Jan
15
There were days when I used to hunt. It always made sense to me that if you were going to take the life of an animal, you’d do it yourself. The supermarket hid what was behind that piece of meat- a routinized, mechanical processing system where workers probably stop realizing they are actually killing living things. To me bought meat devalues the life that was at the source of it. Better to actually kill it. That way you would at least know what it meant to see an animal die for food. You could take responsibility for that death. It was also the truth; you should experience the gory reality of gutting and skinning for yourself, if only to see the sterilized deceit of packaged meat.
I witnessed a few ungulate deaths. All of the times were from my late teens, when I went out fairly regularly with my best friend and his dad. Mostly it was for the purpose (at least from my perspective) of drinking the dad’s whiskey, not without its own risk. The dad had the tracings of a killer, an old brawler who now drove a logging truck, and drank, hunted, and fished in his spare-time. I had heard his stories around the campfire from when I was a kid and exagerated they were not. I had experienced his wrath before. I had borrowed his prized fishing rod once when we were 13, and crossing a raging river, I fell in and chose to swim for my life rather than hang onto it. I had never heard the end of it and he no doubt saw me in lesser eyes since then.
But perhaps it was just as well. Hunting to him was less the romantic ideal of relating to nature it was to me then a piss-fest aimed at telling enough insulting jokes and put downs to establish his dominance. And of course, nailing that big trophy. If there was anything that really excited him, it was the opportunity to take home a rack big enough to get in the trophy books. It was this prospect, however remote, that inspired him the most. The age-old competition of measurable size. I’m pretty sure he kept the trophy book under the seat in case he needed to reference it. It wasn’t something that mattered much to me, and in the end, I was just happy with a few moose-meat steaks.
I killed my first and only mule deer in Forst St. John, on a trip with the same friend, his dad, and his friend, a somewhat mysterious logging truck driver who rode a harley and listened to Kris Kristofferson, i.e. he may have been a repenting hippy. I was 18 and working at a sawmill outside of Prince George, a fact relevant since the dad bet me his pay cheque against mine I would never shoot anything with my open-site 30-30, a relic I borrowed from my dad (it was the farm gun) that had practically no range and questionable rifling. I was insecure and intimidated and I never bet him. But that morning, through a line of trees into a grain field, I shot and killed a four-point buck who was too brave to run when my first shot missed (he was with some does). He died instantly, the bullet going through his heart.
It was never easy, killing animals. On the farm, the worst part is having to put down the sick cow, a task that had fallen on me a few times and not by choice. They are always the profound moments in an otherwise routine life of chores- which, if you distill out the core of it, is to give and maintain life. But those moments of death and the loud shock of the rifle that sends the herd in panic, if anything, sum up like little else the power of humans over nature. In that one surprising moment that is almost fast beyond comprehension, you finally understand in practical terms one of the most banal observations, that we humans really have things under control.
And yet we don’t. Animals, it seems, are adopting evolutionary strategies to avoid being hunted. They are getting smaller, and reproducing earlier. The phenomenon is discussed in a new study of exploited fish and animal populations. It shows that humans, through harvesting the biggest of each species, are turning the order of survival upside down. Rather than big having an evolutionary advantage, the reverse is true. The result? Smaller animals with a predisposition to begin reproducing earlier are now more fit to survive in a human-predated landscape. But these smaller specimens don’t reproduce as well, sometimes not replacing population losses, and so the spectre of extinction. Scientists are predicting as much for the Atlantic Cod, and now, because of the growing popularity of sushi, bluefin tuna. This all comes on top of news of the possible extinction of salmon runs along our own coast. The meaning of all this? I haven’t hunted since I shot the deer, and I don’t eat much meat otherwise. The study only underscores this decision, though, if I ever do hunt again, I will make sure I spare anything big and go for the sickly ones that appear to be on the verge of dying. As for fish, that is a harder question. I love sushi and salmon, and I don’t see how we can selectively harvest the smallest of these species. I will have to accept less of it, if that means preserving them as a species.
James Steidle
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