Wayne Pacelle's new book, Part 2

Yesterday I blogged about how I actually like the title of HSUS head Wayne Pacelle's new book, "The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them."

That was a very, very serious post about the "kinship" part of the title. Today, however, I'd like to tell you something funny about the "bond" part of that title.

On the book's Amazon page, there's a video in which Pacelle tells viewers, "I've always had a bond with animals."

On its face, there's nothing funny about that. I would never denigrate anyone's bond with animals (except for those freaks who like to diddle animals, but that's another story).

What's funny about it is that in Ted Kerasote's 1993 book Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt, Wayne Pacelle is quoted as saying the following:

"I don't have a hands-on fondness for animals. I didn't grow up with dozens of dogs and cats as many people did. To this day, I don't feel bonded to any particular non-human animal. I like them and I pet them and I'm kind to them, but there's no special bond between me and other animals."

Now, 1993 was a long time ago, and I know people can change. Hell, my views about animals have shifted radically over the past five years. But the word "always" has a pretty clear meaning. I'll be interested to learn more about that.

And for the record, I did not make this connection myself - that quote popped up in an Amazon forum I stumbled on when I was looking for the book - so I deserve no credit for connecting the dots. Just for sharing a good laugh.

© 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

Oh boy, this is bad: Hunt protester shot

Very bad news from Down Under today: A woman who was part of an organized protest of duck hunting was shot in the face, allegedly by a 14-year-old duck hunter.

Click here for the first story in the Melbourne Herald Sun on the topic, and here for a more recent story and video.

Apparently, there's an extended duck season in Australia this year, and yesterday was the first day of that extended season. There are organized duck-hunt protesters who actively interfere with hunts in Australia - something that used to happen here in America until just about every state made it illegal.

According to the Herald Sun: Witnesses claim they saw the 14-year-old boy taunting the victim, St Kilda woman Julia Symons, minutes before she was peppered with shotgun pellets at Lake Buloke in the state's northwest.

But police described the shooting as an accident after taking the teenage hunter and his uncle to nearby Donald police station for questioning and seizing the firearm involved.

The facts ultimately must be decided by the Australian judicial system, but some things are worth saying up front:

1. If the boy shot the woman in the face deliberately, he deserves the maximum punishment the judicial system can mete out.

2. If the boy accidentally pulled the trigger while waving a gun at her, then he's an idiot who deserves at the very least to have his right to hunt and use a gun revoked for a long time, if not for life, even if the justice system is lenient.

3. If it was genuinely a freak accident, it's a reminder that one shouldn't engage in hostile interactions while carrying a gun, because any subsequent accident will be viewed as deliberate.

I have no idea what hunter education is required in Australia, but good lord, even the instruction manuals that come with guns make it clear you don't point them at people, even if you think they're unloaded.

Obviously I don't know the whole story, but if the boy is charged and found guilty, I would have no qualms seeing him made into an example and a reminder that you just don't wave guns at people.

That gunshot did not just wound a woman, which is horrifying; it is a black eye to hunters and hunting worldwide. I have absolutely nothing to say in his defense.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

California bear hunters: Time to speak up

California's black bear population is thriving, and our state's Department of Fish and Game is responding with a proposal to increase the number of bears we hunters can kill each year from 1,700 to 2,000.

Predictably, HSUS is up in arms about the proposal and mobilizing its minions in opposition.

Why does this matter? Because we are in the last few days of a public comment period when people can weigh in on the proposal. These comments from the public will be taken under consideration by our Fish and Game Commission when it decides the matter.

If you're a California hunter, or if you don't hunt, but support lawful hunting in California, please take a few minutes to email DFG in support of this proposal - we don't want HSUS supporters to be the only ones emailing about this. (In case clicking doesn't automatically open an email for you, the address is WILDLIFEMGT@dfg.ca.gov.)

After you've sent that email, please share this post with your friends and ask them to do the same. The deadline is 5 p.m. Monday March 21.

Unlike HSUS, I will not write your email for you - having covered politics, I can tell you that decision-makers have a lot more respect for individually-written emails than auto-generated carbon copies.

And unlike HSUS (see "up in arms" link above), I will show you where you can get some facts about the bear-hunting proposal: Here's a link to the state's 107-page draft environmental impact report on the proposal.

But don't worry: If you don't have time to read through that, I've highlighted some key facts below:

1. Like I said, the bear population is thriving. Check out this chart from page 22 of the report:


Wow, big increase, right? Yeah, about 470 percent (I'm guestimating because I'm going off the chart, not raw numbers). That's huge.

2. The bear harvest isn't increasing at even close to the same rate as the bear population. Here's a chart I made from numbers on pages 11-13 of the report:


Wow, much smaller increase, isn't it? Yeah. Exactly 143 percent.

Oh, and in case you noticed that the harvest number has gone over 1,700, here's why: That limit is a cap, and DFG cuts off bear hunting by Dec. 26 or whenever that cap is reached. But there's a lag time between when bears are killed and DFG gets tags back from hunters, so sometimes we go over the cap. This year, we stayed well under the cap at just shy of 1,300. All of this is factored into recommendations regarding the cap.

3. The proposed increase in the bear hunting cap is consistent with state policy, established by our Legislature, which calls for providing hunting opportunities when they are consistent with maintaining healthy wildlife populations (page 8 of the report).

4. The proposed increase would still keep us well within the limits of how many bears can be killed without causing the population to decline. Wildlife managers believe that limit could be raised to 3,100 - far more than the proposed 2,000 (page 25 of the report).

5. Black bear is an excellent food source for families. You can get a lot of bear meat for a $41.86 tag, which is pretty important in a state whose economy is still in the toilet. Our unemployment rate is still 12.4 percent, compared with 9 percent nationwide (click here and scroll down for complete data).

Bear is tasty and filling! I haven't gotten a bear yet, but a friend of ours did last fall, and he shared some of the meat with us. These bear pelmeni that Hank made with the meat were incredible.


Sounds like a lot of good reasons to raise the bear hunting cap, if you ask me.

But before I wrap up, I think it's worth noting that HSUS continues to rely on emotional appeal, telling its supporters that this proposal "seems designed to placate a handful of hunters' desires to chase down more bears with their dogs while adding more heads and hides to their collection."

Or at least, that's what it says now. In a Feb. 3 blog post, HSUS said, "There is no one clamoring for an expanded quota..." So, which is it?

Oh, and by the way, HSUS doesn't have a single bit of data supporting its claim that California bear hunters are motivated by heads and hides. Those folks just like to say that because it riles up their supporters.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011