Duck Dynasty: The mainstreaming of duck hunting, or just another hillbilly show? Or both?

Hmmmmmmmm ... so much to say on this topic. Let's start with the word in my headline that is most likely to be interpreted as a pejorative: "hillbilly." I assure you it is not, at least not on my part. Having spent five years in the South, I cringe when I hear any region of the South and its people being mocked, and it happens with some frequency.

But I used this word for a reason, which I will get to shortly. But first:

Something interesting happened last year in the world of hunting TV. First, the bad news: Steven Rinella's outstanding hunting show, "The Wild Within," did not get picked up for a second season on the Travel Channel.

Thankfully, Rinella didn't disappear: He now has a show called "Meat Eater" on the Sportsman Channel, and it's still outstanding. But I'm disappointed that Rinella and his message about the value of hunting for your own food won't be out there for mainstream audiences anymore.

At the same time that was going on, I heard a rumor that Duck Commander was leaving the Outdoor Channel for ... A&E.

A&E? Seriously? You're going to put ducks getting shot out of the sky on A&E? It didn't make sense, but when I saw Duck Commander was still on the Outdoor Channel last year - unfortunately at hours that didn't work for me - I figured the rumors must've been wrong.

But it turns out they were right. I was searching for a duck recipe on Hank's blog this weekend and there it was in an ad on the search page: Duck Dynasty - a new show on A&E, debuting March 21.

Well, I'll be damned. If you click on that Duck Dynasty link, I think you'll see that this show has the potential to be every bit as entertaining as the hunting show on the Outdoor Channel was, because the Robertsons are just plain interesting and entertaining people.

But the question remained: Why the Duck Commander crew move to A&E even as Rinella was leaving mainstream TV?

I got what might be part of the answer to that question second-hand, from a TV industry insider: "Hillbillies" are in these days.

Ah yes, how could I have forgotten? The History Channel's "Swamp People," a show about Louisiana alligator hunters, has been a monster success.

Who doesn't love alligator hunter Troy Landry? If I walk through a crowd at my university shouting, "Shooooot 'em! Shooooooooooooot 'em!," chances are that everyone around me will know exactly what I'm talking about - and they'll start laughing.

And not necessarily in a negative way. I don't think people love to make fun of Troy and his thick Cajun accent; I think they just love Troy. And thanks to Troy, a television industry already obsessed with reality shows has concluded that thick-accented Southern characters are a golden ticket. Especially if they kill things for a living.

I'm not surprised that America likes a show about killing alligators. Alligators are scary. They can eat us for breakfast.

But is America ready for a show about a family whose business is rooted in killing birds that are widely regarded as cute and harmless? Will the Robertson family charm make it palatable to the masses?

I guess we'll start getting the answer to that on March 21, 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central). I'll be watching.

© Holly A. Heyser 2012

Hunting television, modern cavemen and honest drama

Me, age 25

I was watching hunting TV the other night and becoming increasingly disgruntled.

The show - its name is irrelevant because it's one of many like this - had this incredibly artificial sense of drama. Every time the host opened his mouth, he sounded like he was in a life-or-death situation. This is ridiculous, because, let's face it: Hunting is life-or-death far more for the animals we hunt than it is for ourselves.

So, I grabbed the remote and started shopping around, and I soon found that the final installment of the Discovery Channel's "I, Caveman" was on. I'd never watched the show, but the promo said it involved the final hunt of a group of modern people living the Paleolithic life for 10 days, so I was on it.

My timing was impeccable - I got there just in time for the disclaimer: "This program contains scenes that may be disturbing to some people."

Phhddt. Grow up, people, I thought.

The group of made-for-TV cavepeople was hunting elk with atlatls - spear throwers - and they had just gotten close to the herd. The first one hurled his weapon and missed. Same for the second. The elk looked perplexed.

Then the third guy - an actual bowhunter back in real life - hurled his weapon and tagged a big bull in the neck.

And this is where the show won my respect.

I don't know how much time had elapsed, but the group of hunters approached the elk, which was on the ground, still alive, breathing with great labor. The hunters stood a few feet away and hurled their atlatls into his chest to finish him off. One of the hunters - a woman - sobbed as she did this. That, of course, brought me to tears. What an intense and terrible moment.

That's when it struck me: The hunting show I'd been watching had manufactured drama where there was little or none. But this non-hunting reality TV show had captured some of the most intense drama we encounter in hunting: that horrible moment where you come face-to-face with your prey before it's dead. It was deeply honest.

