Jim
Posewitz, Founder of Orion
As
hunters, our relationship with the animals we pursue in fair chase is
experimental. In looking across
human history it is hard to find anything like the association between hunters
and the hunted that has developed in North America. In most places, and through most of recent human history,
wildlife belonged to those of privilege or property. Hunting was, and in most places on earth today remains, the sport of kings.
Before
we address the ethics of hunting we need to look at why most of us can even
aspire to be a hunter. When
America was colonized it was common practice for the royalty of Europe to grant
land to relatives. Some of those
land grants here in America included, in the language of the times, “…the fishings, hawkings huntings, and
fowlings.”
The
American Revolution separated us from the king and produced a system of free
people governing themselves. Fish
and wildlife were not mentioned in any of our founding documents. The void was filled by court decisions
that established water, fish and wildlife as public resources held in trust by
the states for the benefit of all the people. Their words at the time were “When the revolution took place, the people … became themselves
sovereign…” In short, since
you and I are sovereign, the king’s deer became the people’s game. America would have a democracy of the
wild.
When
that initial court decision was issued in 1842 Montana had a wildlife resource
that “… for variety and abundance
exceeded anything the eye of man had ever looked upon.” Forty-one years
later a young Theodore Roosevelt (TR) came west to hunt buffalo. He borrowed a gun, hired a guide and
hunted for nine days through the rotting carcasses of the last commercial
slaughter before finding and shooting a lone, wandering bull. He found that lone buffalo on Little
Cannon Ball Creek, Montana Territory.
Two years later TR would write of a ranchman who made a journey of 1,000
miles across Northern Montana and was, “…
never out of sight of a dead buffalo and never in sight of a live one.” Montana was the wildlife bone-yard of a
continent.
These
experiences contributed to a conservation epiphany among a handful of visionary
hunters. In 1887 they formed a
citizen based hunting club to introduce the fair chase sporting code and
restore big game to America. Four
years later they lobbied a provision through Congress allowing presidents to
set aside unclaimed lands for conservation purposes. When TR became president he used that authority to set aside
almost ten percent of America for wildlife restoration along with public forest
conservation. A generation later,
when an economic depression and the dust bowl had our country on its knees,
hunters championed an excise tax on firearms and ammunition to fund the
struggling wildlife restoration.
Today
we take to the field in pursuit of a wonderfully restored wild abundance in a
relationship with nature perhaps unique in human history. When we take rifle in hand and head for
the outdoors it is essential that we also carry the conservation ethic that put
both you and the game pursued in the field. We as hunters need to embrace the truth that we and the
antelope, deer, elk, goose and duck we pursue, sprouted from the same diamond
buried in our American heritage.
Once we accept and remember that exceptional reality, the decisions made
afield will be easy. We will:
respect the animals; honor the relationship we share with them; afford them
fair chase; and measure up to the conservation ethic generations of hunters
passed to our custody.
As
a minority, hunters are often asked, “Why do you hunt?” Once you learn of the power and beauty
in the North American hunting heritage, you can simply answer, “Because
it matters.”