Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
7 th grade I was able to buy a Winchester model 12 Featherweight 12 gauge with money I
made from mowing lawns and a paper route, for $100.00. I almost always shot 2 ¾ inch
magnum 4s, and with that gun (I used it until I was 35 years old when the firing pin wore
out). I became a pretty good shot with a shotgun.
As I grew older a lot of different things entered my life; playing football, trying to figure
out how to hit a curve ball, getting a grip of what girls were all about (a never ending
process), what I was going to do with my life and whether or not I could get into college
and medical school. But, throughout all that, hunting remained in my heart. North Dakota
is a place where many people hunt and it is not considered abnormal. But, although many
people hunted, I seemed to love it more than most.
My academic and ultimately my professional life took me far away from the prairies, out
of hunting environs and into circles of people who either were uninterested or thought
“blood sports” were (at best) a vestigial remnant of an un-evolved human or (at worst) a
vicious product of human insecurity. But I never changed. Even Stanford and Harvard
were unable to learn me away from hunting and every year I planned my vacations (when
available) to allow me to return to the prairie in October.
I have tried to think about why. Not then, of course, but now. The usual platitudes about
hunting are true, but not sufficient. I do like to eat wild game, and I even like to eat ducks.
For me, cooking and eating wild ducks is not an excuse for shooting them, I actually like it.
There is also the “trophy” aspect of having a drake canvasback or goldeneye or mallard in
hand. And I have mounted ducks to remind me of their beauty. But those explanations do
not account for the major and unbroken role that hunting has played in my life even as I
progressed through college, professional school, got married (to a non-hunter), had
children, tried to make ends meet, and start a career that would make me a living.
I have not experienced combat or the human bonds that can be forged in that crucible
and I would not presume to compare anything else to that experience. But the comradeship
and the implied trust of walking next to somebody with a gun in a day that may involve
killing has to be part of the reward of hunting. Hunters are a tribe, and membership in that
tribe brings with it connection. Today I still hunt with friends I have been afield with since
we were in high school, and although the other parts of our lives are separate and distinct
we still hunt together after 50 years. But I have also hunted alone, and find it satisfying.
Hunting does seem to provide me with a sense of continuity, connects me to my past and
perhaps to my future, and connects me to people that have been in my life even though I may
be alone at the time. It connects me to my father and my son, my friends, both alive and
dead, my childhood, and my home. It connects me to the generations of humans that lived
and died in more perilous and dangerous times than we enjoy, and who hunted not only
because of their survival imperative, but because they liked it. It is not only me that has
heard the horn of the hunter. I am certainly not under the illusion that I must hunt to
survive, but others have had to, others have chosen to, and they all are my kin. Their
stories are not strange to me and whether I am reading about goose hunting in North
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