This subject came up a while back and I posted a link to this article that was on the Kifaru website. The link is now dead, but someone graciously copied it on to their forum for me. This is a copyrighted article by Phillip Watts. This is how it appeared on the Kifaru forum. I think it about sums it up:
Hunting, Mental Health, and Understanding the Natural World
What is it about hunting that so deeply offends some people?
I recently read a fascinating essay by Mitch Kendall titled “Hunting and Mental Health.” It was written in response to a statement by Earle D. Hightower, chairman of the Institute for Public Safety, a Rockville, Maryland-based group. Mr. Hightower was quoted in the Washington Times as saying “my personal opinion is that anybody who goes out and shoots helpless animals has a psychiatric problem.” Mr. Hightower’s organization also reportedly sent 600 cards to Maryland property owners stating that 40% of hunters are drug addicts, drunks, or mentally unstable.
Mr. Kendall is a psychologist, and researched the behavioral science literature to see if there was evidence of a tendency toward mental instability among hunters. He found to the contrary that “many of the best-respected behavioral scientists of our times, including Sigmund Freud, William James, Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Karl Menninger have written that hunting is a natural, healthy part of human nature.” He quotes Erich Fromm as follows:
“In the act of hunting, a man becomes, however briefly, part of nature again. He returns to the natural state, becomes one with the animal…to be part of nature and to transcend it by virtue of his consciousness.”
I’d like to thank Dr. Fromm for so beautifully describing why most of us hunt, and Mr. Kendall for illuminating these words. But again the question, what is it about hunting that offends some people to the point that they question the mental health of hunters?
I believe the quote from Dr. Fromm contains the answer: “...a man becomes, however briefly, part of nature again. He returns to the natural state…” Dr. Fromm is telling us that man has in effect left the natural state. This is why hunting is so repugnant to some--because as a society, many of us no longer understand the natural world, how it works, and our role in it. We don’t understand where our food comes from or the connection between meat on our dinner plates and killing animals. We abhor killing and believe that anyone who kills by choice must be if not mentally unstable, at least subject to ridicule.
I’m not only talking about the hard-core anti-hunting groups here. Although I completely disagree with them, I grudgingly respect them because they practice what they preach—they don’t eat meat or use animal-based products like leather shoes. They are at least true to their convictions.
Their logic is flawed, of course. Anti-hunting groups like to quote statistics showing that the majority of Americans are against hunting, but I’m not buying it. Both major candidates in the recent presidential election staged photo ops in the field, with guns in their hands, and I believe this is a much more accurate indication of how most Americans feel about hunting. Pollsters don’t get these things wrong very often. And cultures all over the world not only consume meat but make it the center of tradition and ritual. We have our Thanksgiving turkey, Greeks have their whole lamb roasted on a spit, and Inuit have their whale blubber. I can’t believe that people worldwide have this all wrong.
And why single out hunters for ridicule? Why not focus on beef packing plants or poultry plants where far greater numbers of animals are killed every year than in our fields and forests? And if killing animals to clothe ourselves is wrong, why protest outside furriers and not shoe stores? Don’t many more people wear leather shoes than furs?
The answer is, most of us eat beef or poultry and wear leather shoes. These are accepted without so much as a second thought, and to question something so deeply ingrained in our culture would seem radical, outside the mainstream--even crazy. Or to be more cynical, if the same anti-hunting groups that question the mental health of hunters were to question the mental health of people who eat meat or wear leather shoes (in other words, the general public) their message would fall on deaf ears and their fundraising would evaporate.
So why pick on hunters? Because most people don’t hunt. Hunters as a group are an easy target, and the message that killing animals is wrong finds a somewhat sympathetic ear with the general public.
In the natural world there are predators and prey. Humans are the most highly developed predators, so we’re at the top of the food chain. I’m not ashamed of this, but apparently many of us are. We eat meat, wear leather shoes and use animal products but refuse to acknowledge that we are responsible for killing animals to sustain ourselves. Not only that, but we disparage those who do their own killing.
