On sluicing ducks

It finally happened: I came home from a hunt with seven ducks last week, and while my shooting wasn't amazing, it felt like I'd gotten through my really bad case of the yips.

Now, I'd love to regale you with the details of some of my incredibly awesome shots that day - the wigeon I dropped so hard he bounced three feet off the water when he hit, the spoonie I nearly dropped into my lap - but that's not what this post is about.

This post is about two greenwing teal I shot on the water.

I'd started my morning at one of my favorite spots under a bright crescent moon and a sky littered with stars. In other words, it was going to be a clear and bright day.

Once shoot time arrived, the flight was really good - I heard gunshots all over the refuge, and while I missed a lot in that first hour, I did drop one duck, a hen wigeon.

Then the fog rolled in, and the shooting stopped abruptly. Ducks don't fly in the fog.

There was no telling how long this was going to last, so I made a decision: It was time for a walkabout.

The beauty of where I hunt on my refuge is that it's free roam. When you hunt "assigned blinds," you have to stay within 100 feet of a particular spot. If the ducks don't happen to want to be there that day, you're effed. But in free roam, you are free to go to the ducks, so long as you're not getting too close to other hunters.

On this morning, I knew there were likely to be some crippled ducks who'd been injured, but not killed, by some of the hunters. Wounded ducks like to hide in cover. My strategy would be to walk through the grass where they hide, look for cripples, and shoot them. More meat for my table, and the end of suffering for wounded animals.

Not 60 seconds into my walkabout, I saw a duck in the grass, head up and alert. I knew he saw me, but he wasn't going anyplace. Crip! I took stock of my surroundings, determined that the angle and direction of my shot wasn't going to intersect any nearby hunters, and shot the duck. He went belly-up.

As I walked toward him to pick him up, I saw another duck doing the same thing - he hadn't gotten up when I fired the first shot. Another crip! So I shot him. He got up and flew, then dropped, so I got him too.

I took both birds - drake greenwings - back to my tule patch, went to my car for more ammunition, then returned to my spot just as the fog was lifting and the shooting resumed all around me.

When I went home that afternoon and started plucking my birds, I was in for a surprise: Neither teal had a mark on him except for the shots I'd fired. No broken wings. No pellets to the breasts. Just the distinctive wounds caused by sluicing: shots that rake across the back.

They hadn't been wounded! So why had they just sat there? Maybe they hoped I couldn't see them. Maybe they didn't want to fly in the fog. Who knows?

My first thought upon making this little discovery was, "Good! These'll be great eaters." Shot holes in the breast don't make for great presentation on the plate. These would be perfect. And they were little fatties, too.

My next thought was that this discovery changed my shots from noble - putting ducks out of their misery - to "unsportsmanlike."

So here's the big question: If I'd known they weren't cripples, would I have shot them on the water anyway?

The answer is "Hell yes!"

Why? Let's start with the reason why many duck hunters would say, "Hell no!" Shooting a duck on the water - also known as "sluicing" or "water swatting" - is considered by some to be unsportsmanlike because the shot is too easy, and the bird doesn't have sufficient chance to elude the hunter.

Me? I don't care.

I hunt to put food on the table, not to impress anyone else with my tremendous wingshooting abilities. While I love making a good shot, and I'm proud of myself when I shoot well, that's just not what hunting's about for me.

But let's take a visual look at the core argument.

Is it sportsmanlike to shoot these ducks?

Of course. Classic shot. How about these:

Sure, as long as there are no hunters hiding in those tules in the background. And these:

That was a test. If that image doesn't make you nearly pee yourself with excitement, you are obviously not a duck hunter.

How about this one? His feet are about a centimeter off the water.

Yep, still flapping those wings. Totally sportsmanlike! And this one?

Ah yes, this is where we - or at least some of us - draw the line. It's that last centimeter that makes all the difference in the world, right?

Nope. I call bullshit.

Now, you don't have to shoot that duck. I really don't care. Choosing not to take a shot is never "wrong," regardless of the reason.

But I don't think it's "wrong" for me to take that shot either. And I flat-out don't believe that the sitting duck is the most vulnerable duck (and therefore the "easiest" to shoot) in this series of drawings. These ducks are:

Why? Neither these ducks nor the sitting duck know you're there, so all of them are vulnerable. They're all pretty easy shots because they've really slowed down, and the three on the left, while still moving, are coming straight at you. Stick the damn bead on a bird and pull the trigger.

But let's say you miss one of these shots (which, God help me, I've done way too many times), or you attract their attention and spook them before pulling the trigger. Now that the ducks are alerted, they're going to want to get the hell out of Dodge.

The sitting duck need only launch into the air, which he can do with astonishing speed. The landing ducks, on the other hand, must reverse course. They must stop their downward movement before they can start moving up and out. So, this is really the shot that's "too easy" and "unsportsmanlike," right?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

This is the problem with some of the ethical lines we hunters draw in the sand (or in the marsh, in this case). I believe our core concern should be making the cleanest kill possible with shots that won't lead to any unintentional wounding of other hunters or dogs who might be nearby.

I mean, do we really think the duck gives a damn whether we shot him on the water or when he was still a foot off the water? If he ain't dead yet, he's thinking, "Ow! Ow! Ow! I've gotta get out of here," not, "That unsportsmanlike bastard just shot me on the water!"

And I don't feel any less guilty for ending a bird's life when it's midair, as opposed to when it's on the water. I've killed it, either way.

Hunting is, at its core, tricking animals into making mistakes that cost them their lives. On the water or in the air, that duck you're shooting has been fooled into believing he's safe there. That means you've done the first part of your job well. Now it's time to shoot him - if you choose to.

But tell me readers: What do you think? What's your line in the sand? Why?

Let the comments begin!

P.S. While I love it when everyone agrees with me, I really want to hear about it if you disagree, because I want to hear WHY - challenging my position helps me see whether my arguments are on point, and it occasionally changes my mind. Really!

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

The late-night life of a hunter: Dreaming of death

I was talking to a few of my students the other day and when I told them I dream of death as often as once a week, they all looked at me funny.

I'm not sure why it would surprise anyone: I hunt. I write about hunting in a way that deeply examines why I hunt and how I justify and/or rationalize killing. And I have always had really vivid dreams.

Hank, who rarely remembers his dreams, is often blown away when I wake up and tell him where my mind has been. I dream crazy stuff.

Now, I write about this topic with some trepidation, because I know somewhere out there is a brainwashed PETA activist who's ready to tell me that dreaming of death is my subconscious's way of expressing guilt for my crimes against animals.

And I have wondered about that myself, particularly when the dream includes seeing my beloved cat Giblet - who is, at this second, dozing on my desk to be near me - dead and skinned. No getting around it: That's a pretty unpleasant dream.

Or maybe it's just a reminder that we all die eventually, and that we're all made of meat.

Most of my death dreams involve hunting. The more I'm hunting while I'm awake, the more I hunt in my dreams. While sleeping the other day, I snatched a Eurasian collared dove out of the sky, then held it in my hands and tried to figure out what next, given that - oopsie! - dove season was over, not to mention snatching from the sky is NOT a legal method of take for doves. (I have a deep-seated fear of breaking rules.)

Sometimes my death dreams seem really random. One of my more memorable ones recently involved me simultaneously saving some rats and killing others. (I kill animals for food, but I will go to ridiculous lengths to save a spider from getting washed down the bathtub drain. Hey, I don't eat spiders; nor do I think they should die just because humans invented big enameled tubs that bugs can't easily get out of.)

Joel Shangle

The most intense death dream I've had in a long, long time happened this summer. Hank and I were on the road, up in Seattle for his book tour events there. We were exhausted, and we had to get up really early so we could go be on Joel Shangle's Northwest Wild Country radio show.

