Larry's Philosophy (Hunting and the Meaning of Life!)

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The Following is a response to an email I received from an intellectual anti-hunting friend I know that I felt compeled to respond to!

Note this is in email  thread form with original email last in order.


----- Original Message -----


From: Larry Stephens

To: Henry (anti-hunter)

Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 10:10 PM

Subject: Re: Travel and thinking

Henry,

Your trip sounded great. My wife and i like to do this very thing and is what we did a couple of weeks ago when we bought some new hay equipment.

Glad you found some edible food.

As to the rest! I wish you would put as much thought and research into these comments as you do other topics. It is quite obvious you have no understanding of all the aspects of hunting and what it means. Your mind is closed on this matter without a full understanding. You think it is all about the kill and nothing could be further from the truth in reality and typically.

I am certainly no expert on philosophy but i am pretty close when it comes to hunting. Done legally and ethically, it is difficult and harvests are few and far in between for the majority. If it was all about the killing there would be few hunters. The reward at the end of the effort is unbelievable! It is the end result, if you are lucky and skillful but it is elusive at best and can be as difficult as grasping a wisp of smoke. My long time hunting companion Rick and I have been hunting in Illinois for 5 seasons now. Typically about 15 days a year and most of that with bow and arrow. Another self imposed handicap! I consider rick a pretty good hunter and he has yet to bring home a buck even though we have the opportunity to kill every time out! You will find this difficult to believe but this is true of most hunters, they adjust their goals of harvest based on the difficulty. These are self imposed rules. If a task is to easy there is no reward in it. True rewards only come from a great expended effort. Actually, in Rick's heart i know he does not like to kill an animal but he is driven to hunt, just as I, by a force as old as time. This is why he commits himself to only harvest the most mature bucks in the herd. This satisfies his need to hunt while limiting the killing and keeping the effort at a point that makes a successful hunt a great reward. But!!, If he had to kill to survive, he would do what was necessary and dispatch every animal to the very best of his ability, to this I have no question.

In 12 days of hunting last year, from my perch high up in the few select trees I like to hunt from, I saw a total of 166 deer. I could have taken probably a quarter of them but only tensioned my bow string twice in those 12 days and came home without a harvest. Many days I sat quietly on stand for 8 to 10 hours a day, seldom moving, just observing what was going on. I have watched tiny birds for hours, no more than an inch and a half tall searching snow covered tree limbs for a tiny speck of food that may get him to the next day of life. I have seen a hawk swoop in without a sound, wings folded and snatch a squirrel right off the limb. I have been sitting high in a tree at dark and had the faintest sound catch my attention only to see a barred owl gliding directly at me thru the tree canopy, at less than 10 feet. I have had a pair of wood duck sail past me so close I think I could have reached out and grabbed them. They over take you almost before you can hear the whistle of their wings, like fighter jets. One mourning I climbed into one of my stands on a cut corn field. It was cold and I had built up some pretty good body heat on the walk in. I had been sitting there for a while when I noticed some deer enter the field. I wanted to get on my feet before they approached but found myself frozen to the cloth seat when I tried to stand. The wind was blowing 25-30 and it was about 6 degrees. Try sitting motionless in that weather for 5 hours! A few days later I was in the same stand. It was overcast and 38 degrees and gusting 30+. A light rain stated to fall horizontally, and I had only worn a sleeveless fleece vest for a jacket as it really did not feel that cold. Shortly after, rain began to pour down and I stood in the tree with the vest over my head looking out of the arm hole for any approaching deer for 3 hours. I was shaking uncontrollably when I spotted a nice buck 350yds down the field. He walked straight to my tree like he was drawn by a magnet. The wind was blowing so hard I had to hold some nearby branches out of the way with one leg as I drew my bow for the shot. At the last minute I decided to pass on him as the deer was not a mature animal even though I had gone thru hell for the opportunity. I was so hypothermic I could barely climb down the tree afterwards.

I have had thousands of experiences like those mentioned above and each is a unique memory I treasure as much as any. I wish I could compile a movie of all of them for others to enjoy.

To say that hunting is all about killing is to have a complete lack of understand of the subject. You cannot understand what you do not know or have experience with. I have to admit there is a great adrenalin rush when you are about to make a kill but I don't think it comes from the love of killing per say but more from a primal instinct that wells up all your senses to a heightened and intense focus to deal the killing blow.

You have no idea of the difficulty to kill a deer legally with even a high power rifle. It’s no easier with dogs either. The guys you see in Ocala are extremely lucky to kill a buck every few years. The population is very low and I have hunted the “Forest” many years and have only harvested a couple bucks. Some of what you wrote is true but only applies to the minority. The difficulty, time and effort expended to get to the point of making a harvest is great and any hunter should rightfully be proud of the accomplishment. I don't agree with parading a dead animal around town and most hunters discourage this. Any animal taken deserves a degree of respect.

