(snip Dreamer's very thoughtful remarks)

Having answered your question about why I'm "revolted," I'll now ask you
one.  Given all the myriad ways we can seek transcendence, challenge,
excitement, identification, etc., why would you choose to seek it
through the killing of another creature?  And if you say "evolution" or
"biology" I will
> regretfully sigh and conclude you weren't serious in the search to find
and share insight.
>
Respectfully,
Dreamer

Bissell here;
Thank you, I'll try to do your request justice.

I come from a western US family, two of my great-grandfathers were Mormon
pioneers. My father grew up on a western cattle ranch, but hunting was not
part of family life. My grandfather was a rancher who didn't own a pair of
cowboy boots or a cowboy hat, or a gun. He thought them frivilous and
wasteful.

My father worked bucking hay all summer in order to save $16 to buy an L.C.
Smith side by side 12 gauge shotgun from the Sears catalog. The family ranch
was around the southern end of Utah Lake and he hunted ducks for the family.
My son still has that shotgun, although it is not safe to shot anymore. Dad
also bought a second hand 35-40 Craig with a bent barrel. You had to shot
low and to the right with it. My idiot brother sold it when I was in the Air
Force. When Dad died we tried to buy it back, but it was no longer
available.

My father was a petroleum geologist and I went with him on most of his field
trips. In those days that meant a lot of walking, that was my father's way
of doing geology. He felt that you had to walk on the rocks to really
understand them.

One day we were hiking in the Ruby Mountains of northern Nevada. I was only
8 or 9 years old. It was a cold spring day, spitting snow, and with a raw
wind burning exposed skin. This was then, and is today, real wilderness.
Wild, tough country with no water and only sparse vegetation. My father
loved it because the rocks were all exposed and not covered with plants. We
hiked up over a ridge and were making our way toward a pile of rocks when a
little bitch coyote ran out of a crack. She was, it appeared, only a year
old, probably only 15 or 20 pounds. She had her first litter hidden in the
rocks, and in all likelyhood we were the first humans she had every seen. We
probably looked and smelled like demons to her. But, she stood her ground
and barked at us. Every time we tried to get to the rocks to see if they
had, as my father put it, "the right kind of fossils," she would cut us off
and challenge us. I was amazed. As I watched her the incredible beauty of it
hit me with an almost sexual force. It was like a charge of electricity went
in my head. I clearly "saw" the connection of this little defiant animal and
the harsh land around me. I can, from memory, identify the plants now as if
I saw then outside my window. The purity of the animal and the land were so
clear to me.

>From that day on I was fascinated with animals in the wild. Every time my
father would return from a trip, no matter what time, he would come to my
room and tell me what animals he had seen.

Later he took me on a hunting trip. Dad didn't really like hunting, he
didn't like much of anything which took his time away from geology. But, his
friends wanted to go and I had begged him to take me. I wasn't allowed to
carry a gun, just go along. I was amazed how childlike the men were,
especially my father. They joked and kidded each other, and me, just like my
friends and I did when we played. They were careful to explain things to me,
how to light a fire, the right way to cook an egg over the fire, how to lay
out the sleeping bags. No judgemental statements, no bed times, no cautions
to "be quiet" or anything. Just men, being men with the united purpose of
hunting deer. Dad was not a good shot, but one man in the party got a deer.
We all helped clean it and cut it up. The guy who shot it handed out
portions to everyone, including me. He gave me a small package and told me
how important it was to share what you got.

My father quit hunting soon after this and didn't ever take me again.
However, my older brother took me under his wing and showed me how to shoot
both the 12 gauge and one of the several 22 rifles we owned. The first
animal I ever shot was a jackrabbit, I hit it in the stomache and learned
that rabbits can scream when in pain. It scared me so much I threw up. My
brother was very mad at me and forced me to shot the rabbit in the head to
kill it. I was sure, at the time, that I would never hunt again. But, I was
also aware that I had done something of importance and had done it badly. I
kept at it until I felt that I was doing it right.

After high school I quit hunting. I didn't hunt again for about 15 years. By
then I was a trained ecologists and a game warden in Colorado, and had my
own family. I took up hunting again with the perspective of wanting to
experience what the people I worked with experienced, and to understand
hunters who I worked for. I taught my son and daughter to hunt, and today
the only reason I will hunt is if one of them asks me to go.

Let me relate three stories quickly.

I do mail surveys of hunters sometimes. We get them mailed back with all
sorts of comments written on them. One of them said, "Mr. Grady Smith cannot
fill out this questionaire on hunting as he passed away last year. I am his
wife. He would have loved to answer your questions because he loved hunting.
How I miss him coming home and telling me about his days hunt." This woman
did not hunt, but hunting was a part of her life.

I was interviewing a woman who told me her husband, a hunter, had suffered a
stroke to the frontal lobe of his brain. The damage was severe and he could
no longer recognize his children. He did, however ask his wife to go buy a
hunting license for him. When she told him he couldn't hunt anymore, he
said, "If I can't hunt, who am I?"

When Timothy McVey, the Oklahoma City bomber, was sentenced to death, the
judge let members of the victims families say something to McVey. One father
said, "you killed my son, my best friend, the only man I would ever hunt
with."

These are all powerful stories, and I hope my own story is at least somewhat
forceful. Do you really think that all this is because hunters enjoy killing
animals? Don't you see that there is something much more profound going on
here?

I'm sorry for people who are so distressed by death they feel that the only
way to relate to nature is to leave it alone, or view it from a distance.
I'm careful when I dig in my garden not to kill earthworms, I'd prefer not
to have a lawn, I get a thrill in my stomach when I hear a flicker beating
out a challenge on an aluminum pole. I do not want to be seperated from
nature anymore than the requirements of modern society force on me. One way
to remain in contact, physical contact, is through hunting. It is not the
only way, or the way for everyone, but it is a way for a lot of people and
to trivialize it by saying they are "machismo," and "unusually cruel and
unconscious" speaks more for your lack of understanding than their emotions.

Hope this is as carefully thought out as Dreamer's statement.

sb



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