“Hunting is not merely an acquired taste; the
instinct that finds delight in the sight and pursuit
of game is bred into the very fiber of this race (man).
We are dealing, therefore, with something that lies
very deep. Some can live without opportunity for this
exercise and control of the hunting instinct, just
as I suppose some can live without work, play, love,
business or other vital adventures. But in these days
we regard deprivations as unsocial. Opportunity for
exercise of all the normal instincts has come to be
regarded more and more as an inalienable right.”
– Aldo Leopold, "A Sand County Almanac",
1949
“…When I hunt I am immersed mentally,
physically and even spiritually in an age-old predatory
relationship among animals. I am participating in
a common ecological process –just as a fox seeks
her prey.”
“To me, hunting is a very intense personal
relationship between myself, the prey, and the environment
in which the chase occurs.”
“This participation, to me, is a form of ecological
worship.”
– Eric K. Fritzell, "Hunting as Religion",
Wildlife Forever Symposium
“…there is value in any experience that
exercises those ethical restraints collectively called
‘sportsmanship’.”
“A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that
the hunter obviously has no gallery to applaud or
disapprove of this conduct. Whatever his acts, they
are dictated by his own conscious, rather than a mob
of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance
of this fact.”
– Aldo Leopold, "A Sand County Almanac",
1949
“Hunting may lead people to have peak experiences.
All the elements are there, from spectacular environmental
settings to intense emotional excitement, to encounters
with the deepest issues of life and death. Many hunters
I know feel that ultimately hunting is their religion,
but often do not admit this because of criticism from
those who do not understand the hunter’s soul.”
– James A. Swan, "In Defense of Hunting",
1995
“Why do I hunt? It’s a lot to think about,
and I think about it a lot. I hunt to acknowledge
my evolutionary roots, millennia deep, as a predatory
omnivore. To participate actively in the bedrock workings
of nature. For the atavistic challenge of doing it
well with an absolute minimum of technological assistance.
To learn the lessons, about nature and myself, that
only hunting can teach. To accept personal responsibility
for at least some of the deaths that nourish my life.
For the glimpse it offers into a wildness we can hardly
imagine. Because it provides the closest thing I’ve
known to a spiritual experience. I hunt because it
enriches my life and because I can’t help myself…because
I was born with a hunter’s heart.”
– David Peterson, "A Hunter’s Heart",
1996
“The early conservation movement…generated
the first stages in shaping a “commons,”
a public domain for public ownership for public use
and the public ownership of fish and wildlife as resources
not subject to private appropriation. Wildlife is
a resource of the commons - not of commerce. “
– Samuel P. Hays, "Conservation and the
Gospel of Efficiency", 1959
“Fundamental to ethical hunting is the idea
of fair chase. This concept addresses the balance
between the hunter and the hunted. It is a balance
that allows hunters to occasionally succeed while
animals generally avoid being taken.”
“There are some activities that are clearly
unfair as well as unethical. At the top of the list
is shooting captive or domesticated big game animals
in commercial killing areas (game farms) where a person
with a gun is guaranteed an animal to shoot. These
shooting grounds are alien to any consideration of
‘ethical hunting’.”
“There is a lot to think about and be thankful
for. It is well to think of these things when you
anticipate hunting, now and then when your are hunting,
and always when you claim an animal that is, in so
many ways, a precious gift. It is a gift that comes
to you from ancestral hunters in the caves of origins,
from native hunter of all lands, from those who won
our independence from kings, from our nation’s
first conservationists, and from all those who work
to protect wild places and the wildlife that lives
there. Most of all, it is a gift that comes from the
land. Appreciate it.”
-
Jim Posewitz, Helena, Montana, "Beyond Fair Chase:
The Ethic and Tradition of Hunting", 1994
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