What's wrong with this picture?

Now, I can already anticipate the objection: We're all told to just let the animal die, to avoid approaching it while it's still alive. What these nouveau-paleos were doing broke that rule in a big way, and had that bull jumped up, they could've been killed. I'm hoping that the bowhunter helped call the shots on that off-camera.

Even taking that rule into account, though, you and I know damn well that the hunt-o-vision cameras capture some of these moments too. And just about all of them end up on the cutting room floor.

I think one reason for this is that we hunters are afraid to show the realities of hunting that cause our own hearts to skip a beat. If we say how awful these moments can be, aren't we just handing ammunition to the enemy?

The answer to that question, in my opinion, is no. The enemy already knows about these moments. Anti-hunters have already produced and distributed painful videos of not-quite-mortally-wounded animals. The fact that they will put that reality out there while we hide it actually hurts our cause. It makes us look dishonest.

Does this mean I want to turn on a hunting channel filled with these coup de grace moments? No, and frankly, I don't want my hunting to be filled with these moments either. They suck.

I just wish hunting TV would trade a little of its manufactured drama for a little of the reality we all know is out there.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

New show: Hunting TV on a non-hunting channel

The other day, my mom was telling me how my taking up hunting has changed her viewpoint: When she watches TV or listens to the radio, she's much more tuned in to how hunting is portrayed, and it bugs her when hunters are stereotyped as stupid, cruel or violent.

The good news is that there appears to be growing curiosity about hunting as a way to feed yourself (which is - DUH! - what hunting is), and there's a new television show that feeds that interest: Steven Rinella's The Wild Within.

If the name Rinella sounds familiar, it may be because of a New York Times op-ed piece he did a few years ago called Locavore, Get Your Gun. The gist of it, in case you don't feel like clicking over, is this: Eating local, sustainably produced meat may be all the rage these days, but hunters have been doing that all along.

Having a piece like that in the New York Times is important because it delivers a valuable message to the Times' huge non-hunting audience, showing an alternative to the stereotypes that may have shaped their views of us. But having a weekly television show on that topic may be even better. Read more...
I watched the premiere of Rinella's show last night on the Travel Channel, and on the whole, I thought it was really good.

The first episode featured Rinella at his part-time home in Alaska fishing for crab and shrimp, hunting deer and going on an opportunistic hunt where he might get bear or waterfowl (he got the latter). The show culminated in a meal with his wife and friends back at his home in Brooklyn. Get it? Hunting = food.

The overall tone is fairly adventure-oriented, kind of like Bear Grylls with a gun. In other words, this isn't Everyman Hunting - there's a definite survival orientation.

The highlight of the show, for me, came right after Rinella shot a deer. Directly addressing the camera/audience, he noted frankly that killing is inherently ugly, but hunters at least take direct responsibility for it, rather than delegating to a third party.

That, of course, is one of my favorite soapbox speeches, so I was thrilled to hear it coming through the megaphone of the Travel Channel.

I don't think we necessarily need to guilt-trip all the people who buy meat from third parties - there isn't enough wildland or wildlife left for everyone to hunt. But we do need to fend off the hypocrisy I hate the most: Meat eaters who think there's something wrong with hunting.

My only real criticism of the show is how it handled what came after Rinella killed that deer: the field dressing. That scene mostly featured close-ups of Rinella's hand cutting various parts, and shots of him talking to the camera with his hands in the deer, but with the frame cut off at his hands - you couldn't see the deer. I caught a glimpse of the deer's head only once, and only briefly.

In other words, the filming obscured the full reality of the dead deer in front of him, looking partly like a previously living animal, partly like meat and guts.

Being a mildly militant meat activist, I'd really like the public to see the whole reality of killing. I think the fact that we've sheltered most people from the reality of killing animals is the reason that we see so much hypocrisy and ignorance about killing animals for meat.

That said, I know exactly why Rinella's producers handled that scene this way. Just look at the reaction to the caribou-dressing scene in Sarah Palin's reality show - people were so freakin' offended that they were "forced" to watch an animal being transformed into meat. (Doubt me? Check out this hypocritical and vitriolic rant by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.)

I'm sure that some of the reaction to Palin's televised killing was rooted in people's disdain for her politics. But I also know that many people put such scenes in the same category as full frontal nudity - "How dare you expose our children to this?" - regardless of their political views.