I recall a business dinner in Louisiana some years ago. A colleague noticed turtle soup on the menu and asked if I’d ever had it. I told him that I’d made turtle soup several times with snapping turtles I’d caught myself. Another colleague was aghast---“how could you do that, kill those poor turtles?” she asked in dismay. Moments earlier she had ordered a whole lobster, boiled. I politely explained to her that my killing turtles was no different than her ordering a lobster for dinner, and pointed out that I had at least killed the turtles before cooking them (lobsters are boiled alive). But she failed to make the connection.
Another time at home in Virginia, I was in my garage skinning a deer I’d killed. One of my sons, age 4, wandered out to watch. He loved eating venison and was happy that I’d killed the deer. But then one of my neighbor’s children came into the garage, saw the deer, and said in a scolding tone “my mother says killing animals is wrong.” My son was crestfallen—maybe his dad was wrong for killing this deer. Normally I would’ve let the other child’s remark pass without comment, but seeing the look on my son’s face I couldn’t. As gently as I could I asked the child if his family was vegetarian, and of course they weren’t. I explained to him that his mother was mistaken, and that in order for anyone to eat meat animals had to be killed.
I could forgive the child for not making the connection, but his mother should have known better. As one who has hunted most of my life I will never be able to understand how so many of us can at once abhor the killing of animals, yet be perfectly happy to eat meat, fish, or poultry for dinner. But I believe that these folks are sincere. They’ve just lost their understanding of the natural world and our role in it, and seldom think about where our food comes from.
Anti-hunting sentiment is for the most part an urban and suburban phenomenon. Most people in this country grow up in urban or suburban areas and are never exposed to farms, so they have little understanding of where our food comes from. Most never witness a chicken, hog, or steer being killed for food, and grow up with an aversion to killing of any kind. The only killing they’re exposed to is on the evening news, and it’s not a good thing.
Killing an animal for food is traumatic for people not accustomed to it. Killing in and of itself is bloody, gory, and upsetting to them. They equate hunting with killing so they have difficulty understanding why anyone would want to hunt. They don’t understand, as Erich Fromm did, that hunting is much more than just the act of killing. It’s being part of nature, or “returning to the natural state” as he put it.
By contrast, in rural areas most people either grow up on farms or know someone who owns a farm. Rural people understand that we raise animals and kill them to feed ourselves. The children in 4-H competition are under no illusions as to the fate of their prize-winning steers, hogs, and lambs. To farmers, raising and killing animals to feed our population is as natural as harvesting tomatoes or green beans from their gardens, or hunting deer on the back forty.
My father was raised on a farm. As a child, every Sunday we made the trip to my grandparent’s house for dinner with the extended family. My grandparents were far from wealthy but the spread they put out every Sunday was fantastic. There would be ham from the smokehouse and two or three other kinds of meat, along with too many different vegetables to count, homemade puddings, pies, and pickles. All of this was grown on the farm and cooked on a wood-burning stove. I recall seeing my grandmother nonchalantly grab a chicken, and in one smooth motion stretch its neck over the chopping block and chop its head off with a hatchet. Was this the act of a mentally unstable or sadistic woman? No, it was a chore that had to be done if we were to have fried chicken that evening, simple as that. My grandmother was one of the kindest, gentlest people you could ever meet. In fact, she wouldn’t allow dove hunting on her place because she believed doves mated for life. And if anyone were to suggest to me that she was mentally unstable or sadistic for killing chickens, well, I’d suggest to them…that it’s a free country and they’re entitled to their opinion. Of course I would.
So, if killing animals to feed and clothe ourselves is an accepted part of our culture, why do so many meat-eating, leather shoe-wearing citizens continue to see hunters as blood-thirsty rednecks?
Because most people don’t want to admit that they are responsible for killing animals to sustain themselves. They don’t see the connection between the cellophane-wrapped steaks they buy at the grocery store and the animal that was killed and butchered to provide those steaks—out of sight, out of mind. They can eat their steaks with a clear conscience because they didn’t personally kill the animal--they’re not killers.
