Annie, get your gun...

Today I am going to attempt to wade through the murky, potentially dangerous topic of hunting. I should add, that members of my family are hunters and this is not intended to look down upon them or judge them. I just love them too much. :)

Hunting. Yes, I'm well aware that it is the season. I would probably forget about it, but I am always reminded when I log onto Facebook and see status update after status update from other friends about it. Even worse, when I see a picture of someone with a dead animal. Blech.

The topic of hunting was usually never black and white for me. And now, even as much as I despise it, it still isn't black and white. Perhaps I should explain.

One of my first memories tied with hunting was when my father came home with a dead deer. I remember walking out and seeing it hanging in our shed behind our house. I was horrified. I ran away and hid from my dad behind the couch in our living room. It scared me to death.

Of course, fast forward to several years later, and I had accepted it. When my father, brothers, and cousins would go hunting and bring home an animal, I would stare at it in awe. I would love to see how pretty those animals were, even if they were dead.

When I was 12 or so, I thought about taking hunters safety because it seemed like such a fun thing to do. I wanted to go hiking up in the mountains and look for animals. However, the man in charge happened to call me in the middle of my nap one Friday afternoon. He wanted to know whether or not I intended to come to the class. For me, it was an easy answer. I was tired and it sounded really boring at the time, so I said no.

I should note though, that through all this time I always fished. Whenever we went on family trips, we would pack all our fishing poles. Fishing never seemed to bother me much, at least not as much as hunting initially did.

As time wore on, I got accustomed to the life of living in a family of hunters. It wasn't until after I graduated and left my parents' house that I started to question and seriously think twice about it again. There wasn't a certain event that steered me in this direction, at least as far as I can remember. But there was always this nagging feeling and it just didn't sit well with me.

A month or two before I met Mark, I was hanging out with another guy who loved to hunt. He would talk about it all the time. Once again, that nagging feeling came back up and I told him that I didn't think that hunting was right. He thought I was crazy. I couldn't keep seeing him because I knew that things just wouldn't work out. I needed to date someone who didn't prefer to kill animals.

Then I met Mark. One year after that, I started on the path to veganism.

Of course, as the years have gone on, I have heard various hunting stories and seen plenty of pictures. At first, they were really upsetting. Once the suffering of animals is put to the forefront of your concerns, it is amazing how much seeing even a dead squirrel can make you mad.

I wrote an article for a magazine journalism class that really made me question and wonder what the role of animals should be in our lives. Was it our responsibility to keep their populations in check? Was it our responsibility to kill ones who are considered diseased or invasive species? Was it our right to kill them if we needed food?

The answer to the latter question took a while for me to figure out. Even now, I know it isn't a simple answer and it is far from black and white. I know there are many people who are pro-hunting who think that I've "gone PETA" and who think that I care more about animals than humans.

The truth of it to me is that hunting has a place. It has a purpose. I understand the need for someone to go hunting when they are poor and they have a family to feed over the winter. I understand the need to go hunting when there is nothing else to eat. Do I understand the need to go hunting to see who can get the biggest deer or elk? Absolutely not.

In fact, we read in the scriptures, "Wo be unto man who sheddeth blood or that wasteth flesh and hath no need." (D&C 49:21)

Over the years, my view of hunting has gone from complete disgust to an almost mild acceptance. I have learned that in comparison with factory farming, wild animals really are better for you to eat (if in fact, you must eat meat). And the people who hunt actually know where their food is coming from and aren't afraid to do the job themselves. That part I can tolerate.

I think that in our culture, hunting has been glamorized. Walk through any Cabela's or Sportsman's Warehouse and it's obvious. Every now and then my family would get the biggest hard-bound Cabela's catalog that I've ever seen whose size trumps that of the Bible.

I understand though--hunting is fun for some people. Even I used to love going up to deer camp in the fall and sitting around the fire. When it got cold, I would go into the canvas tent with the fire and stay warm. I've never actually hunted, but that part was fun enough to me.

So now that I've said that hunting has a place, is it really needed? Is it really worth all the money (sometimes thousands of dollars for some tags) just to kill an animal? I guess that is very questionable and the answer will change depending on who you talk to. Many people say that hunting is needed to control animal populations. To me, a simple answer is that we feel we need to control animal populations because we also hunt the predators of these animals, too. I think nature does a very good job of balancing everything out when just left to itself.

I'm not sure why I feel the need to post something about this, other than to say that the over-killing and over-glamorization of hunting is really bothers me. If someone needs to hunt to survive, then fine. But I don't think that the competition of seeing who can take the largest or most exotic animal is right. If someone really needs food, then why be picky? Why kill an animal if there is no intent to eat it?

This is a hard topic to confine to one post, and my thoughts have been so scattered lately that I hope you don't mind if it isn't well written. Whenever I see mindless and glorification of killing animals, one quote by President Brigham Young comes to mind: "Not one particle of all that comprises this vast creation of God is our own. Everything we have has been bestowed upon us for our action, to see what we would do with it--whether we would use it for eternal life and exaltation, or for eternal death and degradation."