Did you hear the one about the vegetarian who moved to the Elk Hunting Capital of the World? What might sound like the beginning of a bad joke was actually the life I inadvertently chose for myself about twelve years ago. I am a lifelong vegetarian, and when people hear this, they assume deep socio-political convictions of me; in reality, while I do love animals and have never eaten meat of any kind, I didn’t initially eschew meat for any reason other than I just didn’t want to eat it. This wasn’t a hard sell for my parents because my mother is also a vegetarian, although she chose a meat-free life after having to slaughter her family’s dinner one too many times for her liking as a child.
As I grew older, I became more aware of the people I encountered in my small, Southern hometown who hunted as well as their reasons for it; specifically, I had an uncle who hunted for sport and liked to use a bow and arrow to wound a deer so that he could track it and then kill it. He did not hunt because he preferred or needed that meat. He hunted because he enjoyed the primal predator/prey dynamic he could create. He said he also felt good about helping to reduce a population that risked becoming too large if left unchecked by natural depredation. Whenever the topic of hunting would arise among people who hunt, I heard versions of this same story from them: it’s a rite of passage; it’s a bonding experience among the hunting party; hunting helps to balance the ecosystem. It isn’t that I doubted the veracity of these explanations. What stuck in my craw about them (and honestly the thing that troubles me most about many actions) is the intention I thought they reflected. For me, it’s always the thought and the reason behind a behavior that most interests me.
When I accepted a teaching assignment in a small, remote town in Colorado years ago, I had no idea that it would feel like stepping back in time approximately 50 years, but in some of the best ways. This town consists of a Main Street from which side roads leading to family ranches sprout. There is one school that serves students from kindergarten through grade twelve, with the entire student body not exceeding three hundred. At lunchtime the students walk home or congregate at the lone gas station, the Loaf and Jug, to purchase the soft drinks and junk food that their parents don’t permit at home. Families in this town are primarily ranchers or coal miners; many of the teachers lead hunting trips for out-of-towners to supplement their scant salaries. Childhood obesity rates are in the top five lowest in the country, and the crime blotter is refreshingly empty.
Driving down Main Street the first time, I saw a banner stretching across the two-lane street welcoming me to the “Elk Hunting Capital of the World” and knew my status as an herbivore would likely not endear me to the residents. True to its claim, the town’s revenue was comfortably padded by the steady stream of outdoor aficionados each year who arrived with fat wallets and high hopes. My students’ families knew when to expect the surge of recreational hunters in the fall and would plan accordingly. It wasn’t uncommon for a student to be absent from school for several weeks at a time, and when checking attendance I received versions of, “Oh, Caleb won’t be here at all this week because he’s hunting with his dad.” Initially I was frustrated by what I perceived as irresponsible planning and misplaced priorities. After all, where I came from hunting was something people seemed to do for kicks and it certainly wasn’t a valid reason for missing up to two weeks of classes. A lesson I’m embarrassed to admit needs repeating for me is that instead of getting judgmental, I should get curious, and so when my students returned from hunting I inquired about their experiences and learned some humbling truths. These families relied on the meat from an 800-pound elk to fill their freezer for the winter. Hunting had nothing to do with sport for them and everything to do with survival. What struck me even deeper was the respect and gratitude the local hunters had for the animal whose life ended so theirs could continue. A seventh grader named Tommy told me, “I mean, we’re not weird about it or anything, but when we make a kill my dad puts his hand on the elk and thanks it for giving its life for us.” Not one part of an animal goes to waste in this small town, either. It feeds humans and dogs, and the inedible parts are used for other purposes: tools, rugs, clothing.
Before moving out west to this gem of a town that few people know exists, I believed I knew the kind of people hunters were. I’d reduced the entire group to an inaccurate, incomplete, one-dimensional caricature in a way that annoys me when people do to me upon learning that I’ve never eaten meat. I don’t know that my opinion of hunting would ever have changed in the absence of these sincere conversations with my students, who at the age of thirteen were far wiser than I in many ways. I have no reason to believe I’ll ever become a carnivore or that I’ll hunt an animal, but my level of respect for the people who do practice the ethical harvesting of meat, who demonstrate respect for the animal whose life is taken to sustain another’s, is as immense as my humility at having gotten them so wrong for so long. Humans wield such power, and nowhere is it more evident that in the natural world where we often have an advantage over wildlife. How we use that power reveals much more about us than perhaps we even realize.
PartWolf 