by The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance
Jeremy Bentham’s famous articulation of the question “Can they suffer?” comes from An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Vol. II, 2nd ed. (London: W. Pickering, 1823), 236.
For an excellent discussion of commercial fisheries, I recommend Paul Greenberg’s Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food (New York: Penguin, 2010).
Richard Nelson’s line “The supermarket is an agent of our forgetfulness” appears in Heart and Blood, 281.
“Absent referent” is a term that originated in linguistics. Carol J. Adams uses it to make an important point about how we separate the idea of “meat” from the idea of “animal.” The lines I quote in this chapter come from her book The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, 10th anniv. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1990, 2000), 14.
The Dalai Lama’s discussion of Tibetan Buddhists’ “rather curious attitude” toward meat can be found in Freedom in Exile, 20.
Thomas Berry frequently used the word “autistic” to describe modern people’s relational incapacity. In The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999), 79, for instance, he wrote that his was “an autistic generation in its inability to establish any intimate rapport with the natural world.”
William Cronon discusses the “dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural” in the book he edited, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 80-81. By setting “humanity and nature at opposite poles,” he writes, “we thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.”
Paul Shepard’s line about large carnivores being inevitably “pursued by microbes, fungi, and plant roots” comes from his essay collection Traces of an Omnivore (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 49. Val Plumwood’s remarkable essay was originally published as “Being Prey,” Terra Nova 1, no. 3 (1996): 32-44. Cleveland Amory’s phrase “prey will be separated from predator” is from a 1992 interview with Sierra magazine, quoted in Nelson’s Heart and Blood, 275.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from Paul Rezendes, Tracking and the Art of Seeing (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 20.
Chapter 6: Hunter and Beholder
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation provided statistics on Americans’ annual participation in fishing and hunting.
Susan Kent’s observation concerning traditional societies’ classifications of animals and fish appears in the book she edited, Farmers as Hunters: The Implications of Sedentism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 132, and was first brought to my attention by Mary Zeiss Stange’s Woman the Hunter (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 45.
Estimates of U.S. per capita meat and fish consumption come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Fact Book 2001-2002, 15.
The controversial idea that persistence hunting may have played a part in human evolution is sketched in Dennis M. Bramble and Daniel E. Lieberman’s “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” Nature 432, no. 18 (2004): 345-352. It is also discussed in Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) and in Bernd Heinrich’s Why We Run: A Natural History (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
The 2001 shooting death of Deborah Prasnicki in Wisconsin was covered in national and regional news stories, including Meg Jones, “Trial Starts for Hunter Charged in Fatal Shooting,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 27, 2003.
Jan E. Dizard’s observation that “even hunters themselves are not all that trusting of other hunters” comes from his book Mortal Stakes: Hunters and Hunting in Contemporary America (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 162.
He notes that virtually none of the hunters he interviewed during his research would hunt with a complete stranger: “They would first want to know something about the person’s temperament, judgment, and competency with a firearm.… If hunters are cautious about the company they keep while hunting, it is small wonder that nonhunters are concerned.”
The line concerning the “many Tygers, monstrous and furious beasts” found in the New World comes from Job Hortop, The Travails of an Englishman (London: William Wright, 1591) and is quoted in Andrea L. Smalley’s “‘The Liberty of Killing a Deer’: Histories of Wildlife Use and Political Ecology in Early America” (PhD diss., Northern Illinois University, 2005), which she generously shared with me.
In writing this chapter, I drew extensively from Daniel Herman’s excellent Hunting and the American Imagination (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001). Direct quotes drawn from Herman’s work are listed here, by opening words and page numbers in his book: “How was it that New England could be so full of game,” 29; “lackluster hunters,” 31; “They believed that Indians, like English aristocrats,” 32; “the third stage,” 42; “images of man fallen to a state of nature,” 4; “take on the aura of the indigene,” xiii; “a hunting people,” x.
Herman’s book was also my source for quotes from several others. These are listed here, again with page numbers from Herman’s book: William Bradford, “hidious & desolate wildernes,” 16; Lord Thomas Macaulay, “not because it gave pain to the bear,” 30; Thomas Jefferson, “those who labour in the earth,” 44; Charles Woodmason, “one continual Scene of Depravity of Manners,” 39; James Fenimore Cooper, “driven God’s creatures from the wilderness,” 116; Henry William Herbert, “the demoralization of luxury,” 174-175.