So, I get it. My only hope is that shows like Rinella's will eventually help restore Americans' understanding of where food comes from, and we can get back to watching the full and honest reality of it without hysterics. It's certainly a good start.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

A hunting competition without flaw?

Hunting competitions can be fraught with risk: If you reward those who kill the biggest animals, you risk making it appear that the hunting is all about racks. If you reward those who kill the most animals, you risk making it appear that we'll kill way more than we can eat just to rack up numbers.

But I read a story in yesterday's New York Times about a hunting competition that seems to be absolutely perfect.

From the headline, "A Kind of Hunt That Even Deer Can Get Behind," I thought it might be a video game competition, or one that traded guns for cameras, both of which make me groan. (Nothing against wildlife photography; it's just not a meaningful substitute for hunting for me.)

But this competition - the Whitetail Pro Series, which will air on the Outdoor Channel in 2011 - focuses primarily on what I think is the most important aspect of hunting: making a clean kill. Read more...
In this contest, hunters head out each day with bolt-action 20 gauge shotguns, five blank shells and $1,200 digital scopes mounted on their guns. When they spot their deer, they hit a button to start recording and have 10 seconds to make the shot.

The judging for this contest involves taking the memory card out of the scope and reviewing all the shots frame-by-frame to see who made the cleanest shots. Hunters also earn points based on the age of deer they "shoot" - shooting a wary mature doe is worth more than shooting a goofy young buck.

Says the story:

The main goal of the series, according to Greg Koch, the founder of the group, is to reward hunters who consistently take clean shots on mature deer.

“In most states, you can kill one deer per season, and that hampers your ability to prove your skills,” Koch, 53, said.

So, what's not to love about this? It rewards all the right behaviors and skills without even remotely cheapening the lives of the animals we hunt by turning them into mere points on a scoreboard.

The Times story compares it with Bassmaster catch-and-release fishing competitions, but I'd say the Whitetail Pro Series sounds superior because the animal is subjected to less trauma for the sake of competition. The sound of gunfire can't possibly be worse than being reeled in with a hook through your lip.

What I really love about it is the emphasis on values that I think most hunters hold (at least the ones I know), but that aren't always emphasized on hunting TV.

One of the competitors - Todd Hamilton of Oswego, Illinois - really hit the nail on the head with this quote in the Times story: “That’s been my big pet peeve lately: people are almost accepting wounding. ... I was raised that when we butchered or slaughtered something, it goes fast and it’s quick, and that should be our goal, not to wound anything."

I'd love to see a lot more of this mentality rewarded and highlighted in hunting television shows. Our kids need to know that our entire community believes ethical and clean shots are more important than getting the biggest rack at any cost.

And so do the non-hunters, because they'll judge us by our TV shows, whether they accurately reflect our values or not.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010

Nuge nabbed for deer poaching in Cali

What. The. Hell.

I remember reading about this on a forum a couple months ago: Ted Nugent did a deer hunt in California and put it on his TV show, and Cali hunters were all abuzz because the episode showed him killing a spike buck (illegal here) over what looked like bait (also illegal here).

I didn't see the show, but apparently a couple California game wardens did, and now comes the news that Nuge has pleaded no contest to misdemeanor poaching charges. Read more...
Dude! What were you thinking???

Of course, some of the first comments I read on the Sacramento Bee's story (before stopping in disgust), criticized the Bee for picking on Nuge, and "Kalifornia" for having such restrictive laws. Way to show your inner caveman, guys.

The fact is, the rules are the rules. We're all responsible for knowing the rules before we hunt. And someone who's going to televise his hunt is doubly responsible.

(And not for nothing, but one of the reasons we have restrictive rules is that this is not whitetail country. Our deer are NOT that abundant. In fact, we've seen a decline in parts of our blacktail population over the past 20 years.)

Now, I can see how Nuge would get into this bind: This is the way he hunts all the time. That doesn't excuse him for not familiarizing himself with our laws, but it does show that the hunt was nothing out of the ordinary for him.

What boggles my mind is that his guide, who does live in California, not only let those violations happen, but let them happen on film. That's just flat out stupid. If you live in this state, you can't not know that it's illegal to bait, and illegal to kill spikes.

The larger problem is that this contributes to the non-hunting public's impression that we're all a bunch of poachers. If a guide and a rock/hunting TV star break laws brazenly, then what must the ordinary hunters do?