Before I go any further, I have to apologize to my mother, who might find this disturbing.

So, in this dream, I was going to be executed. I'm not sure what I'd done to deserve the death penalty, but that was irrelevant because I was going to die.

Here's the weird part: I was not remotely upset that I was going to die.

But I was absolutely freaking out because the method of execution was going to entail eight minutes of intense pain. I was shrieking for my mother. "MOM! MOM!! MOOOOMMMM!!!" That's something I probably haven't done, awake or asleep, for a good 40 years.

The last thing that happened in the dream was that Hank came to me, touched me on the shoulder and told me that the courts were intervening and that I would not be executed by the eight-minutes-of-pain method - they were going to come up with something else. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and woke up. Hank was touching my shoulder, telling me it was 5 a.m., time to get up.

So where, you might ask, does such a dream come from? As with all dreams, I can pick out bits and pieces from all over the waking world, evidence that my brain is processing lots of stuff.

Eight minutes of pain? My greatest concern when hunting. I hate it when I don't make a quick clean kill. (And like most humans, I can whip myself into a frothy mess anticipating pain.)

Not being concerned about the fact that I was going to be killed? Hunting has made me reflect on death a lot, and it has helped me understand that I probably won't be able to choose the time, method and reason for my death: I could be eaten by a mountain lion, or hit by a bus, or my heart could simply stop one day after a long and happy life.

Execution? Yeah, I've covered those. I witnessed one when I was a reporter in Virginia, and it isn't what you'd expect at all. They don't head for the lethal-injection gurney looking defiant and spitting profanities; they just look small and scared. Like they want their mommies.

The irony here? I was aware of it even in my dream: I think California's death penalty is a joke, because the appeals process is endless. Far, far more death-row inmates die of natural causes than get executed here. And there I was in my dream, appealing to the courts. Tsk tsk tsk. The hypocrisies that I loathe the most are my own.

If there are any professional dream interpreters reading this, though, you're probably wondering when I'll get to the obvious: In dreams, death is a symbol of major change that you're trying to adjust to. Like ... your boyfriend writing a book, going on book tour and appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio shows and TV shows all over the country.

Voila! Dream demystified.

I know. You're probably looking at the screen now the way Hank looked at me when I told him about that dream. It's OK. No need to call a doctor.

But, seriously. At the risk of incurring deafening silence: Am I the only hunter (or farmer) out there who dreams often of death? Or am I just the only one crazy enough to write about it?

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Three story lines from women's hunting camp: The unknown, the uncertainty and the fever

I was present for the birth of three new huntresses last weekend at Cal Waterfowl's women's hunting camp at Bird's Landing, and let me tell you: Watching the delivery never gets old.

But this camp was really interesting because of three striking story lines among some of the participants.

The first story line was Jamie's. Probably her biggest fear was making a mistake with gun handling and ending up hurting or killing someone.

I didn't help. During the hunter safety class on Saturday morning, I told a couple stories, one I'd read about, and one I was there for. The story I'd read was about an experienced shooting instructor who gathered with his pals in the shooting range parking lot after a shoot. He leaned his gun up against the car - bad idea, but hey, it was unloaded. Except it wasn't. It fell over, something hit the trigger, and someone died.

I could see Jamie recoiling. Had it been a mistake to bring it up?

But, hey, I was on a roll. The other story happened with a friend of mine. She was having trouble unloading her autoloader. Safety Measure No. 1 failed: The safety wasn't on. Safety Measure No. 2 failed: Somehow, she hit the trigger.

The boom was deafening and shocking. We'd stared at each other, bug-eyed. I looked at her legs, and at mine. Had either of us been hit? Were we bleeding? "Are you OK?" I asked. She nodded. I was OK too. But we saw where the shot had gouged the concrete in front of us.

My friend was pretty freaked. "Ya know what?" I told her. "You had the muzzle pointed in a safe direction." This is, of course, exactly why we're taught so many layers of safety - because you never know when the fail safes might fail.

Jamie looked green. Had I scared her in a bad way, or in a good way?

The next morning, when we all split up for the hunt, I ended up with Jamie first. We walked and walked and walked our field, Jamie with muzzle dutifully pointed up. The dog smelled birds, but they were running - we couldn't get anything in the air. At least not at first.

Finally, the dog scared up a rooster - a passing shot not too far in front of Jamie.

Jamie swung on the bird. Our dog handler ducked. Then Jamie eased the gun off her shoulder.

"Why'd you decide not to shoot?" I asked her later.

"Zone of fire," she said. There was a parking lot on the other side of the bird. It didn't seem safe to her.

"Good," I said. "That's exactly what you were supposed to do."

Before the day was over, I reminded her of her nerves on the first day, and asked her how she'd felt handling the gun. "Oh, it was fine," she said. Turns out guns aren't quite as scary when you know the rules for handling them. And follow those rules.

And oh yeah: Sometime after I'd left her that morning, she'd gotten one:

The next story line was Rachel's. Rachel had a practicality to her that reminded me a lot of Tamar Haspel. Her husband hunts. She's interested in taking personal responsibility for the meat she eats. And she's not shy about asking questions that people more immersed in hunting culture might be hesitant to voice, like what's up with fair chase, and why does it matter? You're killing the animal either way.

The thing I said during hunter ed that took her off guard (I know, nice job, Holly) was that animals don't always just drop dead when we hit them; sometimes we have to finish them off.

"What do you mean? How do you do it?"

It felt like I was telling a kid Santa wasn't real, which is not to suggest that she's naive - I'd made the same assumption when I started hunting. I thought a hit meant death. I learned immediately that it doesn't always.

I didn't get to hunt with Rachel on Sunday. When I left Jamie's party, Rachel was too far out in the field for me to chase after her without running the risk of botching a shot by being in her zone of fire. But when she came in, I asked how she did. Turns out she got one:

I had to goad her to smile. Something was wrong.

I didn't ask. But I just rattled on about hunting. I don't know what I said - something about downing birds by breaking their wings, rather than killing them outright.

"That's what happened with this one," she said, grimacing. "He had to ..." She finished the sentence by making a fist and twirling it in a circle.

"Helicopter it," I said.

"Yeah."

"That's the hard thing about bird hunting," I told her. You can't be precise the way you can with a rifle.

"If you want to hunt birds, you're going to have to get comfortable with that," I said. "And if you can't, you might want to stick with big game - things you can hunt with a rifle."

When we all gathered at the end of the hunt, she brought it up on her own. "They're telling me I might be a better farmer than a hunter."

"That's OK," I said. "It's not for everyone."

In fact, that's one of of the things I tell people is great about this women's hunting camp. For $200, you do it all in one weekend: hunter ed, shooting practice, hunt. You don't have to have a gun; you can borrow or rent one. And if you hate hunting, you're out $200 and two days of your life.

Rachel's fear is one of the most common ones with women: We have a deep aversion to causing pain. It can be a stopper.

Finally, I come to Monique.

Monique is one of last year's grads who came to the camp for a hunter ed refresher, shooting practice and the hunt.

While she has gotten some hunting in since last year's camp, I know it hasn't been enough. She wanted more.

By the time I caught up with her in a field parking lot on Sunday, she'd already gotten a bird, which she was more than happy to show me.

A bunch of us were standing there in the parking lot jawing, giving the dogs a rest,  when someone else fired at a bird in a nearby field and missed. We all looked up - everyone had been instructed that you should always look to see if the hunter missed the bird, sending it where you might get it.

Sure as hell, the rooster sailed past our parking lot, just out of range. But of course, everyone was unloaded.

