Dear HCN,
Once again I am treated
to the inane and meretricious propaganda of an “ethical,
wildlife-loving hunter” in Ken Wright’s review of David Petersen’s
book Elkheart (HCN, 9/28/98). Mr. Petersen expounds the same
logically absurd argument that tries to justify recreational
hunting not as the macabre sport it is, but as a need for meat and
for ungulate control. I doubt that Mr. Petersen as a published
author is in need of wild meat for his survival. He uses the
atavistic, hunter-gatherer palaver to justify his blood lust in the
20th century of ritualized killing. The domestication of animals
bred for the purpose of food (or they would not exist otherwise)
has eliminated the need for barbaric Neanderthal consumers to hunt
wild meat.
Hunting is not ethical just because
you eat what you kill. I don’t see Mr. Petersen wearing animal
hides, tracking down his prey on foot and killing it with a stone
knife or spear that he fashioned, nor do I see modern hunters
utilizing the entire carcass for their survival
needs.
Hunting nowadays is merely some
psychological need to recapture the archetype primordial hunt that
not only brought in food but revitalized manhood. Mr. Petersen
confuses the need to hunt, (his illusion) with the fact that modern
hunting is merely a way to flatter the vanity of the male ego. He
preaches 18th-century values of survival while comfortably residing
in the 21st century, where one can easily overwhelm any wild animal
with ultra-high-powered technology. What is ethical or sporting
about that?
It is a strange, morally bankrupt
ideology that preaches conservation and a deep love of wildlife,
while the principal objective is to kill animals in order to
provide more animals to kill. Mr. Petersen’s “love of wildlife” and
his “conservation” ideas would be better served, ethically sound
and less contradictory if he would preach appreciation of wildlife,
ecosystems, natural history and land ethics instead of covering his
hands in blood.
Recreational hunting needs to
become as extinct as the passenger pigeon. The coonskin cap
mentality was valid once upon a time on the frontier. Trivial
wild-meat eating and the illusion of the archaic hunt are as much a
dying remnant of our culture as is the wilderness you exploit by
harvesting its creatures. True wilderness, recreational hunting and
cattle ranching on public lands are being left behind by our
high-tech society. Wilderness will be excruciatingly missed, the
other two merely footnotes to
history.
Stephen
Gies
Billings,
Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Hunters: Say goodbye to your “macabre sport’.
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