More Than What Meets The Eye

Most animal rights activists try to portray hunters as evil people who just like to kill defenseless animals for the fun of it. This simply is not true. Yes the ultimate goal is to harvest whatever game you’re targeting but it is more than that, it’s trying to outwit nature in its own element and also become entwined with it at the same time. Hunting is the oldest form of competition. It wasn’t that long ago that man had to hunt to survive. I know that times have changed but I still feel that we carry a predatory instinct with us. Football, hockey, or competition of any kind I feel is just a way of expressing that instinct by challenging, outsmarting, and ultimately conquering your adversary.  Hunting is basically the same thing however instead of outsmarting a fellow person you’re trying to prevail over Mother Nature and her billions of years of evolution.

I know that a rebuttal to that argument is that it is now become an unfair playing field. Whereas the hunter has a rifle and powerful optics and the game has nothing to defend itself. However I would challenge that claim by stating that I have been hunting for the past three years and I have yet to harvest anything. Now if the odds were stacked so grossly uneven I would assume that I would have something more to show for my investment. Thus there must be a reason for this. Deer the game species that I targeted does in fact boast some impressive defenses. They possess great vision, smell and hearing all of which makes this animal very elusive to hunters. Therefore, validating that the competition between hunters and their game is in fact a fair fight.   

Even though I haven’t harvested any game to date I would still call my hunts successful because of the interactions that I enjoyed within each hunt. Whether it was scouting many different areas looking for any sign of activity that might point me in the right direction or sitting at a chosen spot for hours waiting patiently, the goal was to blend with nature. I would much rather sit in a tree all day and watch the world revolve around me than harvest an animal that was just laid out in front of me without any effort on my part. This belief is how most hunters I have spoken to approach the sport of hunting. So this notion that all a hunter likes is too kill any unlucky animal that crosses their path is simply untrue. It is not the act of killing that we seek it’s the competition and triumph that drives our love of the hunt.