"Anyone got a gun handy?" I asked, watching to mark where the bird would land. He hadn't even touched down on terra firma when Monique walked past me with her shotgun, stepped out of the parking lot, loaded up, and said, "Let's go!"

We didn't get that one, but we marked a couple other birds that other hunters scared our way, and ultimately, one of the dogs flushed one in range.

Aaaaand, she got it:

It was nearing noon. "Tell me if you want to stop," Monique said, "because I could do this all day."

I grinned.

I'm not sure why I love witnessing that kind of transformation. Is it because she's now part of the sisterhood? Is it the fact that there's one more person in the world who understands how hunting can grip you in a way you never imagined? Is it taking pride in having played a small role in getting her to this place?

I don't know. I just know it was a beautiful thing.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Coyote crap, a stranger's off-the-cuff comment, and the problem with 'sport' hunting

I had about a dozen errands to run this morning, and one of them was a visit to my pharmacy in Folsom. No more than two steps out of my car, I spotted a dung heap on the pavement.

Dog? Nope. I could see from the fruity contents that it was coyote poop - no surprise, given that my medical center abuts some undeveloped land with plenty of connections to waterways.

No more than two steps after that, I heard a woman farther back in the parking lot exclaim, "That's a coyote!"

Damn, she could tell from there?

No. I looked up and she was pointing. There was a young 'yote trotting down the sidewalk adjacent to the medical center.

"He'd better get out of here before he gets dead," she said, and I agreed as we started walking toward the building's entrance.

"I like coyotes," I told her. "I'm a hunter, but I'm not interested in killing them."

"You're a hunter?" she said, starting to size me up, as I did the same with her. She was, like me, a middle-aged white woman, typical suburbanite.

I nodded.

"For meat or for sport?"

I grinned. Thank you, God. You couldn't have sent this woman to me at a better time.

"For meat," I told her. In the remaining steps of our shared path, we discussed various types of waterfowl's tendencies to mate for life. She really hoped I didn't hunt geese; I admitted that I did. Then we parted company with a couple pleasant have-a-nice-days.

Why was I so happy she said "for meat or for sport?" Because she perfectly illustrated a point I've been making recently over at Tovar Cerulli's Mindful Carnivore, where there's been a spirited discussion about the merits of calling hunting a "sport."

I was going to drop this anecdote in a comment over at Tovar's place, but I realized that while I have made many comments about how much I hate the term "sport hunting" on this blog and on others', I have never written a post devoted to the subject.

This chance meeting with a stranger gave me an excuse to rectify that. Plus, it gave me the chance to start a story with a description of coyote feces, which not only satisfies my need to be unusual, but also provides a point of contemplation for people who like to read deeply into writers' messages.

Time to get to the point: For this woman, there were two types of hunting: You either hunt for meat, or you hunt for sport. The two are mutually exclusive. Based on my extensive monitoring of what non-hunters say about hunting, I believe she represents a LOT of non-hunters.

That, in a nutshell, explains my loathing for the term "sport hunting" as a description for what hunters in America do. Non-hunters - who constitute a vast majority in every state in the U.S. - often hear "sport" and think we're just killing for shits, giggles and heads on our walls. (Some people do, in fact, hunt just for thrills and heads. But I've found them to be an extreme, albeit highly visible, minority.)

Anti-hunters hear "sport" and say, "It's not a sport if the animals don't have guns, too."

I just don't see how clinging stubbornly to this term does us a damn bit of good.

I have heard a lot of defenses of the term "sport hunting." My good friend Phillip has argued - lucidly, as always - that hunting is recreation for most Americans. We don't have to do it. We don't hunt just for meat; we hunt because we enjoy it.

While I prefer to turn that argument around and say, "We don't have to get our meat at grocery stores," I still have to agree that Phillip is essentially correct, and very honest, in his assessment. Hunting is something most of us choose to do in our free time, not something we are compelled to do.

But I still don't like "sport."

I also know that "sport hunting" was used more than a century ago to distinguish between that notion of recreational hunting and "market" or "commercial" hunting, which we don't do anymore because that was wiping out game species. We still see vestiges of these mutually exclusive terms in fishing: it's either commercial fishing or sport fishing.

Even so, I think the fact that "sport" means something entirely different - and entirely negative - to people who aren't part of the hunting community makes it a poor word choice for us.

I'd always read and heard that sport hunting v. market hunting was the origin of the term, but over on Tovar's blog, Jim Tantillo informed me that there was a deeper history of the term, tying it to concepts of fair chase. Here's an excerpt:

The ancient Greeks hunted for recreation and had a concept of “sport” that went along with it. Sport is where the rules of “fair” chase come from. Greek hunters were critical of later Roman hunters who hunted in so-called “Oriental fashion,” i.e., from elevated platforms, simply waiting to sluice animals as they were driven past the platform. This offended the Greek sensibilities of what was fair/unfair.

Fast forward to the middle ages, and you see fair chase developed in mature form and associated with honor and chivalric behavior generally. Again, hunting as a highly ritualized activity with arbitrary rules designed to restrict the hunter’s advantage–as opposed to poaching with crossbows, sluicing animals in mud wallows or water, etc.–basically is present in virtually all aspects by the 12th or 13th century.

This did not change my opinion. I don't think that non-hunters hear "sport" and think of noble Greek hunters, as opposed to lazy Roman hunters. And personally, I prefer commonsense rules (e.g., the North American Wildlife Conservation Model - the very basis of modern American hunting laws) over arbitrary ones.

In short: I don't care about the history of the term, recent or ancient. I don't care if it's being misused, or unjustly maligned. The reality is that people who aren't familiar with hunting hear "sport" and think, "Ew, that's disgusting. Why would you kill living beings just for sport?"

Language changes. Words we love take on different meanings over time. That's when we retire them - which is precisely what we should do with the term "sport hunting."

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Good reading: 'Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals'

When I read books about the relationship between humans and other animals, I'm looking for several things: Insights that help me understand my thoughts, emotions and actions; ammunition for my rhetorical battles with anti-hunters; and, believe it or not, facts or ideas that challenge my thinking and assumptions.

I got all three with the new book, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by anthrozoologist Hal Herzog.

When someone from TLC Book Tours asked me last month if I'd like a copy of the book for review, it took me about two seconds to say, "Yes, please!" From the title alone, I could see it'd be right up my alley.

Once it arrived, I tore through it, and I loved it. Mostly.

The big take-away from this book is that we humans are wildly inconsistent and hypocritical in our attitudes toward, and treatment of, animals. Moreover, the more we try to be moral purists in our regard for animals, the harder it is for us to behave consistently toward them.

I suspect many vegans can relate to that, because it's just hard to live in a way that doesn't use animals at all. I found I could relate to it as well: Hunting has taken me on a journey that has soured my view of agriculture because of how it manipulates nature - both animals and plants - but I find it pretty much impossible to escape ag and live up to my own ideal.

This book has lots of other intriguing ideas and facts that, combined with Herzog's conversational writing style, make this a good read. Here's one of my favorites:

We have some really wacky inconsistencies arising from our use of animals in research, which Herzog illustrates with the distinction between "good mice" and "bad mice" in a lab at the University of Tennessee.

The use of mice in a research projects at the lab is allowed only after a committee weighs the potential benefits of the research against the harm that will be inflicted on the mice. Once a project is approved, there are strict guidelines for the treatment of mice. Those are the good mice.

Then there the bad mice: the vermin running loose, threatening the hyper-clean conditions of the lab. The people running the lab can do anything they want to eradicate these mice, and the method they use is sticky traps. Here's what Herzog says about them:

Sticky traps are rodent flypaper. Each trap consists of a sheet of cardboard about a foot square, covered with a tenacious adhesive and embedded with a chemical mouse attractant - hence their other name, glue boards. In the evening, animal care technicians would place glue boards in areas where pest mice traveled, and check them the next morning. When a mouse stepped on a sticky trap, it would become profoundly stuck. As it struggled, the animal's fur would become increasingly mired in glue. Though the traps did not contain toxins, about half of the animals were dead when the were found the next day...

