Shooting

Judging from the mail, phone calls and various reports, my recent musings upon ethics seem to have touched a responsive chord and sparked a lot of discussion. This pleases me; it's exactly what I had hoped for. There is no blueprint for ethics, no paradigm for behavior, no Website that spoon-feeds guidance for every situation. We all agree on the broad outlines-fair chase and other concepts-but beyond those we're on our own to govern our conduct as we see fit. Ethical behavior is what we can live with afterward.

One of the best examples of this I've ever heard came from an old grouse hunter who had been hunting by himself and came in birdless. He mentioned that the best opportunity he'd had all day had been at a young bird that was perched in a tree and refused to fly. "Hell, why didn't you just knock 'im out of the tree?" someone said. "Nobody'd know." The old boy took a sip of bourbon, smiled thinly and said, "I would." The deeper and wider you probe into ethical questions, the more questions crop up-and the more complex the implications become. And these, moreover, sometimes cut both ways. Purism exists in every aspect of human activity from religion to gardening, sport included. Purism is a form of ethics, ethics taken to a logical conclusion-and we know what Sartre said about logical conclusions taken to extremes. The kind of sporting purism I'm thinking of takes form in comments such as, "I'd never hunt on a preserve. That's not hunting!" There's a corollary in fishing-especially fly-fishing, where purism seems to rear its head frequently. Catching a fish on anything but a dry fly is somehow unethical, or so the thinking seems to go, and it fits as a logical conclusion. Take purist fly-fishing to its extreme, and guys would be out there casting bare tippets. The logical conclusion here eliminates any chance of serving the ultimate purpose of the sport, which so far as I know is to actually catch fish, fairly and respectfully, while enjoying the whole experience. Making anything so difficult as to remove the possibility of success leaves only the form and defeats the intention. If the objective is simply to go through the motions, you might as well cast flies into a swimming pool or a bare leader into a trout stream. Either way, something is missing. Taking a piously rigid stand against shooting game-farm birds is really no different. For one thing, not all hunting preserves deserve to be painted with the same brush. Some are good, some aren't, and some are exceptional. The key difference, of course, lies with the birds themselves. Are they well-exercised and thus strong in flight? Have they been on the ground long enough to get their bearings, find their escape routes and shed some of their inclination to see humans as harmless bearers of food? No amount of luxury accommodation can make up for birds tossed out 30 minutes ahead of the hunters or planted so far from escape cover that they'd need to pack a lunch just to make the trip. I've seen some doozies. One time I shot (I can't say "hunted") on a plantation in Mississippi that had all the trappings of traditional Southern quail hunting; they used Jeeps instead of democrat wagons, but everything else was there. The birds, on the other hand, were pen-sluggish and utterly disoriented, planted as threes and fours in unlikely places-along with a shovelful of droppings from the pen so the outfit's stone-nosed dogs could find them. My partner summed it up after lunch the first day: "These birds aren't trying to escape. They're just tryin' to get the hell out of the way." I've been to some places that were almost as bad, but the point is that not all preserves are like this. The real jewels I know are a story for another time-and there's a much larger, far more important point to make with this. What distresses me most about purism is its divisiveness. Tell me you wouldn't dream of hunting on a preserve, and I'll say: Then don't do it. But don't cop an attitude and sneer at those who do. They're no less sportsmanlike than you are, and if they take pleasure in hunting preserves, what's it to you? Save your piety for when you're alone; don't parade it around as if it makes you some sort of superior being. And think about this: A lot of hunters live in urban and suburban environments far from any other access to hunting. Perhaps they lack the time and resources to go off every week to places where wild birds abound, much as they might wish they could. If not for preserves, they might not get a chance to hunt more than once or twice in a season, if that. What are they supposed to do, not hunt at all if they can't match your level of purity? Maybe they're getting old, growing infirm, have family responsibilities that just don't allow them to hunt except on preserves. Does that mean they love hunting any less or conduct themselves any less ethically? Purist fly-fishers strike me as simply silly. Purist bird hunters sometimes just tick me off. And it's not just bird hunters. I've gone head to head with some archers who look down their noses at those who hunt with firearms. They seem to think their tool of choice is somehow more sporting and requires some loftier level of skill. Hogwash. Good is good, regardless of whether it's demonstrated with a bow or a rifle. Besides, what's the difference between a deer that escapes with a bullet wound and one that runs off with an arrow in it? I'm told there's an element of archers who use only "traditional" recurve bows and longbows and scoff at those who shoot compounds. For cryin' out loud. It all makes me think Kristofferson was spot on when he wrote: "Everybody needs somebody to look down on/Who they can be better than at any time they please." It also makes me think the philosopher Pogo was equally right in saying, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." In divisiveness lies the path to ruin. There are factions out there lying in wait, fairly slobbering at the thought of seeing us at each other's throats. You'd be surprised at how subtle and round-about their tactics might be. We couldn't change their minds even if they had them. All we can do is present a solid front and try to best them at their own games. If the day should come when we lose our privilege of hunting (I'm not sure I can call it a "right," just by definition), then what shall we do? Wrap ourselves in our various purities and disclaim any responsibility? After all, we were striving to uphold the finest traditions of our sport. They let us down-"they," of course, being our fellow hunters who just aren't pure enough. There's a comforting thought for you. The only certainty is that the anti-hunters-whoever they happen to be-won't stop trying to do it to us. The best we can do is make sure we don't do it to ourselves.