So recently a news story came up about hunting. It got me wanting to talk about hunting, since it's something that I take some interest in. As it happens the news story involved political debate over some laws that are being passed on the federal level, but I don't want people thinking that I'm making a veiled political commentary; I genuinely had a sudden desire to talk about a sport that interests me. I also wrote a blog entry elsewhere on gardening and nature, which primed me for this topic. I haven't written an actual essay of any sincerity on this blog for a long time, and it's about time that I do it again.

Honestly, I've never hunted, because I never had the time. Back when I was a kid, I took a hunting class that included a lot of details about safety. That was the main thing, safety. A lot about safety. I do think that that's the most important thing to keep in mind when hunting. If you learn nothing else, you must know how to never shoot yourself in the foot, or worse, accidentally shoot someone else. One of the #1 rules of hunting is to always know where you're aiming your rifle and always know what you're shooting at before you pull the trigger. Always be aware of whether or not a shot is safe to take before shooting. Always take extra precautions to know with absolute certainty that you're the only person in the area. There are also many rules for handing a gun safely from one hunter to the other, how to handle guns in groups, how to cross fences with a gun, and even how to pass axes between two people (upside-down, with the blade perpendicular with your arms).

In case you were wondering, I learned all of this in a Boy Scouts-y type organization.

Anyway, that's safety. When it comes to ethics and other traditions, there are certain things to bear in mind. In a nutshell, always respect the law and the customs of the land. This includes:

• Knowing if you're required to have a permit to hunt.
  
• Knowing if you're the right age to hunt.
  
• Knowing what hunting equipment is legal.
  
• Knowing if you're allowed to hunt in an area.
  
• Knowing if a particular animal is legal to hunt and in-season.
  
• Knowing what you're allowed to do with an animal once you've hunted it.
  
• Respecting people who are uncomfortable with hunting.
  

That last part isn't a written law, but a custom. In my hunting class, I was taught about how to live in a world where others do not particularly like the idea of hunting. Not everybody supports hunting. Not everybody reading this blog likes the idea. Often times not even the family members of hunters like or support hunting. While I can't say that I will stop hunting for them, I will do my best to not parade hunting culture. It's sort of like nudist culture; fine on your own time, but you don't start displaying bodies out in public, since most would consider that obscene. The most basic rule that I learned is that if you're transporting the carcass of a deer, you should keep it under a tarp in a pickup truck. Do not tie it to the hood of your truck. This will upset people, even other hunters. Most people agree that an animal must be shown respect, and in America it is disrespectful to transport an uncovered carcass. There is some debate over whether or not it is okay to pose for a picture over a carcass; I respect either opinion, but I personally think that it's okay. With regards to the content of the picture, such as whether or not the hunter is smiling, or if the wounds are visible, or if the animal has been gutted, or if part of it has been turned into a trophy, I personally believe that the photograph must reflect what is considered acceptable and respectful in the area where the animal was hunted. A respectful photograph in South Dakota might look different than a respectful photograph in South Africa. When you hang up a photograph in a public space, such as a small private business that you own, make sure that it reflects the values of both the culture of the hunting grounds and the locality of the physical portrait. This is just my personal perspective. It is also important for hunters to know when not to brag about their accomplishments or even talk about hunting at all, since non-hunters might find it socially intrusive.

There are certain things that aren't illegal, but it is still the responsibility of the hunter to act in an ethical manner. A hunter should always make sure that his hunting does not hurt the ecosystem. The law does not always reflect what is healthy for the environment. If you're on a hunting trip in another country where a reckless behavior is legal, that legality does not make the hunting ethical. You must use your judgment. Some countries do not have proper protection laws against endangered species. Make sure you recognize an endangered species and don't take advantage of their availability. A hunter must be a hundred times better educated than the average person on what impact their activities leave on the animal kingdom, since they bear a great responsibility.

Another thing that isn't illegal everywhere, but one should strive to avoid, is any unnecessary animal cruelty. Never allow an animal to suffer. My father, who likes to fish, enjoys catching fish and tossing them back into the water. My sister objects to this, because it's pointless and doesn't serve any point. She does not object to fishing, so long as the fish's body is used in some way and to some end, but returning them to their place worse than how they were found is not only cruel, but completely pointless. I happen to agree with her. I wish that my father would stop that habit if only for her sake. Unfortunately, my father doesn't really care much about hunting ethics, or any kind of ethics, or respect for people, or human decency, or boundaries, or love, or kindness, or any notion that any sort of living people holds any sort of dignity worth his acknowledging, or any sense of obligation to treat people with respect, or comprehension that he has any obligation to follow any sort of reality other than his own, or any ability to show empathy, or any inkling that sadism is actually the opposite of integrity.