Animals caught in sticky traps suffer a horrible death. I doubt that any animal care committee would approve an experiment in which a researcher requested permission to glue mice to cardboard and leave them overnight. Thus a procedure that was clearly unacceptable for a mouse labeled "subject" was permitted for a mouse labeled "pest."

Here's the kicker: The "bad" mice were not wild animals; they were escaped "good" mice.

Bonus points to Herzog for admitting to the same hypocrisy in his own home. When his son's pet mouse died, the family held a respectful funeral for the little rodent and buried him in the garden with a slate headstone. A couple days later when Herzog's wife discovered mouse poop in the kitchen, "She looked at me and said, 'Kill it,'" he wrote. He did, with a snap trap, and he tossed its corpse under a bush not far from the pet mouse's grave site.

One recurring theme in the book - what struck me as the biggest consistency in how we treat animals - is that we give the most respect and courtesy to the animals that are considered family (i.e., pets), and the least to animals that are generally out of our sight (i.e., farm animals).

Personally, I think we treat humans the same way. I'm not gonna lie: The plight of a human in my family or my community means way more to me than the plight of a human halfway across the country, or on the other side of the world.

This certainly explains how I can be a devoted slave to my cat Giblet at one moment, then head out to slaughter wild animals that are pretty close to her in size, and even charm, the next. Giblet is family; ducks are not.

It also explains why I might never raise animals for meat, despite the fact that I grew up in a household that did so: I'm not sure I could keep an animal in my care (making it like family), then slit its throat.

It's totally irrational, and totally human, that I feel that way.

Or wait, maybe it's not just human. Check this out:

Herzog wrote about some research aimed at determining whether mice would react to pain being inflicted on other mice. What kind of pain? Oh, injecting mild acid in their stomachs, injecting irritants into their paws and heating the surface mice were standing on until they lifted their paws to get away from it.

The results? Yes, mice who were subjected to these little tortures writhed more when they were in the presence of other mice being tortured than they did when they were being tortured in isolation ... but only if the fellow torture victims were relatives or cage-mates.

But wait, there's more! Pain was contagious only to mice who could see their relatives or cage-mates suffering. Merely smelling or hearing those fellow suffering mice did not affect them. Out of sight, out of mind.

This book is full of lots of fascinating stuff like this, and it covers way more than animal research: Herzog delves into pets, agriculture, cockfighting and animal rights/animal advocacy.

But I was really disappointed with one aspect of the book: Herzog didn't address hunting in any substantial way, despite the fact that hunters often express the baffling sentiment that we love the animals we hunt - not just that we love to hunt them and eat them, but that we revere and respect them. While I've given this paradox a great deal of thought on my own, I was really hoping to learn more from a researcher.

Moreover, I got the strong sense that Herzog doesn't particularly understand hunters or hunting. For example, in his chapter on cockfighting - which he studied at great length - he says this:

If cockfighters were sadistic perverts, it would be easy to explain their involvement in a cruel bloodsport. But given that most are not, how can they participate in an activity that is illegal and that nearly everyone in America thinks is immoral? The answer is that they construct a moral framework based on a mix of wishful thinking and logic in which cockfighting becomes completely acceptable. In this regard they are no different from any other person who exploits animals - hunters, circus animal trainers, even scientists and meat-eaters.

I don't object to his conclusion about the moral framework we construct. I accept that we do that. For some people, killing animals is justified by God giving mankind dominion over animals. I don't personally buy that; I justify my hunting by the fact that hunting is a fact of life in nature. Other people don't buy that either. And I know a vegan who eats oysters, despite the fact that they are living beings, because someone gave her an article in which someone said it was OK for vegans to eat them.

I don't object to the term "exploit" either, because I take it at its literal definition (to use), not with its emotional connotation (to abuse).

What bugs me is that he lumped hunters in with circus animal trainers, while he put scientists and meat eaters in a higher class. Yes, I'm really parsing words here, but I don't think I'm wrong. Hunters are meat eaters who go out and get their own, but I'm not sure he groks that.

If Herzog has spent any time researching hunters personally, it's not apparent in this book. I think every mention of hunters references someone else's research.

And funny thing? Because he spent a lot of time with cockfighters and got to know how they pamper their birds, he acknowledges that cockfighting produces far less suffering than producing broiler chickens. Yet, while he doesn't advocate the end of broiler chicken production, he does advocate the end of cockfighting. "It is time for rooster fighters to close down the pits and swap their gaffs for golf clubs and bass boats," he writes.

Bass boats? Those instruments of contest-driven, high-speed torture-and-release fishing? Really?

I guess Herzog suffers from the same moral inconsistencies as the rest of us.

Now, I don't think any of this should dissuade you from buying this book. If you're interested in how humans relate to and interact with animals, you'll learn a lot. And you'll probably think more carefully about your own views. Just don't expect to learn much about hunters.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

When a hunter thinks like a vegan - Part II

It's been nearly a month since I wrote my incredibly depressed post about the hopelessness of mankind, and I've started to reach some helpful conclusions since then.

In case you missed that post, here's the short version: My admiration of hunter-gatherers for their balanced relationship with nature had been decimated by my realization that even when we were all hunter-gatherers, we as a species were constantly seeking more, more, more. The role model I had discovered when I started hunting was, it turns out, just an early version of our modern raping-and-pillaging selves.

Having been thinking like that for quite some time, I found myself desperate to get back on an even keel, because depressed self-loathing is ... well ... depressing.

One of the things that's been helpful is a book I bought a long time ago, but hadn't read yet: Adventures Among Ants.

I'd hoped to finish the whole book and review it here, but quite honestly, there are some days when the author loses me, so I'm not done yet. Reading it is like having a conversation with an incredibly nerdy scientist - he alternates between being really engaging with his passion for the topic and being so detailed that I lose interest.

Nonetheless, I have picked up some fascinating insights. For example: Marauder ants will kill other species of ants that dare to get in their way, but they will not eat them. Instead, they set the other ants' carcasses aside and cover them with dirt.

Sounds remarkably like a burial, doesn't it?

Another thing I know is in this book, though I haven't gotten to it yet, is that leaf cutter ants are farmers that have created monocultures, and they're starting to have problems, such as disease, associated with monocultures. This, of course, sounds a lot like a problem human farmers have.

See where I'm going with this?

I don't necessarily believe that ants are on a parallel course with humans. It seems clear to me that we have screwed up the planet far more than ants ever will, though I acknowledge that may be a function of my unavoidably human perspective.

Even so, reading this book has been a helpful reminder to me that we are not alone on this planet in terms of having organized societies and the problems (and quirks) that go with them.

And that notion got me thinking the other day: One of the things we talked about in the comment thread of that first post was the notion that perhaps we're doing what we're supposed to do - that our trajectory as a species that battles with nature, to nature's detriment, is inevitable.

I reluctantly believe that it is. But here's the thing: I've come to believe that any other animal species would do the same if it had the same staggering brainpower that humans have, relative to other species.

Think about it. Is there a single animal on earth that will not jump at the chance to exploit a resource to the fullest extent?

Example One: Hank loves to tell the story of a whitetail doe he killed in Wyoming. She was the fattest deer he'd ever seen, because she had found a farmer's alfalfa field and just plopped down in that field day after day, stuffing herself. (The farmer, by the way, was grateful that Hank put that to an end, and Hank was grateful to make a venison sausage that required no additional fat.)

