time and our money to do it. And that's why some people simply don't understand.
Well said Hank Shaw! As usual you said it much better than I ever could. Love how you stated it is not stupidity but more a lack of knowledge of what hunting is all about. As far as the eating my term is " everything but the oink" when I am able to harvest a deer. I still get a side eye from some of my hunting friends when keeping heart, liver, tongue and caul fat. Kidneys are next on the list. I change their minds just a bit more every time they try something made with the "wobbly bits". I sometimes feel the non-hunters appreciate using every part more than some of my hunting friends.
Change nothing... It hits the point perfectly... No matter the game... there is a moment of reverence when a life is taken... silent prayers, the last bite (personal fave), the hootin and hollerin, even pictures, are all a tribute to the life that has been given.. each a little different in their own way, but all are a celebration of sorts for the animal... Same as the ones who never gave the shot, or moved last second negating a shot...... Most of us remember all of them ... as we should...
Having worked most of my life as a chef, hunting for me has always been about putting food on the table. There's no "thrill" in killing animals for me; what thrills me is in getting a well-placed shot that makes a deer drop on the spot, and knowing there was a minimum of suffering for the animal. There have also been times when I was hunting that I was so awed by what I was seeing, that I didn't even shoot & just marveled at what I was seeing (like the first time I saw a gobbler in full strut mode at close range!). Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the hunting experience!
First of all I’m not surprised that this essay stood the test of time. It’s an excellent piece and still captures how most hunters feel and I doubt your workflow transitions from hunter to butcher to chef were likely to change over that period of time.
I like how you illustrate the joy of a successful hunt. It is one of the most primal successes we will ever experience and depending on the manner of the hunt the success may well have been earned the hard way.
I tend to have a similar transition after the shot, but almost fearful at times. I mostly hunt in Texas. That means I have a clock ticking in my head that starts almost immediately after the shot is taken on many hunts and like the normal flow of time it will wait for no one.
Beautifully written and well explained. ❤️
Thank you for the authentic and moving expressions in this essay. It was an honourable piece of writing.
Now I understand.