[i had to delete this paragraph after I realized just how angry this subject makes me.]

So basically, there are a lot of rules, written in civil laws and in natural laws, for what one cannot do as a hunter. Once you respect those, you have freedom to determine your own hunter's ethics and traditions with what's left over. Different people have their own perspectives on hunting, and hunters are not a homogeneous group. In some places, hunting is seen as a rite of passage or as a means of proving one's worth. it can be a strong tradition, or a weak tradition. Many people have religious perspectives on hunting; for some people, their religion forbids it altogether, and among those religions that permit hunting, there's no consensus of what it means.

How I was brought up, I was taught that a hunter must contribute to the land, or at the very least, do no harm. It's sort of like the Hippocratic Oath. I see hunting as a spiritual experience, one where you bond with nature, one where you take part in the circle of life. I see humankind as holding a special place as both the caretakers and the masters over nature. A friend of mine, a farmer and actress (uncommon combination, I know), takes care of pigs, truly loves them, and holds similar views as me. As it happens, she still ends up slaughtering her livestock. The way she sees it, in her role as master, she determines the course of her pigs' lives; how they're conceived, how they're raised, what sort of health and happiness they will know while they're on this Earth, when and how they will conclude their lives, and to what ends they will die. The deaths are painless, and they are meaningful in her eyes. When I apply similar principles as hunting, I think of my grandmother's garden. She trims her bushes, uproots weeds, and sometimes even uproots beautiful flowers as she alters and shapes her garden into a plot of land that she deems desirable. I see hunting in a similar way; you're in a garden, and the death of a game can be like the trimming of a bush. Hunting shapes nature in small ways. Hunting allows someone to become one with nature, to appreciate the small details of nature's garden. It's more interactive than merely hiking. It has an intimacy to it.

Others simply love the primal aspect of hunting. Remember how I compared hunting to nudism? The comparison holds up. It's natural. It's a means of rediscovering our core identity. Some might say that we've grown past this, that we're better and more sophisticated, but others have a mind that technology will never change our core identity. We are hunter-gatherers. We go out and we tame nature. We celebrate being at the top of the food chain. So long as no one is hunting anything endangered or off-season, I have no problem with this mentality.

There are those who do it because it's a sign of independence. It makes a personal statement. There are those who do it because it's better than playing video games. Some do it to be tough, which I find a weak reason, but if they respect the laws of man and nature, then there's no reason to stop them from hunting. Then there's people like my father, who talk about hunting all of the time and never do it, and demean people who don't hunt, and will do thinks that deliberately make people feel uncomfortable for the sake of being macho, and

[Another paragraph and a half deleted.]

Believe it or not, I do want to go hunting with my father sometime. It's an experience that I feel that I need to have, if we can agree on what it ethical and what the meaning of the hunt is. It would probably be one of my better experiences with him. He never developed beyond parallel play; that is, he doesn't actually interact with people all that much, but he still desires for people to do the same things that he's doing as he's doing them. If he's interested in something, he wants to do it, and he wants everyone else that he knows to do it with him. Without copying and pasting a definition of parallel play, that's how I'll describe it. Basically, hunting seems like the ideal situation for this, since you don't have to talk much while you're doing it, but it's definitely something that he reveres and considers constructive, so it just might form a bonding experience. So long as he doesn't revel in his capacity to cause pain and demean everything in this universe that isn't him, it just might work out.

[Fighting the temptation to fit in another rant.]

Outside of my father, I sometimes wonder what people I would want to hunt with. I wonder what sort of father I'd be. When I took my hunting class, I remember a picture in my textbook of a father hunting with a daughter. That image stuck with me, and to this day I see that as something that I very much want. I don't give much thought to these days on romance and marriage and other intimate mushy stuff, and I like the idea of staying single for my entire life because of how hardcore and na-na-na-na-can't-touch-this that sounds, but then I think of these things and remember what I'm missing out on. I think of what things that I can offer someone that I've never witnessed in my lifetime, and hopefully in ways that are far more loving and prosperous than they ever would have been if I had had the opportunity. I only just realized as I was writing this that if this ever happened, there's a good chance that I wouldn't walk with my children in my own homeland of the North American Great Planes, but in a far-off country like China, and this image of hunting with my children that I always had might be completely different from the one that happens in reality. I'm very much interested in international travel.