Example Two: Our cat Harlequin loves hunting, but she can't resist the bowl of easy food that awaits her in our house - she'll eat everything we put out for her.

Example Three: A couple years ago I went pheasant hunting on a sheep farm and I was appalled at the destruction coyotes had wrought. A lot of sheep were giving birth to lambs at the time, and we came across a heart-rending sight: one day-old lamb draped across another, stashed away in the cattails. The farther we went on our hunt, the more carcasses of all sizes we found. Judging by how many were still encased in their own skin and wool, it was obvious the 'yotes weren't even hungry - they just couldn't resist the easy kill.

It is a basic fact of life that each and every one of us survives by taking advantage of resources around us, and the better we are at doing that, the more we will do it - even if it's unnecessary or even detrimental to ourselves.

Normally, nature's system of checks and balances does a pretty good job of limiting this behavior: Exhaust your food resource? You starve to death. Eat too much? You become a desirable food source for someone else.

The fact that other animals haven't exploited the earth as ruthlessly and selfishly as we have isn't a function of any sort of nobility or wisdom; it's a function of not having the brainpower to thwart nature's checks and balances as successfully as we have (so far).

Strangely, this line of thinking is starting to make me feel better. Why? It's partly because while our path as a species is destructive, it's actually entirely consistent with the biological mandate of every living thing on earth: Exploit your environment to the fullest extent, grow strong, and multiply. Or, die out and become nothing more than a fossilized memory.

It's also partly because of the last comment I got on the original post on this topic, which came from someone named Jessica:

I guess the only consolation I have is, at least you care. At least you feel the tension between who we are and what we've become. So what's underneath all our civilization - what is the real, true truth about us? That we're not meant to live out of harmony with nature?

If that's true, then every time you do something for the natural world, you're committing an act of beauty. And while it might not stop our human trajectory, it's still, well, beautiful. Maybe because it's so hopeful, and so selfless.

So you probably do beautiful things all the time, and encourage other people to think about who we really are as humans. And that's a good thing, right?

Jessica's words echoed some of the points made by other commenters on that post, but it came at a point in my thinking when it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Maybe her point is, in fact, the case. If it is, then there are a lot of us out committing such acts any way we can, from the vegans who want to minimize harm caused to other animals on their behalf, to the environmentalists who donate their time and money to fight environmental devastation, to the hunters who participate in a system that supports habitat for animals while providing an amazing alternative to factory-farmed meat.

These things may not change the outcome of humanity's impact on the earth and its inhabitants, but there is, at least, some nobility in the effort. It's certainly more than our biological mandate requires. Perhaps any species with comparable brainpower would do the same.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

When a hunter thinks like a vegan

Hunting has been, for me, two parallel journeys.

One is obvious: Acquiring gear, learning how to use it, learning how to hunt. That I began this journey at age 41 has been sheer delight. I enjoy stretching my brain, and revel in the fact that I didn't leave behind learning when I finished my degree 22 years ago.

The second journey - a journey of the mind - has been equally thrilling. Until recently.

This journey has its roots in this blog, which I started on Nov. 4, 2007 - one year to the day after the first time I pulled the trigger on a shotgun.

I quickly became enamored with writing not just about hunting, but in defense of hunting. Hank would call it "the zeal of a convert," but to me, it was just a natural response to discovering that hunters, and hunting, weren't what I'd thought they'd been. At all.

When you make it your personal mission to defend hunting, one thing you quickly find out is there's one aspect of what we do that is incredibly hard to explain, satisfactorily, to non-hunters: We deeply love an act that culminates (on good days) in taking another creature's life.

Why?

Interestingly enough, while most hunters will never articulate the reason as well as Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, every hunter I know says hunting provides a connection to nature. (This oversimplified answer, of course, prompts a predictable response from non-hunters: Can't you enjoy nature without killing it?)

But why? I kept asking myself. Why do we crave this connection?

I did a little introspection and became interested in the notion of Eden. Having been raised by atheists, I did not accept the Bible's explanation for why we left Eden, but I knew Eden once existed: It was the remnant of our past that I touched every time I went hunting.

Why was I so hungry for this?

I scoured other hunters' reading lists and Amazon for things that might help me understand, and I devoured a lot of books:

Ishmael, a novel that calls into question our 10,000-year-old assumption that the way we used to live was terrifying and awful.

The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, a book about restoring that way of life (albeit with some deeply flawed visions of the future).

The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World, a book about the tension between us civilized folk and some of the last remaining hunter-gatherers.

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, a scathing indictment of the precepts of vegetarianism that damns the agricultural revolution in the process.

Health and the Rise of Civilization, a detailed look at the deteriorating health that accompanied every transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural lifestyles.

Slowly, the why emerged and grew, and it led to an amusing discovery: I actually have something in common with anti-hunting vegans:

Vegans are ashamed of what we are - an omnivorous species that's built its bodies and brains in no small part on the flesh of fellow animals. They want to run away from that, as fast and as far as possible. They want to evolve into something else, so they have built for themselves a diet that reflects not their bodies' needs, but the moral construct through which they view the world.

I, on the other hand, am ashamed of what our species has become: an organism relentless in its quest to dominate and control nature, at the expense of plants and animals that have every bit as much right to be here as we do. I want to run away from that - to discard 10,000 years of agriculture and embrace the very lifestyle denigrated, quite unfairly, by the agriculturalists.

In one way, this is a righteous statement: I accept the terms and conditions under which nature operates. Life feeds life. It isn't always pretty for the individual (be it plant, animal or human), but hot damn, it works really well as a system when you don't eff with it.


It is also, of course, a perfect explanation of why hunting is not only acceptable, but essential, in the grand scheme of things. Individually, you can do it or not do it, but on the whole, it is vital. It is the very stuff of life. Vegans can entertain whatever fantasies they like about how nature should work in a "moral" world, but the reality will remain the same.

The problem, though, is this: At its core, this is is still a worldview rooted in self-loathing, and that, my friends, is unhealthy.

When you really examine the concept of what it means to control and manipulate nature the way we do, you see demons everywhere. Every disposable coffee cup looks like an unconscionable waste of resources. Every car, an obscene destroyer of air and land. Every subdivision, an unnecessarily large usurpation of habitat.

I mean, seriously, can anyone argue that these are good things? Convenient, yes, but good? I think not.

Of course, I use all of these things. I try to minimize my environmental footprint: I can and do use travel mugs and canvas shopping bags. I drive a four-cylinder car. I have a back yard in which a substantial chunk is allowed to go wild, providing habitat for little creatures.

But I am undeniably a member of a destructive species that, when given the chance, is shamefully wasteful.

I used to believe that we are capable of doing better. Back in the 1990s, I used to play a computer game called SimEarth. It was super fun: You get a planet with a bunch of types of animals - primates, reptiles, fish, etc. - and you tinker with conditions that will determine which becomes the dominant "higher" life form. You can change the tilt of the earth's axis, change how much light is reflected from the planet, and after a civilization has emerged, alter the balance of investment in art, philosophy and science.

The game follows clear patterns: Your dominant species grows too large, wages wars, wrecks the planet and implodes in an epidemic of disease and/or destruction. If you're really good, though, you can maintain a small outpost of highly advanced civilization that has learned to live in non-destructive harmony with the planet.

I used to believe that humanity might be capable of reaching such an apex of civilization. But now I'm not so sure.

It was that last book that killed my hope - Health and the Rise of Civilization. I used to think the hunter-gatherers lived right, in harmony with other plants and animals. But that book showed me that all of human history has been marked by the same drive to expand beyond the bounds of our habitat.