To be fair, I have to admit there are abuses of the hunting privilege and right, just as with anything men are involved with. Recently an 11 year old boy killed an 1,100 lb+ hog in north Alabama. He is being hailed as a hero by many and loathed by even more. My own opinion is that I am ashamed that this was portrayed as hunting of an 1,100 lb wild, feral hog when in reality this animal was pen raised to this size and is a domestic animal with little survival instincts. This was not hunting and is the very thing that gives hunting a negative view. This was no more than a killing in poor taste. No hog in the wild could grow to that weight and seldom happens on a farm. I took the time to read some of the negative responses posted on the boy’s web site and they were nothing short of incredible. Some people were so ignorant of nature they actually thought this animal was a unique creature of his species that is now lost to the world. Others were disgustingly abusive. It suffices to say ignorance is rampant.

Hunting is no different than golf or fishing (or motor cycles in your case) in that persons and businesses have capitalized on its popularity and there are gadgets for everything, beyond belief.

You fail to acknowledge all of the good that hunting does to protect the environment and non game species. Hunters have saved many species from extinction directly and indirectly. Of course, in the past, thru over harvest, prior to an understanding of management, game populations have been decimated but this is no longer acceptable practice. The worst of it came from market hunting.

I have written several times regarding the monies generated by hunting that goes to rehabilitate, purchase and protect habitat that would otherwise be lost if it were not for the interest and effort of the hunting community. To this you have no comment.

Henry, extremely little of your taxes go towards helping wildlife while the hunters you condemn pay taxes on licenses, ammunition, buy special permits for use of land that no other groups pay and expend personal effort in land restoration, planting, burning etc. This goes unacknowledged by you. Maybe you do not believe it, but it is none the less a fact. Hunters even provide thousands of very poor families with meat that they donate and pay for the processing of, every year. There are programs in place in nearly every state in the U.S. that help feed the poor thru hunter donations of harvested game. I could go on and on with these examples.

Here is another point; our environment no longer has the checks and balances of predator and pray, in many cases, it once had. Man tries to manipulate everything to what he feels is correct, this includes the environment. Our own ever expanding population has brought about change and problems in the natural environment that have no easy answers. Man has removed or lowered the populations of many of the predators that keep prey species populations in check. Without these predators to harvest the surplus of animals and keep the herd in check, nature has another way of handling over population. It is by far, more cruel than death by a human hunter. First, nature will try to starve to death many but usually before this process is complete a disease will spread thru the heard wiping out the vast majority in a sickened, starving death. This is currently beginning to be seen in the deer herds as they are expanding beyond what hunters are harvesting, in the form of CWD, chronic wasting disease. As the name suggests, the victim wastes away in a sickened state, with blind staggers, in a death that is measured in days! This is due in large to over population.

By the way, no bear hunting is currently allowed in the state of Florida due to habitat loss and low numbers overall. This is due to people moving into the state and developing natural environments. By accounts I have heard, illegal immigrants that are here and/or would come into the U.S. if allowed could total an estimated 4mill. So much for the plight of the Florida bear and Panther! If I understand you, you are pro immigration and anti hunting, so its o.k. to crowd the animals out but not to hunt them!

I really do not have the words to describe hunting in a way you could understand. It is something that has to be experienced to really understand and identify with. Man is a predator!!!!!!!!! Always has been and I don't think that will change any time soon. It is a primal drive and a part of our vary being. Most people are many generations removed from this and have maybe lost touch with this drive. I am driven to hunt and it is not because I love to kill. Even when I start to feel disinterested after a long season a field, when I come across some smoking hot buck sign or the drag marks from a strutting gobbler I get invigorated all over again. It’s a drive that you have to experience to understand I guess. The more time spent afield the sharper your senses become to the natural world. I can't understand my wife talking on the other side of the room but I have heard a turkey gobble from a mile away on his roost limb, so faint a sound, few people would ever know it happened let alone what it was! Or the sound of a smart old doe slowly stomping her front foot, in the fall leaves, to alert the others that danger is about. As time spent in the woods begins to sharpen your senses a true hunter begins to feel a part of the world. It’s a unique and grounding experience. Someone that buys their food at publix can't appreciate any of this and it is a completely foreign concept.

Henry, what I am speaking of "is life". It is philosophy in the truest since. Life as you know it has taken all this away and left people much like yourself wondering what life is all about?, where are we going?, why? So educated and intelligent that they over think and miss the simple truth. There is no complicated, mind bending answer. It simply, just is!!

If you could experience all that I have in the wild, your philosophical and theological search “for the meaning of life” might be over. Man and all his complications has obscured what life really is.

Life is simple in its basic form and there is no complicated answer to the meaning of life.

Larry's philosophy.


So endith the lesson.

Larry


post script:

I can at least respect a true vegetarians views on the killing of animals for food, even though I don't agree but for an anti-hunter to say he or she is appalled by hunting then partake in a meal with meat killed by another, when he or she cannot stomach the task for themselves is nothing short of hypocrisy. It is normal for a human to feel sorrow and pity at the passing of a life but it is also a fundamental part of the human instinct to survive by the skills and instincts that have been instilled in us over thousands of years.

Due to the circumstances of human life today, people have lost touch with the fact that man has survived for so many years by killing. Because they are more educated and detached from this they let their emotions govern their thoughts when it comes to the idea of hunting and killing.

