An Ethnography of Hunters Essay -- Learning to Hunt

Everyone fling mutilates, and everyone eats. Not everyone eats what they kill, but these remain two of the most(prenominal) intimate forms of communing with our environment, whether we recognize them as such, or not. Almost 40 000 Americans atomic number 18 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 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 supply guns, and spent many long hours as a family communing with nature with long walks on the nature trails in southern California 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 didnt advance to me until high school, however, that I didnt know where the meat I was eating came from. This bothered me. I became vegetarian. No much cows in the rain tone I said. No more chickens in long cramped houses, locomote 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 lookup helped control deer populations, and that cleanup for food was, ultimately, part of human nature to be honored, much slight 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 ornitholog... ...or 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 nece ssary protein harvest, but allow for there be a movement in the other oversight? Will the deer population survive while the hunters try to call for up their minds? I hope that this ethnography may serve as a model of forming connections within our own close communities that we may call on towards preserving this interwoven web of culture through respect and interest in our environments. I havent been hunting. I havent yet sought out the opportunity. I have, however, precondition up vegitarianism for lent.Notes1. poundage refers to the number of pounds it requires to draw the string back from the prow2. Hedge apple also known as Osage Orange, common in old fence-rows in the greater Goshen area