When we needed to grow, we pushed into new territories. When there were no new territories left to fill, we pushed our hunter-gatherer diet, adding less nutritious foods like grains. When that was no longer enough, we invented agriculture - the ultimate control of fellow plants and animals. When that was no longer enough, we invented ever more clever means of extracting what we could from the plants and animals around us.

The trajectory of more more more has always been there, though it was far less noticeable before the agricultural revolution.

I had been, at the time I read that book, working up the courage to write a book of my own, about the intellectual journey that hunting had sparked in me. But the journey was taking me to such a dark place that I couldn't bear the thought of going through with it. Even if I could write it, I couldn't imagine who would want to read such a depressing tome, besides the people who think the world is coming to an end on May 21.

I became deeply depressed, so I abandoned the book. I immersed myself in work, which was, at the time, blissfully busy. I went on gun-less hikes and fruitless turkey hunts. I started to feel better.

It has taken me more than a month just to feel ready to write this blog post, and still with every new paragraph I spew out, I contemplate hitting the "delete" button.

If I actually hit "publish," I almost feel sorry anyone who reads this far. I'm not the kind of writer who enjoys wallowing in her depression. I find depression insufferable, particularly when it's my own.

But I'm looking for something.

Just as most of you have gone through the same stages of hunter development that I've been going through, I'm thinking you may have been down these intellectual roads as well.

So tell me, please: Once you discover the beauty of what we used to be, how do you gracefully accept what we've become? Because if this is just one of those stages in my parallel intellectual journey, I'm quite ready to move on.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Nature, struggle and the irrational impulse to take sides

Something was different at Lake Natoma on Sunday.

It wasn't just that the grass had gotten a lot taller, though that certainly had a huge effect on my weekly hike. The wild oats were up to my waist in places, and I could hear from the way they rustled in the wind that they had already started to dry out - a first step toward painting the hillsides gold for the summer.

I was more than a little bit nervous as I tried to find my deer trails in this stuff - it's plenty warm enough for rattlesnakes to be a concern. So I abandoned all attempts at stealth and made as much noise as possible to avoid catching one by surprise. I hear that never ends well.

The funny thing was that despite making all kinds of noise, I kept catching game by surprise.

When I rounded a corner at the top of one hill, there were two toms with enormous, ground-scraping beards about 20 yards ahead. They boogied into the grass and down the hill, their blood-red heads bobbing through the grass so obviously that I could have killed them both easily, had I been able to carry a shotgun.

A hundred yards beyond that, I startled a hen turkey, though she was further ahead than the boys, and she hightailed it out of my range pretty quickly. Fifty yards beyond that, I startled a dove that sat on a well-worn path just a few feet in front of me - how could he have let me get so close?

And so it continued. This was obviously the day we should have gone turkey hunting with our friend Evan, not last weekend. Something was definitely in the air.

For the final stretch of my hike, I connected to a well-traveled asphalt bike path and I hadn't gone more than 100 yards when a shape under an oak tree caught my eye. A turkey shape. Ten yards away.

I stopped and stared. It was definitely a hen turkey. Her wings drooped a bit and her eyes were closed.

Sleeping?

Then she took a step, very slowly, eyes barely open. Then another.

Something wasn't right. To test my theory, I stepped off the bike path into the shade of the oak, maybe seven yards from her now. She didn't move. I sat back on my heels and watched.

Something was really wrong - there's no way a hen turkey would let me get this close. She looked like she had been poisoned. Who would poison a turkey? I didn't think turkeys would even eat the kinds of poisons that people leave out for mammalian vermin.

I watched some more.

That's when I heard the sound to my right. I instantly had a pretty good idea what it was. Most sounds come from a single point, so when you hear a sound that comes from many points along a line all at once, what you have is a snake in the grass.

I looked away from the turkey and quickly zeroed in on a part of the body slithering past me - away from the turkey, toward a pile of branches next to the bike path, almost close enough to touch.

Body: Not huge.

Head or tail? Saw the head first, its tongue flicking rapidly.

I was pretty sure I recognized it, but I'd need to see the tail to confirm. Wait, wait, wait ...

Yup, rattler. Not the biggest I've ever seen, but I counted five or so beads on the rattle, so it was pretty mature. And did I mention how close it was? Yeah, close enough that it could've struck before I knew what happened if I had provoked it, intentionally or unintentionally.

So I just sat there and watched.

And then I wondered: Was it fleeing the scene of the crime?

I can't imagine a 5-year-old rattler choosing a turkey for a meal. But here I had a turkey that looked like a victim of poison, and a poisonous snake slithering from the scene.

And it upset me. Watching that hen was like watching an animal I've just shot: I put myself in her head, fighting the losing battle. "Sweetie, you are doomed," I thought, sadly.

Then I wondered whether she'd laid eggs yet. I'd come across lots of empty shells during my hike, so I knew birds of some sort were hatching (or being stolen and eaten). If she had laid eggs already, would this rattlesnake have cost her her whole family's life?

That got my maternal instincts going. "Protect babies, at all costs." That's serious genetic coding right there. Not that it did anyone any good.

It was easy to see, in that moment, how non-hunters view us and what we do. I knew, rationally, that if in fact that rattlesnake had bitten this turkey, that it was just how life works. We all feed off of each other. We all cause pain.

But no amount of logic was going to keep me from taking sides, because one animal in front of me was suffering, and the other was not. Despite the fact that if I had encountered this hen in the fall in a place where I could hunt, I might be celebrating having killed her instead of mourning the end of her life.

I don't know that there's any grand message to take away from this. It is what it is.

Perhaps it's just a simple reminder that, to many people, even to those who intellectually understand and accept what we do, we hunters are the snakes in nature's life-and-death struggle.

Does it mean we shouldn't continue playing a role that we have played for hundreds of millenia? Nope. We are what we are.

I guess it just means we shouldn't be surprised by how others see us.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Guilty as charged: I love whole ducks, and there's a really good reason for that

I was accused the other day of being a snob because I am a proponent of using as much of the animals we kill as possible. This means, most importantly, that I don't breast out ducks.

Not only does this position risk offending established hunters who grew up breasting out their ducks, I was told, but it risks alienating hunting newbies by holding them up to a standard that, basically, only the stupendous and amazing Hank could meet.

Well, Hank is a freak, and he'd be the first to admit that. He makes wild boar liver creme caramel, goose gizzard carpaccio and duck liver ravioli. And it's all good. I know, because I eat everything he cooks.

But, seriously, duck hunters, I don't expect you to cook like he does (though it would be nice if you ordered his upcoming book, Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast, which comes out in late May).

And I'm not going to start telling Yo' Mama jokes if your mama raised you to breast out your ducks.

I will, however, strongly encourage you to use more than just the breasts of the ducks you kill, because 1) there's a ton of tasty meat on the rest of the duck, and 2) you don't have to be a great chef to make it taste good.

Let's address Point 2 first. I do very little cooking in our house, because Hank is just way better at it. But I do roast my own whole ducks, because it's super easy.

The short version is that you salt the duck, brown it all over in a cast iron pan, pop it in a 450-degree oven, cook it until the breast meat hits 135 degrees, let it rest under a tent of foil for five minutes, then serve. (Here are the detailed duck roasting instructions.)

Though teal and ruddy ducks are single-serving critters, I can usually get at least two meals out of a medium-sized duck (wigeon, gadwall) and three out of a large duck (mallard, pintail).

This is where we get to Point 1.

The first meal is slicing off the breasts. I did this for lunch just this Thursday with a fat little wigeon I killed in December, and here's how much meat I got from the breasts:


So, that's what you would've gotten off this bird if you'd breasted him out. That scale reads 4 3/8 ounces. And yes, these were like crack cocaine - after I finished eating the breasts, I wanted to go eat the rest of the bird, bones and all.

