Liberal, Urbane Hunters

This morning I found an interesting article by Emma Marris over at Slate, titled, Hipsters Who Hunt, as I was following links to another article. The byline is that "More liberals are shooting their own supper". The article totally caught me by surprise.

While I don't agree with everything she states (e.g., "getting people out of the sprawl and into cities, where efficiencies of scale and density reduce the per-capita impacts on the environment while simultaneously creating more space for the rest of nature.") or all of the angles she views hunting from, I do find it interesting looking at from the perspective of someone who was used to being seen as morally reprehensible by many of his peers growing-up in the PDRM.

Yes, word got out  in high school that I wanted to kill Bambi and, like so many others, was soundly condemned by proper, liberal folks who ate meat from Super Stop & Shop and didn't hesitate to wear leather. Maybe the times are changing?

Some of the takeaways that caught my attention included:

People need to suck it up and realize that in this crazy, anthropogenic world we live in, we sometimes need to kill to keep populations in check. If goose poop is throwing nutrient cycles out of whack, causing algae blooms, and imperiling lake species, then ready the roasting pan for some goose.
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It is high time. And all it takes is overturning two long-held beliefs among many urban liberals: that it is wrong to personally kill animals and that hunters are all rural conservatives.

Or, something that I can't agree more with:

If you eat meat, eating animals you hunt yourself is a more ethical alternative than eating those from the current industrial agricultural system. Rather than being confined in small enclosures and dosed with antibiotics and antidepressants, wild birds and mammals have been leading lives very similar to those their species have been living for thousands of years (though featuring more corn, soy, and suburban refuse, generally speaking). And instead of outsourcing their deaths to an underpaid slaughterhouse employee, you do it yourself, which seems somehow most honest. If you can’t pull the trigger, you had better start collecting tempeh recipes.

I'll always disagree but at least show a modicum of respect for any anti-hunter who practices what s/he preaches and lives a truly vegan lifestyle. Don't waste my time otherwise.

It may also be a surprise to many of these city dwellers but this next takeaway is something that's been obvious to the rest of us for  so many decades:

Hazel Wong, a senior policy adviser at the Nature Conservancy, told me that to pass environmental legislation at the state level, “believe it or not, we work with hunting groups a lot.” I wasn’t surprised. Conservation in America was practically founded by hunters. Yellowstone was first envisioned as a giant game reserve that would create big populations of animals that hunters could nab as they spilled out over the boundaries. Our first conservation-minded president, Teddy Roosevelt, mowed down untold hundreds of animals in his long career as a sport hunter. And “hook and bullet” organizations continue to fight for land protection. You see, you need nature to go hunting. And hunters—liberal and conservative—generally like nature. That’s why they are out in it.

Overall, I'll gladly leave (and have left) difference in politics aside to share a beautiful snowy morning still-hunting through a muskeg meadow on Admiralty Island with anyone willing to share in the spirit of the hunt.