I believe that when a meat-eating person says “how could you kill that poor animal” what they really mean to say (if they stopped to think about it) is “I could never kill that animal.” Which is fine by me--I understand that many people don’t like the idea of killing and would rather not participate in it. But I do have a problem when these same people imply that I (or hunters in general) am somehow morally inferior, mentally unstable, or sadistic for killing an animal. They’re not being honest with themselves, because they won’t admit that in order to eat meat, an animal has to die and someone has to kill it.
They may rationalize themselves blameless because they don’t bloody their own hands, but they’re not. They’re every bit as responsible for killing the animals they eat as I am for killing the animals I hunt. And furthermore, I would argue that it is only the hunter (or the farmer)—who gets his own two hands bloody in order to have his meat—that understands and appreciates what is involved with taking an animal’s life to sustain his own. The hunter owns up to his meat-eating in a very basic way and doesn’t shrink from the task of killing because it’s distasteful.
Let me illustrate using two examples. The first is the average person who eats meat but doesn’t hunt. He walks into a grocery store, browses the meat aisle, and picks out a few steaks. He has no idea where the meat came from, the age of the animal, its condition, or how it was killed—it’s not important. He doesn’t know who killed the animal or who butchered it and wrapped it up so neatly with the little absorbent pad underneath to keep blood from dripping on his car seat on the way home. It matters little to him because the steaks cost a fraction of what he earns in an hour. If he burns them on the grill, it’s no big deal, he’ll just toss them in the garbage and go buy some more.
For the second example, I’ll use myself. I hunt elk in the mountains of Colorado, generally in roadless areas because I like the solitude of the backcountry. In the seasons that I am fortunate enough to kill an elk my hunt follows a familiar pattern, and goes something like this: each day, I awaken well before dawn and coax my stiff muscles back to life. I eat a quick breakfast, pack a lunch, and spend the day looking for elk, sunup to sundown. I walk a few miles over mountainous terrain, through thick timber and grassy meadows. I slip through the shadows as quietly as possible, always conscious of the wind that can carry my scent to the elk and send them running off where I can’t follow. Most days I’ll see some elk but I won’t be able to get close enough for a shot, which for me is within the 100-yard range of my muzzleloading rifle. I’ll also see other animals going about their routines—maybe a black bear foraging or some coyotes hunting. Like me, they will spend much more time walking, looking, listening—hunting—than killing prey.
Then one day, everything will come together. The wind will be just right and I’ll slowly work my way within range of the elk. I’ll struggle to calm myself, and take the shot. I’ll watch the downed elk with a tinge of sadness as its life drains away. I will understand completely what it means to take an animal’s life to sustain my own.
Then comes the hard part. I’ll be alone on a mountainside, three or four miles from the road, with a dead elk weighing several hundred pounds. My equipment will consist of a knife, a folding saw, some rope, a backpack, and my own two legs. By the time I’m done, I will have spent a day or two tending to the elk. I’ll have gotten my arms bloody up to the elbows removing the entrails. I’ll have skinned the elk until my hands ached from the effort, taken a break, and then skinned some more. I’ll have sweated under heavy loads of meat hauled out on my back, and when I’m done I’ll feel a real sense of accomplishment. I’ll provide my family with a freezer full of high-quality meat, better than anything I could buy in a store. We’ll savor every bite and I’ll make damned sure I don’t burn any on the grill.
And later on, when a meat-eating acquaintance makes a disparaging remark about hunting, I’ll fight the urge to just shake my head and walk away. I’ll ask him (as politely as possible) why he thinks it’s OK to pay someone else to kill and butcher animals for him to eat, but it’s not OK to do it himself. I’ll watch him struggle for an answer and not find one. And the sad part is, I will probably fail to change his mind about hunting. A lifetime growing up with Bambi is hard to overcome.
Copyright by Phillip Watts, January 2005, Englewood, Colorado
