Why We Hunt

Cultural man has existed for about two-million years. It was just in the past 40,000 years of our existence as a species, however, that we learned agriculture and animal husbandry. In other words, for 98% of our existence we survived by hunting and gathering. For men, hunting is in effect a biological imperative; the hunting genes are hard-wired into our brains at birth. (For women it is the gathering gene, hence -- and this is not a joke but is in fact a theory advanced by many anthropologists -- a woman's proclivity for shopping.)

The short answer for why we hunt is because we're supposed to. As we evolved, the men who had the best set of hunting skills -- speed, endurance, strength, wisdom and problem solving, among others -- were the men who survived to breed and pass their genes to future generations. Indeed, many anthropologists believe mankind's advances in hunting techniques, which allowed him to kill animals much larger than himself, played a large roll in our continuing evolution as a species. Killing large animals upon which the tribe could feed for longer amounts of time left man with a luxury not enjoyed by other species: leisure time, leading to advances in language, culture and tool making that continue to this day.

Beyond being a biological imperative, hunting provides one with a far different perspective on the commons. The great conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote, in his Sand County Almanac (I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the book in front of me) that "The deer hunter always watches the horizon; the duck hunter always watches the sky; the bird hunter always watches the dog; the non-hunter does not watch."

Leopold did not mean to denigrate non-hunting lovers of the outdoors. Instead, he was trying to show that hunters (and, to large extent, anglers) enter the commons as active participants rather than casual observers. Successful hunters are more finely attuned to their environment. Their senses are more fully developed, their anticipation keener, their powers of observation at their highest. The hunter is more alive than is someone merely on a stroll through the forest.

Some would impugn the morality of hunters, asserting that killing another living creature is somehow abhorrant. This argument fails on two levels. First, know that hunters understand that the logical end game of any hunt results in death. The hunters does not kill with joy, but with a curious combination of pride and melancholy. Pride in the accomplishment of a task that requires skill and cunning, a task that is certainly not easy. (Most non-hunters are either unwilling or unable to understand that the task of successfully hunting any prey animal, regardless of the tool we choose to use, is an extremely difficult one.) Melancholy at the taking of another life. Hunters are not automotons who kill without feeling.

The morality argument also fails because in the end it stinks of hypocracy. We all kill, every day. Who can argue they hold the moral high ground because they let the butcher do their killing for them? Even the vegetarian and the vegan kill -- we all do; we kill with our automobiles, spewing pollution into the commons; we kill with our conspicuous consumption, a system of manufacturing that pollutes and uses natural resources upon which wildlife depend; we kill with our system of shipping goods; we kill with our giant agribusinesses that occupy what once was wildlife habitat. No, I can argue the hunter is indeed the moral one, because he takes at least a portion of his food consumption by his own hands, taking and eating what is, after all, a renewable resource.

In the end, we hunt because it feels right. We enjoy working with the dog, walking with old friends, telling the same stories over and over. We enjoy the pride of passing our knowledge and skills on to our children. We hunt because it's in our bones. As always, comments are welcome.

Next: The Economic Elements of Hunting

Haiwee -- June 22, 2007