Sigh.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010

Second Chance Buck: The Aftermath

It's been more than 48 hours since I killed my first deer ever, and I'm still buzzing. Sometimes I'm calm and I think about other things, like work. Then I see a student who's into guns or hunting, and I say, "Wanna see my buck?" and the whole spazzing thing starts over again.

This has been both a time of reflection and a time of work.

I've reflected on how lucky I was that the buck did exactly what I needed: Hold still and present a good target.

I've reflected on how grateful I am to have made a good shot that killed him in no more than 20-30 seconds - and really, isn't that the measure of what a good shot is, a quick death, not a feat accomplished over great distance? It's probably what I'm most proud of. I know it's something to be thankful for, not to take for granted.

And I've reflected on the sheer volume of congratulations that have come in from quarters I never expected - schoolmates I haven't seen in 27 years! Crazy stuff.

Then there's been the work. Read more...
Boyfriend has been doing his thing, breaking down the meat into all the parts he loves - brisket, flank, tenderloin, backstrap.

My job, aside from writing labels on the vacuum-seal bags, has been prepping the skull for a
"Euro mount," or, as my family says, "skull."

It started on Sunday when Boyfriend announced that it would be my job to skin the head. Not bad, compared with the work he was doing. So I set to work:


Here's what I learned in that process: If you spend much time worrying about someone poking your eyeballs out, stop worrying - they're very firmly attached. My mother, who's a durable soul, happened to arrive at my house in time to watch me digging the eyeballs out of the skull, and she had to avert her eyes for a good 10-15 minutes.

Once skinned, we popped the head in the stock pot for a few hours to help cook stuff out. Yeah, stuff.


Then, this morning and this evening, I picked "stuff" off and out of the skull - cartilage, meat and even brains. I've never seen cooked brains before, and I'm here to tell you, it looks like foie gras - white and creamy.

No, we didn't eat it. But my Argentinian neighbor Silvia would probably be distraught to know that we hadn't. Last time we brought game home, she wanted to know what we did with the brains. "Heart," she said, "ees for thee cats. But I love thee brains."

Silvia, I'm not there yet. Maybe someday.

Anyway, what I'm left with is this:


The skull, picked mostly clean, will now go into a bucket of water in the back yard, where we'll let bacteria finish what I started, probably for most of winter. When it appears to have been picked clean, we'll bleach it, and it'll be ready to hang over our mantle, right next to the deer Boyfriend got this summer, Spork - a harder-earned trophy than mine by a million miles.

Even the side-by-side trophy has significance: I started hunting several years after Boyfriend, so almost everything I've done for the first time is something he's done long before. But for both of us, this was the first year we killed blacktail deer. And while the trophies may pale in comparison with the whitetail that cover so much of our country, these hunts are just as hard fought, the accomplishments no less meaningful.

In just a few days, we'll be duck hunting - a pursuit that will consume much of our free time until the end of January. But we'll have plenty of venison to add to the dinnertable mix this winter, and plenty of deer-hunting memories that won't disappear with the first shotgun blast. And for that, we're grateful.

© Holly A. Heyser 2009

Finally, duck hunting TV worth watching

I've made no secret of the fact that I find most duck hunting TV repulsive.

It's not the low production values or cheesy music. Hell, that's endemic to 99 percent of the hunting shows out there (and it is, of course, the reason we call it "horn porn").

Nope, what I really hate is this: kill shot after kill shot after kill shot. Read more...
With deer hunting shows, you only have to look at a couple kills per show most of the time, and then only after the build-up of watching the hunt. But duck hunting shows? Man, they always show 40, 50, 60 animals being killed.

Some duck hunters don't like that because it's not representative of what really goes on in the field. That's what hunters told Delta Waterfowl Associate Editor Tori McCormick when he went to an outdoors conference in Wisconsin recently (he wrote about it in the summer issue of the magazine).

But that's not my issue. To me, it's just gross, and kinda disrespectful of the animal, to glory in that much death. Don't get me wrong: I value success, and I want to see successful hunters on TV, because I want to learn from them. But I also regard the taking of an animal's life pretty seriously, and I hate to see it cheapened.

(And besides, what self-respecting porn director would put that many money shots in a 30-minute show? Please.)

Well I've finally found a show that doesn't fill every second with falling ducks, and not only that, it's actually good. Damn good. It's Duck Commander on the Outdoor Channel, sponsored by Benelli.

This show has:

- High production values and good music (and there is never ridiculously inappropriate music at any point).

- A great sense of humor. Jase Robertson is especially adept at the art of deadpan (and you can see a little bit of it if you click here and select his short video).

