Everyone kills, and everyone eats. Not everyone eats what they kill,
but these remain two of the most intimate forms of communing with our
environment, whether we recognize them as such, or not. Almost 40 000
Americans are killed each year as the result of homicidal, accidental,
and suicidal uses of guns; in all, Americans wielding guns intimidate,
wound, and kill hundreds of thousands every year. These were the kinds
of ideas impressed upon me as I grew up in my urban Mennonite home:
Guns were beasts, as were knives, arrows, spears, indeed anything could
become a weapon if held in a particular way. We sprayed each other with
the hose instead of water guns, and spent many long hours as a family
"communing with nature" through long walks on the Bruce Trail in
southern Ontario; we had a little garden from which we harvested
potatoes, carrots, and lettuce, but we never harvested the rabbits
hopping through, or the squirrels, or the groundhogs. It didn't occur
to me until high school, however, that I didn't know where the meat I
was eating came from. This bothered me. I became vegetarian. No more
cows in the rain forest! I said. No more chickens in long cramped
houses, moving along conveyor belts where heads went flying, feathers
electrically shocked off, fire burned off the hairs, to be tossed into
a super-wrap machine, ready for the Wal-Mart grocery bin. Hunting, too,
was equally cruel to animals in my mind. I tried to ignore the
arguments that hunting helped control deer populations, and that
killing for food was, ultimately, part of human nature to be honored,
much less tolerated. I got a chance to broaden my perspective last
year, and I harvested my first hen out at Merry Lea Environmental
Learning Center, during a May Term ornithology class. My classmates and
I chased her down, held her by the neck and I sliced her jugular with a
pocketknife. We named her Ellen.
We had her for dinner. She was tough, and tasty. I felt sad, but not
cruel or inhumane. I had no ritual to perform before I took her life,
nor one to perform afterwards. I did not know how these things were
done. I did not know what it meant to be a hunter.
When the opportunity arose for me to take a closer look into the
hunting culture, I only had to look in the telephone book to find what
I was looking for: Turkey Creek Guns and Archery in downtown Goshen,
Indiana. I called them up, explained rather inarticulately what I was
interested in, and soon set up meetings with what I believed to be
thoroughly encultured, currently involved, non-analytic individuals. My
research took the form of ethnography, with the goal of grasping my
informants' point of view, their relation to life, and their visions of
their world .
One of my first discoveries was that I needed to learn a new language:
(what was a muzzleloader? Why was a solid blade better than an
expandable arrowhead? What are cat-whiskers to a hunter?) I will
attempt to pull you into the hunting world through the stories of a
woman and man, whom I will call Beth and David, that own and run the
local guns and archery shop.
For the first interview I met Beth at what I considered to be a
well-known local coffee shop, and relatively common ground for us both.
Beth was quite comfortable in that setting although, she informed me,
she had never been inside that place before. This was my first reminder
of our interwoven worlds; we lived virtually right down the road from
one another, and had never met. It is possible that we had never
crossed paths before.
In this first encounter I learned about hunting tools:
Knives are brought on all hunting excursions; they are an addition to
the other hunting tools, be they firearms or bows. All of the weapons
in their shop are used in hunting, including handguns. This was of
great surprise to me, but my informants said that they originally
introduced handguns into their store for that very purpose. David
claimed, however, that only 2% of those that buy handguns use them to
hunt. It is mostly policemen and "target freaks" that are used to
handguns that buy them for hunting purposes. Others, truck drivers and
homeowners, buy them for personal protection.
The second time I met my informants I went into their store. I carried
a tape recorder and interviewed as I went. I had never been in a room
with so many guns and bows in my life. I was a little intimidated, and
felt like I was looked at a little strangely as I walked into the shop.
I was the only woman, and the only person my age. There were only a few
customers, milling about the shop. They seemed to know each other, and
knew, collectively, that I was either not one of them, or from out of
town. I spied my informant in the back room and she invited me behind
the counter with a wide grin on her face. The customers in the shop
immediately went about their own business, believing, perhaps, that I
was one of them after all.
