This Issue

A Firsthand Education

By Kathleen Weflen

Why teach a young person to hunt deer? About half of Volunteer readers are hunters and could readily answer this question. Middle-school teacher Travis Stewart explains his reasons in his story in this issue. "First Hunt" is a riveting account of young hunters tracking a wounded deer.

Hunting provides firsthand knowledge of the natural world. In his essay "Reality Check" in Orion magazine, Robert Michael Pyle tells a tale that illustrates the importance of even the smallest hunt. In Japan children have long searched the bushes for big stag beetles to capture and keep as pets. But because wild beetles have grown scarce, people now usually buy beetles rather than catch them. When a pet beetle dies, a bewildered child sometimes asks for batteries to revive the "toy," which, after all, came from a store. A child who had hunted the beetle would know it was a living creature from outdoors.

Hunting hones appreciation of nature because it demands attentiveness. Like a student in a course on music or art appreciation, a novice hunter learns to sit still, listen, and look intently. A hunter practices using all senses in pursuit of a wild animal in its habitat.

Sitting in a deer stand, a hunter grows comfortable in the surroundings. "If we are not attached to a particular landscape, we might as well be adrift in space," says Chet Raymo, author of The Path. "The place we learn to love can be a windowsill in a New York high-rise, a patch of woods on Walden Pond, or a million acres of the high Sierras. What’s important is that we feel at home."

Unlike industrial butchering, hunting happens at a human scale. When people sit down at a table to eat wild game, a hunter can tell the story of where the food came from.

Sometimes, of course, hunters have been careless of the consequences of their actions. When Teddy Roosevelt hunted in the North Dakota Badlands in 1883, he searched 13 days before he found and killed his first bison. Overgrazing and drought had altered the grasslands. Overzealous hunters had killed off bison, as well as other big game. Alarmed by the scarcity of wildlife, Roosevelt began advocating conservation and careful use.

So does Shane Mahoney. A hunter, fisherman, and biologist, he has witnessed the demise of Newfoundland’s famed cod fishery. Now he speaks ardently of the need to "better understand our interactions with nature and appreciate the miracle of conservation through wise use." Far from eschewing the harvest of wildlife, Mahoney believes hunters hold the key to conservation. Speaking at the University of Minnesota last spring, he called for educators to ponder our hunting and gathering past, then teach students that history.

Our past is enmeshed with other animals, Mahoney says. And why wouldn’t our interest be keen? Human survival has depended on tracking, capturing, and killing wildlife.

According to Mahoney, humans have redirected the hunting instinct to athletics. Cheering as if their lives depended on him, fans watch the quarterback as he measures time and distance and the trajectory of the football—as a bowhunter might measure time, distance, and the trajectory of the arrow.

Mahoney asks what role a human ought to play in the natural world—user or voyeur? His answer: An educated person must acquire knowledge as a user.

Hunting is one way to know the natural world. Waterfowl hunter Donald Soderlund Jr., featured in "Big Lakes, Empty Skies" on page 20, has traveled that way for 46 years. Scientist Raymo has followed another way—simply walking the one-mile path from home to work for 37 years and studying that landscape in depth. Both observers gained a firsthand education. As Raymo says, "Any path can become the Path if attended to with care."

Kathleen Weflen, editor

kathleen.weflen@state.mn.us