- At least one or two plots wrapped around all the killing, usually having to do with some aspect of the family business, or the foibles of various members of the team. In other words, it's a TV show, not a choo-choo train of money shots.

- When they do show kill shots, they're usually really great shots, worth dwelling on.

It's also worth mentioning that I love, love these guys' accents. Like many people who grew up outside of the South, I used to disparage Southern accents. But that changed when I moved to Virginia in 1997 and began to learn about the variety and charm of the Southern accent. (I think what sealed the deal was when a handsome young racehorse trainer referred to me as "muh dear," and I happily blushed six shades.) Anyway, the cadence of the guys' speech on Duck Commander is ear candy to me.

The only thing I don't like about the show is the fact that I apparently missed most of the season. We started tuning in a few weeks ago, and I was floored when Saturday night's episode was about their last day of season. I checked the website and confirmed that was it - Episode 12.

All I can say is I hope Season Two starts in a few weeks, because duck season, my friends, has not even begun yet (unless you're in one of those lucky states that has an early teal opener). I never would've even thought to look for a new duck show in June, when this probably began. Nobody airs duck shows in June.

So, you may ask, is NorCal Cazadora shilling for these guys?

Hardly.

- The Duck Commander booth was the ONLY BOOTH at the 2008 SHOT Show where I was ignored. Ignored not once, not twice, but three times before it occurred to someone that a press badge-wearing female who was standing there staring at their merchandise might actually be interested in writing about their merchandise.

- I bought one Duck Commander call (based on the advice of the guy who finally helped me at the booth), and it sucked - it gunks up and becomes unusable after five minutes.

But I'm not bitter; none of that would keep me from watching this show. In fact, it's now one of just two programs on TV that I actually like enough to memorize what day and time it's on (the other is Top Chef on Bravo).

I even like it enough that I'd go catch up on the episodes I missed online, except they don't seem to be available yet.

Oh well. I'm just glad there's a show I can love now about my favorite kind of hunting.

© Holly A. Heyser 2009

My first televised hunt - on public TV!

At long last, that crazy hog hunt I went on in May has now been televised on KQED-TV in San Francisco, and I've got to say the producers did a good job.

The hunt was featured on QUEST, KQED's science and environment program, as part of a segment about wild hogs as an invasive species in California. The segment starts and ends with my hunt with Phillip from the Hog Blog and Michael and Sam from Native Hunt in May.

I know a lot of folks in the hunting community would assume public television is populated by a bunch of anti-hunting liberals, but if it is, you wouldn't know it from this program. Hunters are portrayed as part of the solution to the wild hog problem, not bloodthirsty savages. And QUEST gave me lots of air time to talk about why I hunt, with no obnoxious rejoinder from PETA. God bless 'em!

Check it out and see what you think:


QUEST on KQED Public Media.

But there's more than the video. Click here and you'll also see the producer's notes (where you'll find a nice discussion is warming up in the comments), as well as photos from filming.

If you'd like to download the program, you can get it free from iTunes. Click here, find "QUEST Video Podcast" and click on "Subscribe to podcast," which will take you to the iTunes store. Look for "Hog Wild," a segment dated 7/14/2009. It takes a few minutes to download.

If you watch the segment, you'll notice one apparent discrepancy between my story last May and the program: I did not kill the pig in question - Phillip did after I shot and missed. But the program doesn't show that, and I'm guessing most viewers will assume, based on the scenes shown, that I fired the killing shot.

On the one hand, you know me, I'm ridiculously honest about my failings in the field, and I didn't need to be protected from my failings on TV. In fact, I think hunting TV would be far better if it showed more missed shots to impart a little reality.

On the other hand, I'm a journalist, and I know who killed the pig was not relevant to the purpose of the program, and getting into those details would've been an unnecessary diversion that took valuable air time. So I really don't have my undies in a bunch about it.

Overall, it was a great first experience with TV.

© Holly A. Heyser 2009

Yaban TV: 'We are not hunters; we are nature’s soldiers'

"We are not hunters; we are nature's soldiers." What's not to love about that quote? It embodies the ethic so many hunters hold dear - that we're the ones out there who see what's going on with wildlife, who spot when there's a problem.

But that quote didn't come out of America; it came out of Turkey. The words were spoken by Dr. Ali Bürkev, who's a producer for Yaban TV, which is a hunting television channel in Turkey. Read more...
You can read the whole story for yourself on Hurriyet Daily News.com, but here's the upshot: Yaban TV is on a mission to educate and train the nation's hunters not just to be good stewards of the land themselves, but to police it.