The shop seemed fairly low-key to me. Those who worked in the shop
exchanged stories with the customers and the customers shared among
themselves, mostly about recent hunting excursions. There were bows
hung up all over the shop, like a boarder to the room, and guns stacked
on shelves leaning against the walls. There were glass cases under the
counter top containing knives, handguns, and holsters, and arrows with
brightly colored feathers were along one wall. In a front room were all
manner of clothing items, mostly in dark greens and browns and there
was an archery range off to the one side. There were several deer heads
mounted on the walls and one, rather large stuffed bear in the front
room near the clothing.
I was aware, on both occasions that I was in the shop, that Beth and I
were the only women present. Mary Womack comments on this phenomenon:
"Anthropologists traditionally thought women could not hunt because
their upper body strength is not so great as that of males, so women
cannot pull as large a bow or throw a spear as far as men. Also,
childcare is primarily the province of women cross-culturally, and
women in traditional societies typically nurse until a child is four to
six years old. A woman who had to carry a four-year-old child would be
at a disadvantage in stalking large game. However, many of the
assumptions about the inability of women to hunt are based on
stereotypes developed in our own industrialized society. Among the Agta
of the Philippines, women hunt wild boar and deer. They carry smaller
bows than men and typically hunt in groups, whereas men often hunt
singly. Women also use dogs, so that their kill rate is actually higher
than that of men, though men provide more meat because they hunt more
often" (Womack p.88).
Both Beth and David were adamant about the fact that there are women
hunters. The majority of their customers are indeed male, but they
encourage women, especially young women, to get involved in the sport.
David said that even when he was growing up it wasn't ever said that
hunting wasn't a girl's thing to do: he would go shoot rabbits and his
mother would clean them up, it didn't make any difference. It was about
getting food on the table.
I attempted, then, to discover how it was people became a part of this
culture in the first place. Was it something one could join? Was one
born into it? I was never taught to use a gun; indeed, I most certainly
never held one until I was in that shop. I asked my informants how they
got involved.
David said he started when he was very young: he was interested from the start.
We hunted on the farm. And it was nothing for me to just take a rifle
and go out and shoot rabbits by myself. My dad taught me. Hardly
anybody in this area that grew up, everybody had a gun in the house,
usually a long gun, didn't have any use for hand guns, and everyone was
taught how to shoot it, how to be safe with it. Shot gun and rifle
that's what they were, a 22 rifle and maybe a 12-gauge shotgun. And
there was always a gun behind our door.
Beth, on the other hand, claimed to have "married it" when I asked her
how she got involved in archery. Most hunters had siblings, parents,
and grandparents that had been hunting as long as they could remember.
They were most kind, however, to provide me with a list of things I
would need, should I desire to start hunting myself:
What You Need to Start Hunting:
gear: food, appropriate clothing, transportation, lodging/tent,
guns/bows in appropriate poundage 1, projectiles, cameras, and tree
stands if not available on site.
land to hunt on knowledge of animals to be hunted, acquired from friends, family, videos, magazines
knowledge of equipment
skill/prior experience OR someone with prior experience along
a reason to start: thrill, curiosity, food needs
awareness of Bambi Syndrome
hunting license
This list seems rather simple, until you realize the steps involved.
Many of the items can be acquired at a shop like Turkey Creek. Land to
hunt on is a little more difficult to come by. My informants explained
that most people hunt on their own land or get farmers to lease land to
them. This is not difficult if you know who owns what land, and where
the deer/animals to be hunted prefer to graze. And this Bambi Syndrome,
is an essential phenomenon.
I didn't know if I could actually shoot something until I actually got
to that point. But before I could, I had to learn a tremendous amount
about deer, about what happens to them and why we harvest them. I had
the Bambi syndrome. I didn't think that I could ever harvest a deer
But, I learned an enormous amount about the deer, I learned an enormous
amount about the meat, and I've changed my diet because now that's
mainly what we eat.. I mean, we probably put about 4-5 in the freezer a
year and that feeds our family. So yeah, I had to learn a lot.
