In the same way that young
children spontaneously imitate the gestures, postures and sounds of
animals, the young hunter identifies with the animals he hunts. He studies
them, tracks them, listens for them, anticipates them, calls them, even
dreams them. When the moment of truth arrives the young man is caught off
guard at the sight of the beautiful beast, bloodied, soiled and lifeless.
In an eternal moment he realizes that he, too, is mortal and impermanent.
At the deepest level he is stunned by the awareness that despite all
appearances to the contrary he and the animal are essentially one, part of
something far greater than themselves. It is a supreme moment of humility
that launches a boy’s spiritual life and connects him to nature.
The young hunter is also keenly aware that the animal died for him, for
his passage to manhood and for the sustenance of his body and spirit. It is
a holy communion, the original sacrificial rite that opens a young man’s
heart and fills him with empathy. "Thinking with the heart" means
that when we hunt we learn to listen to our deepest feelings and honor
them. That is why over 90% of the mature hunters I’ve surveyed report
letting suitable specimens go, often because it simply doesn’t feel right
to kill them.
As one who serves life by taking life, the young hunter adopts a serious
commitment to temper his passion, the origin of ethical life. For him the
wild animal is a blessed gift. The hunt teaches a spirit of gratitude to
the animals and for the gifts of nature as well as to life itself and the
divine. Most older hunters report that they thank the animals they’ve
taken as well as the Creator.
Hunting invokes an altered state of consciousness, one of supreme
alertness to the animal and the environment. It gets us out of ourselves,
beyond our ego, and as a consequence the hunt is fundamentally a religious
experience, one that reconnects us to the source. Hunting teaches the
interconnection and interdependence of all life, not in an abstract,
intellectual sense, but at the deepest level of knowing. Like men of
hunting-gathering societies, recreational hunters know from direct
experience that interdependence is a fact of life.
Because hunting reveals the impermanence of life and our own mortality,
the taking of an animal’s life evokes respect for all life, animal and
human alike. Killing an animal teaches us the terrible extent of our power,
and so it evokes responsibility.
For these reasons, leading authorities in family therapy, male
development, adolescent psychology and teen violence agree that shooting
sports and hunting are good for youth. Michael Gurian, best-selling author
of several books on how to properly raise boys into fine young men agrees
with Dr. Jim Rose, neuropsychologist at the University of Wyoming, that not
only is hunting unrelated to aggression and violence, it produces less
violent, more peaceful men.
In a l3-year program in Idaho, delinquent boys were taken out for two
weeks into the high desert where they had to survive with nothing more than
a sleeping bag and a pocketknife. They learned to cooperate, to observe and
study wild animals carefully, to invent weapons and traps so they could
eat. The program was the most successful ever launched for troubled youth.
One year after their wilderness survival experience, 85% of the boys had
not resumed delinquency. Field supervisor, Wade Brackenbury, feels that it
was the taking of animals’ lives for food that most transformed the boys
and engendered in them a sense of respect for life.
