As so often happens, the recent discussion over on Holly’s NorCal Cazadora blog got me thinking about some stuff.  It seems a little deep to me right now, as I’m still working on my second cup of coffee, but maybe it’s not.  Anyway, indulge me while I ponder via my keyboard.

The discussion at Holly’s blog centered around The Wild Within, a new program hosted by Steve Rinella on the Travel Channel.  Rinella is one of the growing number of voices in the Locavore movement, and early on advocated hunting as one key way of procuring healthy, natural, locally available meat.  According to the trailer I saw over the weekend, the program follows Rinella as he ventures out to find food through foraging, fishing, and hunting. 

So far so good, and not all that controversial, right?  Well, the show itself wasn’t the catalyst for my deep introspective. I like the idea.  Several of the folks commenting on Holly’s blog also seemed to approve.  But as these things always do, the conversation took a somewhat different turn.  In her review of the preview, Holly offered mild criticism of the fact that the more graphic depictions of field dressing were not included in the program footage.  This led to the suggestion that people absolutely should see this part of the process, because it’s important to understand that getting meat isn’t as neat as picking it up, pre-cut and wrapped in cellophane. 

But I don’t really want to rehash the specific discussion here.  You can go read it for yourself, and in fact I encourage you to participate in that line of discussion over at Holly’s site.

No, what I want to ponder upon is a divergence from that discussion… to follow a tack that popped up while I was in the shower, getting ready for work. 

There’s a recurrent thread in the discussion about why we hunt, in which many hunters say that part of their rationale is to, “take responsibility for the death of the animal that feeds them.” 

Yeah, I’m paraphrasing in an effort to simplify an esoteric and discorporate concept.  Follow with me for a moment, please…

The thinking is (and again, I’m stuffing the nutshell) that many people who don’t hunt in this modern, first-world society, have lost touch with where their food comes from.  As a result, they’ve absolved themselves of the responsibility for the necessary deaths of the animals that die to provide their daily meals.  They’ve reassigned the tasks of killing and tilling to “others”.  It happens somewhere else. It is not “real”.  They’ve become insensate… disconnected.

This lack of connection leads to a lack of understanding or appreciation of anything from the industrialization of agriculture to the natural relationships of predator and prey.  It is a loss of wildness, if you will.  It follows, in this line of thinking, that the failure to accept these basic truths of life and death lead to a lack of appreciation for the environment.  It enables an advanced sort of anthropomorphic thinking in which animals are simply furry people, subject to the same emotions, mores, and social constructs by which humans live.

It is also a key factor in some anti-hunting sentiment… the idea that because they (non-hunters) do not kill animals, we (hunters) must be aberrant.  There is a sense of oblivion to the fact that pretty much every human alive is responsible for the death of countless animals, whether it is directly for meat, through depredation to protect crops, or through habitat displacement for our human conveniences (houses, farms, highways, etc.).  To this mindset, the reality is irrelevant… these deaths don’t count.  Yet because hunters go out with the express purpose of killing, we are morally wrong.

Hunters, on the other hand, say that they accept the role of predator, and by this acceptance they feel a critical connection.  By the blood on their hands, they have taken responsibility for the death of the animal and become active participants in the primal cycle of life and death. This provides a deeper understanding of the natural world and environment.  With this sense of connection comes a suggestion of moral superiority.

And thus is born a dichotomy.  But is it a true one, and does it have value?

When you draw lines, the intent is to both segregate and to incorporate.  The things inside the line “belong”, while those outside are excluded. For the artist, the mathematician, and the academic, this is a pretty useful way to work out problems.  Of course on paper, lines can be erased and redrawn.  When it comes to segregating people, once the lines are drawn changing them can be a more significant challenge. It’s pretty important then, when drawing lines to be damned judicious. 

Close self-examination (not to be confused with navel-gazing) is sometimes painful, as it often exposes justifications disguised as truths.  I can’t help wondering if that’s the case with hunters’ argument that hunting puts us more in touch with the natural world.  Is there any real moral value to the argument that killing our own game makes us superior to the urban dweller who feeds at McDonald’s and Burger King?  Does the blood under our fingernails elevate us above someone who’s never seen their dinner’s entrails? 

Or is this just another argument we use to explain the inexplicable?  Why do we hunt?  Why is it OK to go kill animals?  Because it somehow makes us better than the individuals who don’t?  Is it just a way to make ourselves feel better about what we do?

I realize of course that most of the hunters I know and call my friends don’t necessarily ascribe to this idea of moral superiority… at least not consciously.  I’m not hearing Holly, or Tovar, or Josh saying that they’re “better” than non-hunters by simple virtue of going afield to kill their own meat or forage their own fruits and veggies. 

But is that the subtext?

This deconstruction exposes logical flaws as well, of course.  For example, many people are turning to sustainable, healthy food without going out to kill their own meat or forage their own berries.  And the environmental movement is full of non-hunters who are very, clearly in tune with nature and its cycles. Many urban dwellers are fully aware of the impact of the Big Mac vs. sustainably grown and humanely harvested beef or wild game, and some choose to eat the Big Mac anyway.  And of course, plenty of hunters still eat their share of Big Macs too… in spite of our “enhanced connection to nature”.  

In other words, hunting isn’t the only way to get most of what some hunters claim to get from hunting. 

I sometimes wonder why we can’t just say we enjoy something because we find it enjoyable.

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