On the note of China, hunting has been suspended there altogether since 2006. It isn't a permanent ban, but rather the country has been trying to figure out its laws for the last decade. Most people, when they think of hunting, think of the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, and the continent of Africa, but China has a rich history of hunting. Eventually, when they figure out their hunting laws, I would be very interested in going to the sparsely populated regions of the country to experience nature in ways that few Americans have thought of. Before hunting was put on hold, they had various species of deer, goats, gazelles, and argali. The argali are a group of wild mountain sheep with twisted horns, with several subspecies, and are the largest type of wild sheep in the world. They are unique to the Himalayan region. There were a few other species, such as the Tibetan Antelope and wild yaks that required special permits. Presumably, most of these will still be legal when hunting is allowed again, with updated quotas. China is also trying to figure out what hunting laws will apply to citizens, since oddly enough it was only legal for tourists to hunt before they started on their revisions.

There's also Australia. I have a friend who was raised in Australia. When we ran in to each other on our first day of college, we went on a nature walk, and we did it regularly. On one occasion, we saw a couple of deer roam by our dorms, and we pulled out knives and chased them through a construction site. We've also done other things in nature, such as camping on the Omaha Tribe Reservation, which we visited regularly (and really ought to again sometime, if we can get in contact with our friends there), playing broomball on a frozen lake, sledding and skiing down the hills of our river valley neighborhood back when winters were cold. He moved back to Australia for a year, and upon his return often asked me if I wanted to move there with him. There we can explore the slot canyons, roam the desert, and skedaddle through the natural parks. He also mentioned legal means of hunting. There's an open season on all non-native wildlife, and it doesn't stop there. As sacrilegious as it sounds to Americans who would never dream of shooting the national symbol of their country, Australians don't hesitate to shoot their signature animal. Kangaroos are considered by many to be pests, and furthermore, though exotic they aren't endangered, so Australian hunters commercially hunt over one-and-a-half million kangaroos per year. Traditional, pre-colonial means of hunting kangaroos included throwing sticks, where people would throw heavy sticks at kangaroos and break their necks. These throwing sticks come in a few shapes, the most recognizable being a boomerang shape. An actual boomerang is considered to be lighter, and it thrown in to trees in order to startle birds into flying up into traps set in the higher branches. Contrary to popular believe, boomerangs were not designed to cross-breed yo-yo's and Frisbee's. I really like my friend's idea, and I am seriously considering it, since our lives are advancing similarly and we will both be in an ideal place to move to Australia at about the same time.

Hunting with throwing sticks fits my idea of hunting. I do not consider hunting with guns to be unethical, and as an American I consider firearms to be a quintessential inclusion in my nation's mythology. However, older tools such as the bow and arrow have always grabbed my attention. They're less precise and more frustrating, but I wanted that challenge. Furthermore, firearms scare me on an innate level, in part because of negative experiences with you-know-who. [Okay, I didn't have to delete a paragraph this time, but I removed a particularly unpleasant sentence right here.] I like that it forces me to conserve my ammunition, and to go search for it when I miss my target. I like the ability to select my arrows and even decorate them, and that arrows can be retrieved from their targets, and that arrows marking special achievements can be preserved. I like that everything about a bow and arrow is completely manual and dependent upon my strength. I like the physical exertion that it takes to create the torque. I love the technical design and the engineering that goes in to a bow.

What I didn't appreciate was being asked by a physics teacher to bring my bow to class back in high school without providing a means for me to do it without frightening other students in the hallways. Again, this comes back to the ethics. Hunting wasn't even involved here, but I still wish I had found a way to respect other people's comfort and not to startle anyone. A mature and responsible owner of such a tool ought to know how to never cause disharmony with it, because even freedom from fear isn't a legal right, it is still right to never let them know fear. For those wondering, the bow was brought to class for an experiment in measuring different types of force. In hindsight, I should have proposed meeting him outside of school so that he could have safely and inconspicuously brought it to the lab himself.

As cool and as challenging as it is to hunt with a bow and arrow or just a simple throwing stick, hunting with firearms isn't a walk in the park, either. Many people believe that hunting defenseless animals with guns at a safe distance is cowardly and isn't an accomplishment. Naturally, this has a point, and it's obvious that I agree with it to some extent seeing as I chose to train in archery instead. However, the name of the sport is hunting, not shooting. The weapon is only a part of the hunting experience, and anyone who has taken a hunting class knows this. The reason why I have not yet gone on a serious hunting trip is that the actual act of hunting is time-consuming, and takes a lot of knowledge. A good hunter must know where to find game, how to track game, how to wait for game, and if necessary, how to lure game. Hunting isn't like an arcade game where the deer are right there in front of you and all you have to do is aim and shoot. The vast majority of the time, you aren't aiming at anything. The hunter must use a backdrop of technical know-how to read the environment and find animals. I never quite mastered that level of outdoorsmanship. In addition to knowing the art of hunting in and of itself, avid hunters ought to know how to deal with the elements when things go wrong. If someone goes on a hunting trip in the Canadian shield, he needs to know how to take care of himself if he gets lost, how to cope with hypothermia if he falls into a freezing river, and how to start fires and create shelter. Having a gun makes things a bit easier, but it's still a hardy experience. People can have different opinions on ethics, which all hunters must respect, but I also believe that non-hunters must all understand the challenge that hunters undertake. Hunters can't simply be dismissed as lazy, insecure people who claim a cheap sense of accomplishment.