In personal correspondence, Herman suggested I consult Godfrey Hodgson’s A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2006) regarding the presence of venison, not turkey, at the first Thanksgiving.
Cotton Mather’s diary entry about “making water at the wall” is quoted in Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 38. The 1745 North Carolina law requiring hunters to tend corn hills is cited in Stuart A. Marks, Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual in a Carolina Community (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 31. The phrase “the feathered lightning is no more” comes from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 118. Theodore Roosevelt’s description of killing the bison comes from The Wilderness Hunter (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 254.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from Dizard’s Mortal Stakes, 168.
Chapter 7: Double Vision
The mittens worn by Karen Wood the day she was killed have often been referred to as “white.” In a detailed accounting of evidence introduced during the trial—Steve Kloehn, “Mittens, Rifle Entered into Evidence,” Bangor Daily News, October 13, 1990—they are described as “large, cream-colored, knit mittens, with palms made of a dirty, buff-colored suede.” Thanks to John Holyoke of the Bangor Daily News for locating this story.
The hunter-education text referred to in this chapter is the New England Hunter Education Manual: Core Curriculum (Seattle: Outdoor Empire Publishing, 2002).
Figures on injuries and fatalities come from multiple editions of Injury Facts (Itasca, IL: National Safety Council, 1999-2011) and from What Are They Doing about Hunting Injuries? (Albany, NY: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 2004).
My thanks to Pete Mirick of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife for helping me track down data on the loss of open land in the state. The figures cited come from Losing Ground: The Case for Land Conservation in Massachusetts (Lincoln, MA: Massachusetts Audubon Society, 1991) and James DeNormandie and Claire Corcoran, Losing Ground: Beyond the Footprint (Lincoln, MA: Massachusetts Audubon Society, 2009).
Facts on Missouri and Arkansas conservation funding come from Promises Made, Promises Kept: Celebrating 25 Years of �
�Design for Conservation’ (Jefferson City, MO: Missouri Conservation Commission, 2002) and Keeping Arkansas Natural Forever: Amendment 75: Promises Kept (Little Rock, AR: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, 2002).
Abraham Kaplan’s law of the instrument “Give a small boy a hammer” comes from his book The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing, 1964), 28.
The quote concerning hunters’ lack of commitment to “hunting as a management tool” comes from Daniel J. Decker and Nancy A. Connelly’s “The Need for Hunter Education in Deer Management: Insights from New York,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 18, no. 4 (1990): 447-452.
Figures on public opinions of hunting for meat, sport, and trophies come from an unpublished survey about various hunting and fishing issues: Sportsmen’s Attitudes (Harrisonburg, VA: Responsive Management, 2006). The Stephen Kellert study referred to is “Attitudes and Characteristics of Hunters and Anti-hunters,” in Transactions of the Forty-third North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (Washington, DC: Wildlife Management Institute, 1978), 412-423.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 336.
Chapter 8: A Hunter’s Prayer
In writing this chapter, I drew on José Ortega y Gasset’s prologue-turned-book, Meditations on Hunting (1942; repr., Belgrade, MT: Wilderness Adventures Press, 1995). Most of the direct quotes come from page 105. The remainder are listed here: “exemplary moral spirit,” 97; “Paleolithic man,” 57; “represent the most primitive human species” and “the slightest hint of government,” 76; “Today’s best-trained hunter” and “eternal troglodyte,” 115.
Edward Abbey’s criticism of Ortega y Gasset comes from the essay “Blood Sport” in One Life at a Time, Please (New York: Henry Holt, 1978), 39. The quote from Robert Kimber concerning “utilitarian” hunters comes from his book Living Wild and Domestic: The Education of a Hunter-Gardener (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2002), 45-46.
A Hunter’s Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport, ed. David Petersen (New York: Henry Holt, 1996) helped me begin to explore my mixed feelings about hunting. I quote several lines from Richard Nelson’s introduction “Finding Common Ground”: “Inupiaq men lived to hunt,” 8; “hunting was entirely evil,” 1; “twisted together with them,” 2. I also refer to Ann S. Causey’s essay “Is Hunting Ethical?,” 80-89, and Mary Zeiss Stange’s “In the Snow Queen’s Palace” (adapted from “Little Deaths,” Sports Afield, November 1994), 108-112. The other quotes drawn from A Hunter’s Heart are from Mike Gaddis, “Taking a Life” (originally published in Audubon, November 1990), 121, and George N. Wallace, “If Elk Would Scream” (originally published in High Country News, October 14, 1983), 96.