But I was saving it for this blog post, so I threw the rest of the carcass into the fridge to chill overnight. Then this morning, I picked off all the meat, fat and skin that I could get - this would be a lunch I could take to take to work.

Now, this wigeon was particularly obese, so I got a lot of fat. But apparently Hank really wrecked his wings when he shot him, because this pato gordito came out of the package looking like Venus de Milo - no wing meat for me!

(I know duck wings seem pretty insubstantial and are a total pain in the ass to eat on the bone. But when you're picking the carcass, there's definitely enough meat on the wings to make them worth the effort.)

When it was all picked, I diced up the meat so I could throw it into a quick fried-rice concoction: Duck bits (no added fat needed), chili flakes, garlic, salt, rice.

Here's what I got:


Yep, that's 5 1/4 ounces.

Now, if you're concerned about all that Fatty McFat Wigeon's fat clogging my arteries, don't be - I saved the fat from the frying pan, and it was still liquid at room temperature this morning - a sign it's good-for-you fat. (And if you'd like to read my smug blog post on my latest cholesterol test, click here.)

Now, people like my buddy Charlie would need two of those wigeons to make a satisfying meal (though he'd really prefer if they were two pintails). That's not the point here. The point is that if you think there's not enough meat on a duck to make it worth eating more than the breasts, you might want to reconsider.

What if you hate plucking whole ducks? I sure understand that - plucking is a pain in the butt, and it's the last thing I want to do with my stupid arthritic hands after a day in a wet and windy marsh (I prefer wrapping them around a glass of bourbon).

There is an easier alternative: pluck the breasts and legs and take them out together, each breast attached to a leg. My friend Brent, who hunts up at Lower Klamath, processes his ducks like this, then marinates and grills them. They taste outstanding every time.

The upshot? You worked hard to bring those ducks home. You might as well get all the meat out of them that you can. It sure can't hurt to try, right?

UPDATE: Since writing this blog post, I've produced three videos on how to handle whole ducks:

How to Skin a Duck: For sea ducks or other ducks with off flavors. Removing the skin and fat removes the bad flavors.

How to Pluck a Duck: For all ducks that always taste good (where we live, that's generally pintail, greenwing teal, mallard and wigeon; spoonies and gadwalls can be iffy).

How to Gut a Duck: Part two of the process you begin with plucking.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Something I have in common with Wayne Pacelle

I came across news the other day that HSUS head Wayne Pacelle has a book coming out next month, and I was struck - oddly enough - by how much I liked the title: The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them.

Don't worry, folks - I'm not giving up the gun or anything. Stick with me here.

The part of the title I like is "our kinship with animals," because it is hunting that has made me realize how closely related we are. If nothing else, who can watch bucks in rut and not immediately think of ... men? What hunter can watch a hawk dive and come up empty-clawed and not think, "Better luck next time, brother"? What duck hunter can shoot a duck out of the sky, watch its mate circle, if not land, at great peril, and not recognize that for animals as well as for us, the pairing bond can be very strong?

I'm pretty sure that last thought in particular might put me more in the camp of pro-animal rights folks like Pacelle than of hunters. I've often heard from fellow hunters - as I heard from all kinds of people throughout my pre-hunting life - that we're not supposed to anthropomorphize.

But I no longer believe what I'm doing is anthropomorphizing; what I'm doing is recognizing that while there are substantial differences between humans and other animals, there is far more animal in us than we like to admit. We're extremely clever, and we're blessed with opposable thumbs, but we still take an enormous number of actions day after day that are motivated by the same needs and instincts that drive animal behavior.

I started thinking seriously of other animals as kin when I read Woman the Hunter by Mary Zeiss Stange and came across a passage in which she said most hunter-gatherer cultures view birds and mammals as "us."

It was agricultural societies, she wrote, that started drawing sharp distinctions between us and the other animals. That strikes me as a great way to justify controlling animals to ensure that we can eat 100 percent of what we raise, rather than abide by the natural laws that govern and limit hunting success.

Now, since I brought up killing ducks out of mated pairs, I need to answer the question, "How can you do that?" If I believe animals are kin, don't I think they suffer and mourn the way we do?

The answer is no. But I don't think all humans suffer and mourn the way we do. I think our culture in particular raises us with a tremendous and unjustified sense of entitlement - that we are entitled to avoid death, disease, pain and suffering. We feel we have been wronged when these things are visited upon us, and we rail against it, which does little more than prolong our suffering.

This idea first struck me last summer when I read a blog post by Olivia Nalos over at Versus in which she explored the simpler lives people lived in some of the third-world places she has hunted. They "get over things easier than we do," she wrote. "Take death for instance; AIDS is rampant and people die of cholera, malaria, starvation and other harsh diseases. Regardless, they move on with life quickly."

You don't even have to look to third world countries to see this in action. Has anyone else been following how the Japanese have reacted to the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis? It sucks, but they move quickly to address problems, rather than wallow in self-pity. I think you can chalk that up to Buddhism, which teaches that life is suffering, and it's how you react to that suffering that determines how much it will hurt.

That said, I still believe animals do grieve when they lose offspring or partners to predators of any kind. Ever see or read about a cow elk bawling as her baby is hauled off by predators? (Hell, have you ever seen the Battle at Kruger video where the lions take down a baby buffalo and the whole herd of buffalo come back and kick their asses to save that baby?)

I just believe they move on way faster than we do.

Even so, how can I continue to kill animals if I believe we are kin? This part is simple, and this is where my thinking diverges sharply from the animal rights view: If one observes nature, it is obvious that all of us kin are out there killing and eating each other all the time. It's what we do if we're carnivores or omnivores.

In fact, I think the biggest flaw in pro-animal rights groups' logic is to suggest that we shouldn't engage in that behavior because we're better than those animals. That is a totally patronizing view: The lion kills gazelles because she's too stupid to know how wrong that is, so we'll give her a pass. But us humans? We're so much better that we shouldn't do that.

I'm not buying it. I don't think that me trying to live a life in balance with nature - where I get some of the animals I hunt, rather than getting all of the animals I keep in pens - is immoral. I don't think it's a function of morality at all. It's called eating.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

My hunting ethics - what I believe, and why

I don't come from a hunting tradition, so when it comes to core values and ethics, I've had to develop them from scratch. Some of my decisions about my hunting values have come from the gut; others are the result of lots of conversations with fellow hunters, non-hunters and even anti-hunters. And while it feels I've discussed all of them in one post or another on this blog, I haven't put them down in writing all in one place.

Until now.

What you see below is actually a new hunting ethics standalone page on the blog, because I wanted to make it really easy for any visitor here to find out with one click what kind of hunter I am.

But you can't leave comments on a static page, so I wanted to post this here, and invite you, dear readers, to weigh in. Specifically, I want to know how you feel about what I've written. Have I explained myself clearly? Have I been intellectually honest? Does my logic withstand scrutiny? Have I left anything out?

Your voice matters, not because my values are subject to popular vote, but because intelligent criticism makes me a better thinker.

So please, take a look and let me know what you think. I expect this to be a page that I'll update from time to time, either as my values evolve, or as my ability to articulate them sharpens.

My hunting ethics

Hunting is inherently controversial because it involves killing. When I tell non-hunters that I hunt, they always ask further questions that help them determine whether what I do is acceptable to them: What do you hunt? How do you hunt? Do you eat what you kill?

I've written about these things in great detail in various posts throughout the history of this blog, but I thought it would be worthwhile to have a synopsis in one place. So here's what I do, and why, and how I feel about others who do differently.