"Nature can be protected by the people living in it," Bürkev told the Hurriyet Daily News. "That takes training. We provide that. We mobilize people who live in villages by providing them with environmental consciousness. We cannot protect a forest if the people living in it do not.

"Before the advent of Yaban TV, nature was left in the hands of people with no training. We are changing that," he said.

"We have founded a hotline. People alert the channel about environmental problems or wrong hunting methods they witnessed. They SMS us, tell the location and time," he said. "’There is an illegal mine here,’ ’they are killing the females of the species,’ and ’trees are being cut at that location’ are the kinds of messages we receive. And we broadcast them. This makes people wonder whether they’re being followed and results in self-control."

How cool is that? Do you think perhaps we could take a cue from Turkish TV here in America, and maybe focus some of our TV more actively on promoting stewardship of the land? Not just the obligatory platitudes about how much we love nature, but perhaps a call to action once in a while? Food for thought.

© Holly A. Heyser 2009

Why I love Tred Barta AND Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent never saw a gun he didn't love or a bait pile he didn't want to hunt over. Tred Barta can't talk about bear hunting without bragging about his stone-tip arrows and complaining about people baiting bears with jelly donuts. That puts Ted and Tred about as far apart on the spectrum of hunting ethics as you can possibly get.

So why do I love both of them?

Let me start with Ted. I loved Ted Nugent as a teenager. His music was hard-charging, obnoxious and infectious, and his concerts were reputed to be the loudest around. (Fun fact: I saw him once at Selland Arena in Fresno and actually fell asleep during the concert. Not that I was bored - just exhausted from playing in a big high school tennis tournament that day.)

Now, as an adult who hunts, I watch his show, sometimes in horror, as he gleefully promotes some things I really don't agree with, like hunting over bait, which I would do in a subsistence situation, but find unappealing in times of plenty. Or when he tells viewers it's their "spiritual duty" to own guns to protect the bodies that God gave them.

Whoa. Really? I would never foist a gun on anyone who didn't want one.

And then there's Tred, who's willing to travel all over North America just to come home empty-handed because he's so stubborn that he wants to kill everything with his handmade longbow and stone-tipped arrows. And it's all gotta be spot-and-stalk, no blinds allowed.

On one episode of his show, he briefly succumbs to the urge to make a blind out of branches, berates himself like a recovering alcoholic who's fallen off the wagon, then tears it down. And of course, he ends his hunt without game.

Oh my. It must be nice to have the luxury of not caring about the outcome, but when I invest my time and hard-earned money in a hunt, it's really important to me to bring back some meat for the freezer. Not that I'm willing to do anything to get it - I know coming home empty-handed once in a while is part of the deal. But I'm sure as hell not going to tie my hands behind my back to prove a point.

So back to that question: Why on earth do I love both of them?

Two reasons:

One, they both strike me as utterly sincere about what they say. In a television environment where 95 percent of the shows are thinly veiled infomercials for bait, food plot programs, camo and weapon makers, I find that sincerity refreshing.

Sure, Ted touts his sponsors' products, but when he winds up for a Holy Roller-style exaltation of the Second Amendment, it is authentic Ted, not a canned speech laced with references to C'Mere Deer.

And yes, critics pick apart Tred for killing a pig with a knife ... while it's being held down. Or taking an long shot at some running deer ... with a long bow. But I never doubt for a second that he believes in what he's doing, because you can't really do product placement with homemade stuff.

But the second reason I love them both is the more important one: They both challenge me to consider options and ideas outside of my comfort zone, or at least to remain open-minded about them.

As a new huntress, it is my goal to improve enough each year that I can withstand greater and greater challenges. I've done some pretty easy hunts in my first two years, and I'd like to think I can grow tough enough to handle a multi-day hike in steep mountains to track mountain goats or bighorn sheep, or to use less and less sophisticated weaponry. Tred reminds me that this is a noble goal.

But Ted brings me back to my core beliefs about hunting: Humans eat animals, and to eat them we must kill them, and beyond science-based game management practices that ensure we don't wipe out any species, and beyond our universal desire for the cleanest kill possible, the methods we follow really are a matter of personal preference - nothing more. Attacking each other over these methods serves no one but the enemies of hunting.

It just doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the hunting community should have room for both points of view.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008