Hunting: the spin and the reality

The season for using firearms to hunt deer is drawing to a close here in Maine, which got me to wondering: Do hunters believe their own PR? Or is it just for public consumption?

You know what I'm talking about. There's the claim that pitting a guy with a rifle against an unarmed deer is a fair fight. (I'm reminded of Harry Truman's quote: "I do not believe in shooting anything that cannot shoot back.") There's the assertion that hunters hunt because they love the outdoors. And there's the insistence that hunters have a moral obligation to prevent overpopulation and gruesome deaths in the wild, so they must "harvest" wildlife. (That last one is what I like to call the "we have to kill the deer to save them" argument.)

I never have hunted and I don't plan to start now, but I'm no gun hater. The Second Amendment is as sacred as the First Amendment, in my view. I’m not against hunting if it puts food on someone’s table. It's a hallowed tradition in rural areas, a tangible link to a self-sufficient past and a simpler time.

No one who buys neatly packaged meat at the supermarket can reasonably condemn people who have the initiative, patience and skill to find their own food. To do so is hypocritical. Here in Maine, hunters donate wild game to a worthy state program that distributes it to 245 soup kitchens and food pantries. What's not to love about that?

But the hard, cold, unspoken truth about hunting is this: With the possible exception of truly impoverished people who are desperate to feed their families, hunters enjoy killing things. How else to explain the gleeful expression on their faces whenever they’re photographed holding a freshly "harvested" buck by its antlers?

I understand why hunters don't admit this to the rest of us. But do they admit it to themselves?