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So this fella I know hits a deer. It's over there flopping around and bleating on the side of the road. He hops out, looks at the deer and decides to stop its suffering. He grabs a knife out of the glove box and slits said deer's throat. The deer continues to flop, but now it's gurgling. Being a carpenter, he falls back on what he knows. He goes to his toolbox, retrieves a hammer and proceeds to beat the deer to death.
Thank you for taking the time! <3I just read your story. I enjoyed it. Although your relationship with death is greatly different than my own, I appreciate the way you express yours. Your relationship with hunting, however, seems to be very close to mine.
I never asked anyone to get philosophical. This is a story about my experience with losing my dad to cancer when I was 15, then being able to understand that death isn't always a black cloud that takes something away from me. Hunting let me see that engaging with death could rewrite that story. That's all.I don’t get all philosophical about death and hunting. I hunt and fish because I like to hunt and fish…
I love that you're a conservationist. So am I! Conservation is part and parcel of the engine that allows us to see forward for ecosystems, wildlife, and our connecting force between the two.Somebody once told me that everyone deals with death in their own way and to respect that. It was good advice then and still is now. Reading this affirmed that for me.
Hunting is conservation. This is more complicated the more you drill down. On the macro level, it is a tool used for wildlife management, so in my opinion, on the whole, yes, it is steeped in conservation (provided all laws and regs are followed). But how about on the individual hunter level? For some, I would say very little. For the person who is only in it for the kill. To, "get my buck". Immediately thereafter, hunting is forgotten until next year. Conservation is never considered. The only sliver of conservation is abiding by the regulations and serving as the point of the management tool.
But for many, hunting is the driver of conservation. I often think, did I harvest more animals or did I provide for more animals this past year? Did my conservation efforts result in a net gain or did my take make it a net loss? I think I am comfortably in the net gain camp and that makes me feel good, but it also makes me want to do more. One thing I struggle with is why others don't see conservation like me. Why is it so hard to get a young adult hunter to buy a $10 raffle ticket to benefit conservation, but will trip all over themselves to buy a Bladder-Buster sized soft drink 2 minutes later for $12? Why do hunters want to criticize the many great conservation organizations but not give of their time to help make them better?
I could write more, but I have to go soon to work a fundraiser. For conservation. I doubt I would do it if I wasn't a hunter!