One thing that most people can agree on, though, is that laser-sighted rifles are unfair. Even in America, these are illegal in every state but the great state of Texas. At least, last I checked. It might be illegal there now, too. I wouldn't argue against its legality if it was legal in my state, but I would strongly discourage hunters from using them and I wouldn't want to hunt with such a person as my partner. This isn't surprising from the guy who enjoys archery. Riflery is more precise, but people still often miss. Having laser sightings is like using cheat codes in a video game. Can you imagine Jumanji if you had cheat codes? Good luck impressing Karen Gillan with that sort of sportsmanship.

Overall, I do still expect to hunt with a rifle someday, especially if I ever decide to get sentimental and have kids, and especially if those kids are raised in America. Rifles are a part of American iconography, just as swords are a part of England's. It's a part of the culture, and I do desire to hunt in part for cultural reasons. They say you haven't truly experienced another country if you haven't tried their food, and in some ways that goes for hunting. Really, any old traditions having to do with subsistence. As I said earlier, if I was in Australia, I would want to hunt a kangaroo with a boomerang-shaped bludgeon, not only because of the sportmanship but also because of culture. I could, after all, hunt with a throwing stick anywhere, but I would specifically do it in Australia because of its connection to the heritage of the land. The same goes with America, which had a history of riflery since its very inception. One simply has not had the "full" American experience without understanding riflery.

This leads me to one last thing with relation to hunting methods ending with the "ry" suffix. I mentioned riflery, archery, boomerangery (that isn't an actual word), and there's one more. It's called falconry. This is, hands down, the single coolest method of hunting ever devised by man. For those not in the know, it's when you capture a raptor and train it to fetch wild quarry, like having a dog catch a . People who practice falconry are called falconers, and come to think of it, that would make for an awesome name for a baseball team. But I should get back to the circle of life before I get off on a tangent. While the game that Thorondor brings home might not make for as impressive of a photo-op as the triceratops that Steven Spielberg shot, you get to pose with a bird of prey on your wrist as your loyal companion. You can be that person. Throw in a steed, and I'm pretty sure that you'll be the coolest person in the room no matter where you go. You win in life. Game over.

Of course, it isn't just awesome because it looks cool, but because it truly is a great achievement and puts you in a rare tier of hunter. Falconers are the SEAL Team Six of hunters. You don't buy a raptor for this. You capture an actual wild animal and forge a bond with it. You need to spend a great deal of time every single day with it. You most likely need to be single. Many places don't hand out permits for it unless you take a written test on it. You usually end up spending a small fortune on books because of the sheer amount of knowledge required for both training and caretaking. It can take two years to finish an apprenticeship, and it takes over seven years to become a Master. Most falconers will refuse to teach you anything unless you provide proof of the seriousness of your commitment. You have to spend great deals of time in the middle of nowhere, far away from roads, rifle hunters, power lines, barbed-wire fences, and all other things that could put all the time that you invested with Hedwig at risk of amounting to nothing. You never feed them food from the pet store, but raw meat that you expect them to later hunt for you. You have to be emotionally prepared for the possibility that Hawkeye might pull a Richard Parker and dump you at any given moment, after so much effort was put in to trying to share your life with nature's most graceful predator?

Got that? Now throw in ethics. The law mandates that you provide your raptor proper housing, and that you have the proper equipment. The American federal government has no laws saying that falconry impacts the environment, but falconers have to hold themselves to a higher standard than what the law permits. A falconer owes it to other falconers not to damage the reputation of the craft, and must never harm any birds. If you or another falconer looses a bird, then custom dictates that you put serious effort into finding it. If you run out of money to support this lifestyle, you must pass your raptor on to another qualified falconer or safely release it into the wild. The future of the sport rests on your shoulders to sponsor apprentices. You shouldn't let your friends touch it. You shouldn't do anything commercial with it. And remember what I said earlier about photo-ops and being the coolest person in the room? The falconry community actually discourages publicity, and much of what you do will go without recognition. At this point, we're not just talking about ethics, but the mettle of one's character.

Clearly, it isn't for everyone. However, I hold the ethical expectations for falconers as the classic standard which all hunters should take inspiration from. The future of the sport depends on the nobility of its participants.