Beth also described the Bambi syndrome as something that should not
leave. She explained that every time she harvests an animal she feels
sad about it, and that if she ever harvests one and doesn't feel sad
about it, it's time to stop hunting.
This emphasizes the point that hunting does not simply fulfill a
functional, tangible role in the lives of hunters. There is a different
connection. I discovered more about this when I asked for hunting
stories. I first asked for the most successful hunting story. I
received a perplexed look in response. The best hunting story? Still
perplexed. I then asked if these were unfair questions. This was the
response:
Uh, yes, because, yes I've got some nice animals but probably the most
exciting was the first deer I ever shot. That was done on a deer drive
in Wisconsin. I was like in the middle, I was the driver and the deer
came back through and came broadside. It was a recurve bow, very
excitingThe least successful has probably been a couple Elk hunts we
went on. We maybe spent 2 weeks in the mountains in Colorado. Dry.
Animals moved, we couldn't find em, we walked and walked and walked.
Never saw an animal in 2 weeks. But that's part of hunting. And you
have a lot of fun hunting whether you get anything or not. That's gotta
be the bottom lineThe other fun is hunting with people. I haven't
harvested an animal this year. I've had fun, saw a lot of em, passed em
up: deer, 10 yards, nice buck too, just because I didn't particularly
want to shoot that one Passed a lot of does. So, I've already had a
successful season, even though I didn't put anything in the freezer. So
you've gotta get something more out of it than killing an animal
David defined success as his personal satisfaction. He didn't need to
satisfy anyone else. This is not the case with all hunters, however:
There are people, I know a lot of people, customers, some are some
aren't, that if they don't shoot a deer during gun season or whatever,
for some reason they think people are gonna look down on em, it's
really not the case but its their mindset. If I can, I like to take
pictures. Last year I took some good pictures: deer right out of my
tree stand; deer right underneath me, oh it's fun, a lot of fun. When I
bear hunted, I've got about 2 hours of video of bear and bait, and it's
fun just to watch em come in and feed you know and I remember this one
particular bear, if it wouldn't have had cubs with it, she was a big
sow, she had hair on her back that was probably 6 inches long, that
when she would move she'd walk, that hair would just flow, you know,
just like wheat in the wind, and what a beautiful pelt that would have
been, but she had 3 young ones with her that were that big and I took a
video, and that was success, too.
Local hunters go up to Manitoba to bear hunt, and may be moving out of
the state to do their other large game hunting as well. My informants
explained the history of hunting in this area, and suggest that the
community either needs to be better informed, or start looking
elsewhere for their harvest.
The insurance companies, they say there's too many deer, we need to get
rid of them, and the farmers say they're eatin' too much of the crops
you know, well what's happening is, it's not that there's too many
deer, it's the disappearing habitat from human overpopulation, plain
and simple.
Some hunters are aware of these effects of urban sprawl, others are
not. According to my informants, many hunters are over harvesting. Part
of the role of these hunters in the community, then, is that of
educators. Beth and David go into area schools to teach kids about the
history of archery and instruct them on the use of bows and arrows.
They have been to the Elkhart County Fair with their old wooden saw
horses, carving out bows by hand from Hedge apple(2); they run archery
leagues in the winter and work at children's camps in the summertime.
By the time the interviews were completed my informants were eager to
teach me to shoot. If all goes well, I thought, I will be out next fall
for hunting season. I am curious to know more: Will there be more
female hunters in the future? My impression is that there is more
hunting done for sport now than there is for necessary protein harvest,
but will there be a movement in the other direction? Will the deer
population survive while the hunters try to make up their minds? I hope
that this ethnography may serve as a model of forming connections
within our own close communities; that we may work towards preserving
this interwoven web of culture through respect and interest in our
environments.
I haven't been hunting. I haven't yet sought out the opportunity. I have, however, given up vegitarianism for lent.
Notes
1. poundage refers to the number of pounds it requires to draw the string back from the bow
2. Hedge apple also known as Osage Orange, common in old fence-rows in the greater Goshen area
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