What I hunt: I hunt for food. I will not kill any animal that I am not willing to eat, unless it is threatening to harm me, other humans, or my extended family (which includes pets now, and possibly livestock someday). I have set these boundaries because I believe there must be a good reason to take a life. To that end, I won't even kill bugs that aren't harming me - I usher spiders out of the bathtub, and moths out of the house. Black widows, however, die. So do rattlesnakes that venture into human territory (like my mom's porch).

The specific types of animals I hunt include ducks, pigs, deer, turkeys, doves, pigeons and rabbits. Generally, the animals I love to hunt are the ones I love to eat, and the intensity with which I love to hunt them is directly proportional to how much I love to eat them.

How do I feel about people who hunt animals they don't eat? Honestly, I'm not sure. I try not to judge others, nor hold them to my values, particularly if I don't know anything about what they do. Example: I'm not remotely interested in hunting wolves. Some people do want to hunt wolves, and there may be situations in which wolves need to be hunted to bring their populations back into balance with other wildlife species. While I wouldn't want to pull the trigger, I may have to accept in some situations that it needs to be done.

I do think it's harder to justify hunting for something you won't eat, which means there is a tremendous burden on people who do so to have good reasons for what they do, and to be able to articulate those reasons to the non-hunting public.

My core ethic: This is the one by which I judge myself, and I do judge others: My goal is always the cleanest kill possible. In the event I have not made a clean kill, my goal is to do everything possible to find that animal and end its suffering. While I know nothing goes to waste in nature, I'd prefer that animals not suffer wounding by me just to become vulture food. To that end, I try to avoid shots in which there is a substantial likelihood of merely wounding and/or losing - the animal. This ethic is important to me because it is what I would hope for myself, were I to become prey.

While we all make mistakes, hunters who consistently take careless shots do a disservice to hunting.

That said, I love duck hunting above all, and wing shooting is a sport in which we know many birds escape us with injuries that may produce slow death or crippling. I don't know how to eliminate this, but I do work hard to improve my shooting and increase the likelihood that any bird I hit will not get away. My loss rate in the 2010-11 season was about 10 percent, and while this compares favorably with an average (self-reported) loss ratio of about 18 percent nationwide, I'd like to see that number go much lower.

What about "fair chase" hunting? "Fair chase" is hunting in which the animal has a chance to evade the hunter. I am not a fan of fair chase dogma for a number of reasons:

1) It feels arbitrary: High-fence hunting is not considered fair chase, but put-and-take hunting (e.g., planted pheasants) is, because technically the birds are not bound by a fence, even though they are bound by their inexperience in the wild.

2) Fair chase is all about how we feel, or how we appear to others, when we hunt. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether an animal is afforded the quickest death possible (see "My core ethic").

3) Fair chase is religion by which we anoint those who choose more challenging hunting conditions while we excoriate those who choose easier options. We loathe the hunter who acquires a magnificent trophy in the easiest of conditions, yet mounts it on his wall and brags about it as if he endured great challenge to get it. To that, I say go ahead and loathe him, but don't judge others who may behave perfectly honorably in non-"fair chase" situations.

How I hunt: I'm a relatively new hunter, and while I eagerly took every opportunity available to me in my first couple years of hunting, I now find myself hungry for more challenging hunts. This is not to impress anyone else, but to push myself to become a better hunter. (To me, the best hunter is one who could hunt successfully in utterly primitive conditions - one who could make his own blades, bows and arrows and use them effectively.)

What does this mean specifically? I'm not interested in hunting planted birds. While there are many legitimate reasons to hunt them, it's not for me. I'm not interested in hunting fenced animals, though in principle, I am fine with other people doing so - one can have a perfectly challenging and rigorous hunt inside a fence. I would like to hunt with a bow someday, which I know requires tremendous skill, but I'm not there yet, so it's merely a goal at this point.

It's worth noting that my attitudes toward challenge here stem in no small part from my growing admiration for animals that elude me. I laugh when the clever duck flies so close to me that I could touch him without me even getting off a shot. I admire the pig that can leave a wake of destruction that can be seen from outer space, yet never appear at a time and place where I can shoot him.

That said, it is important for my hunting to be successful at least some of the time, because this is how we put meat in our freezer. I don't see myself raising the challenge bar so high that I rarely bring home meat. That just seems silly.

What about hunting over bait? For almost every animal I hunt in California, hunting over bait is illegal, so this is a moot point. If it weren't illegal, I believe I still wouldn't do it for the reasons mentioned above: I prefer to be challenged. But if civilization came to a sudden end and there was no grocery store as a back-up source of meat, would I hunt over bait? Hell yes. I'd do whatever it takes to feed myself. If I lived in a place where baiting was not only legal, but the norm, I'd have to consider it, because not baiting under those circumstances might mean going without. A lot. But I'm glad I don't have to make that choice.

It's also worth noting that while the non-hunting public has a pretty visceral negative reaction to hunting over bait, doing so can actually afford the opportunity for cleaner kills (see "My core ethic") because animals will come in close and hold relatively still because they're eating.

Catch and release? I'm very uneasy about it - hooking an animal's mouth and wrestling him out of the water for my entertainment alone isn't my cup of tea. If I'm going to put a fish through that, it's going to be for good reason: so I can eat him. (And not surprisingly, as with hunting, my fishing propensities mirror what I like to eat: Spring run Trinity River salmon? Awesome. Love it. Tasty fish. Sturgeon fishing? Don't love the meat. Not interested in spending a lot of time trying to catch them.)

I have little experience with deliberate catch-and-release (only with releasing undersized fish), so I can't profess to know much about it. However, I would hope that catch-and-release anglers take the greatest care with the fish to ensure that they don't die of injury, exhaustion or whatever after being released.

Celebrating the hunt: Yes, I do this. Sometimes I will shout with joy when I've made a good shot. Sometimes I will pose for pictures with the animal(s) I've shot. I realize both of these things are a turnoff to many non-hunters, but the reality is this: Hunting is hard. Success is rarely guaranteed (see "How I hunt"). When I am successful, it means everything I've worked hard for has paid off. This makes me happy.

Rest assured that this does not mean I'm not aware of what it means to take a life. I am constantly aware. When I watch an animal I've shot struggle in his last moments of consciousness, I put myself in his shoes. It makes me queasy. I almost always apologize to animals I've shot, whether they're dead when I reach them or not.

Why I hunt: This could be the subject of a book, not an item on an ethics page on my blog. But it's worth noting here that I am deeply drawn to hunting because it connects me to what we humans have been for the vast majority of our time on earth. In a world gone mad with our perilous drive to "improve" on nature, hunting connects me to a life in which we lived in balance with the other denizens of this planet.

I believe our departure from a hunting-gathering lifestyle is the biggest mistake our species has ever made - that it isn't just bad for all the other denizens of this planet (which it is), but it's bad for us as well. I know that, realistically, there's no escaping the way we live now. But when I hunt, I feel like I'm doing what I was meant to do. One way or another, I have to eat, and I feel a hell of a lot better about my food when I've worked for it than I do when I've bought it at the grocery store.

Note: The post you just read is what I originally wrote, and it's going to stay that way - otherwise, some of the comments below just won't make sense.

To see how I have added to this in response to great issues raised by commenters, click over to the My hunting ethics page. Some of the things I've added so far include a note on the value of catch-and-release fishing (even though I don't like it), my thoughts on shooting ducks on the water, why I don't hunt with lead ammo anymore and how I feel about breasting out ducks.

Interested in joining some of the other excellent hunting ethics discussions raging these days? Check out:

Tovar Cerulli's Mindful Carnivore, specifically his post, Wounded animals, Uncomfortable hunters.

Phillip Loughlin's Hog Blog, specifically, "How Much Is Enough?" Parts I and II.

Tamar Haspel's Starving Off the Land, specifically her post, All's Fair.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011