A lion can be caged and feed his meals by another but it is his nature to hunt and kill for himself. I don't think he takes joy in the kill, in the strict sense. By the same token, keep an animal caged long enough and he will loose his abilities to fend for himself rather quickly. This has happened to the vast majority of the human population.

Let me ask you this Henry, where do you stand on the right for a tribe of peoples living in the Amazon jungle to hunt for their very existence? What is the difference to the animals killed? Do these people have some basic right that I do not? Do you believe the taking of an animal’s life is unjust for us because we are so technologically advance and educated that this act is beneath us? Let our abundant food supply (or gasoline) run short and see how fast people revert back to being the animals we really are!!!!!!!!

L.S.






----- Original Message -----

From: Henry

To: Larry Stephens

Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 10:32 AM

Subject: Travel and thinking

We are back again from one of our excursions, this time it was a little town in Connecticut, were we went and got another couple of nice old classic British bikes, auctioned off because the owner had a stroke and terminated an existing picturesque outdated old bike dealership. But we, Eva and me, take advantage of this small travel adventures to create fun, at least our idea of fun, to something which for most people is a drudge, namely to have to drive 2.600 miles to attend an auction which may last 4 hours, in middle of nowhere, and afterwards, have to load up the stuff and make it all the way back, without blinking an eye when one get to a gas station and to the reception desk of a motel.

We never go forth and back in one straight line. We always look for something along the road, worthwhile to look at. This time it was the MARK TWAIN Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, interesting, at least for all of us which have read his books, and on the return trip, we went again through a stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, we went up and came down through two access roads which we never experienced before, but this time, it was raining and cloudy, but intensely green and clean and smelling like woods are supposed to smell, real and slightly frightening nature. We lost a few hours but it was again a reaffirming of our believe that the darned shopping centers and steel boxes on four wheels are not the only real objects which exist in our small little world.

Outside of classic music CD's, we took this time a full course of CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS in CD's also, which I got from THE TEACHING COMPANY, by Professor Daniel Robinson, Columbia and Oxford Philosophy teacher, which we know from several other lecture series, and who is very thoughtful and clear in his expositions. We listened to eight of them, but each one gave us room to talk and comment at least for another half an hour or so. You see, this mind awakening and provoking thoughts makes the monotony of driving hours and hours negligible, because even after comments given and received, the ideas implanted in the mind are still kind of boiling, they don't want to rest, they refuse to be archived, (is this the right word, ,,,,, ?????,,), and one has to match them up with some prior concepts which we always give for granted but get turned around when this new ideas seek their proper place in our back-space in our mind, were all our ideas and complexes and prejudices and glasses through which we contemplate the world, ,,,,, are.

This is what new ideas in philosophy do to us, ,,,,,, when we are into philosophy of course.

We went North through Interstate 81, which runs along the Appalachian mountains. It may be a few miles more than Interstate 95, but much more scenic and entertaining to look at through the windshield. The food problem got solved also. We used only Truck Stops, bought us a book used by Truckers and had meals only at places like THE IRON SKILLET at PETROS truck stops, and similars. Good real food and very reasonably priced. The six days it took us to go back and forth went by, way too fast, but this is what we call to have a good time.

But I can not end this little letter without mentioning a little thought which came into my mind in a motel we went to overnight. Right in front of my bed were two large painting reproductions of hunting scenes. In one of them was a guy riding a horse and jumping a fence, in the other one a bunch of dogs followed by several riders, males and females, all dressed nicely in the typical British fashion with red jackets, high boots, and this little jockeys on their heads, following the hare, which is on the verge of slipping into some underbrush.

I could not help to think in comparing this kind of festive activity with the war like sport which our local hunters call "hunting". They ride this big camouflaged ATV's with specially designed gun holders, and trays for the ever present cans of beer, clad in "sporty" military type of uniforms which are supposed to make them invisible in the woods, carrying sometimes this hide away huts and looking mean, and business like. I have seen them many times, because we like to roam around on week ends, and at hunting season the concentrate in some preferred spots, all of them standing around in the meeting places next to four by four, and talking important matters. For the locals in northern Florida, you only have to go to a couple of restaurants at Silver Springs in the Ocala National Forest, and you see them driving in, proudly carrying the dead deer in the back. This guys love to kill, love to shoot the stupid weapons with a purpose, they don't go out for the sport, the go for killing, and are truly equipped for it. High powered guns with laser telescopic devices, and every other paraphernalia which the hunting supply department at Walmart so thoughtfully has available. If you compare the pictures of a hunting party in the UK, (where their is a strong opposition against hunting one rabbit by the way), and and what you can see in our National Forests at hunting season, dead Deer, dead Bears, and occasionally other hunters, (remember Cheneys hunting misshape, ,,,,, ????,,), you understand easy the kind of mentality which approved with such an overwhelming majority this " hunting " expedition into Iraq, and other places on earth.

Violence engenders violence, and I came from a country which wrote the manual of how to kill and die violently, ,,,,,,, which is the reason I abhorre anything which has to do with guns and killing, even an innocent rabbit.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, HENRY ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,