In this chapter, I paraphrase several arguments made by Mary Zeiss Stange in Woman the Hunter (cited above); the line “for the same inner reasons” appears on page 8. I also quote Marti Kheel, “License to Kill: An Ecofeminist Critique of Hunters’ Discourse,” in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, ed. Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995); the quotes drawn from Kheel’s essay are “to camouflage and to legitimate,” 87, and “quest to establish masculine identity,” 110.
The quotes and paraphrases from Susan Morse come from personal conversations and from an interview conducted by James Ehlers, “Return of the Cougar: It’s Time for the East to be Wild,” Outdoors Magazine (March 2002): 30-32.
I discuss Ted Kerasote’s essay “Restoring the Older Knowledge,” which appears in A Hunter’s Heart, and quote directly from it: “the disciplined, mindful, sacred activity,” 293; “the world that feeds us,” 294. I also refer to Kerasote’s Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt (New York: Random House, 1993); he discusses the central European model of hunter education on page 218, and mentions his attempt to “outwit” the pain caused by his eating on page 232. In personal correspondence, Kerasote generously shared his thoughts on the origins of “sport” in agrarian societies, and on the ancient concept and word as antecedents of their modern counterparts.
Linda Hogan’s essay “The Feathers” appears in her book Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995) and ends with the phrase “simple powers, strange and real,” 20.
Thomas Berry’s line “For too long we have been away somewhere” was originally published in his book The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988) and appears in Learning to Listen to the Land, ed. Bill Willers (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1991), 255.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986), 413.
Chapter 9: Healing Ground
The line “Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend” is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s play John Endicott and appears in Longfellow’s Poetical Works (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1883), 502. The quote concerning “the apostolic injunction to ‘rejoice’” is from Clive Staples Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1944), 61.
Valerius Geist’s line comes from his article “Threats to Wildlife Conservation,” Deer and Deer Hunting (February 1987): 31, and is quoted in Nelson’s Heart and Blood, 279. Thanks to C. Brickman Way for finding that magazine issue at a flea market and thinking of me.
The line “those ranks of trophy heads” appears in C. L. Rawlins’s “I Like to Talk about Animals” in A Hunter’s Heart, 90.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from John Burroughs, “The Gospel of Nature,” in Time and Change: The Writings of John Burroughs, Part Sixteen (1912; repr., Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 245.
Chapter 10: Into the Woods
In sketching the history of white-tailed deer, I relied on White-tailed Deer: Ecology and Management, ed. Lowell K. Halls (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1984), especially Richard E. McCabe and Thomas R. McCabe’s chapter “Of Slings and Arrows: An Historical Retrospection” and George Mattfeld’s “Northeastern Hardwood and Spruce/Fir Forests.” The McCabes’ quote “The whitetail rarely was hunted” appears on page 72. I drew additional historical data—as well as information on human-deer conflicts, deer population growth, and the ecological impacts of overabundant deer—from Richard Nelson’s Heart and Blood.
For a detailed introduction to the shifting fortunes of various Massachusetts wildlife species over the past few centuries—including large mammals and grassland birds—see Debra Bernardos et al., “Wildlife Dynamics in the Changing New England Landscape,” in Forests in Time: The Environmental Consequences of 1,000 Years of Change in New England, ed. David R. Foster and John D. Aber (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 142-168.
Leopold’s line “just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves” is from A Sand County Almanac, 140.
The Public Trust Doctrine and North American wildlife conservation model are discussed by Valerius Geist, Shane P. Mahoney, and John F. Organ in “Why Hunting Has Defined the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation,” in Transactions of the Sixty-sixth North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (Washington, DC: Wildlife Management Institute, 2001), 175-185.
Concerning historical views of hunters, I drew primarily on Herman’s Hunting and the American Imagination; Elisha Jarrett Lewis’s words on the “pot hunter” are quoted on page 154. I also drew on Louis S. Warren, The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).
This chapter’s epigraph comes from A Sand County Almanac, xviii-xix.
Chapter 11: Kinds of Killing
Joseph Campbell’s words on “the essence of life” are drawn from his book The Hero’s Journey (New York: Harper & Row, 1990; Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003), 13; citation refers to the New World edition.
Leopold’s thoughts on “sportsmanship” and “gadgetry” are from A Sand County Almanac, 212-216. David Stallin
g’s essay, “Space Ace Technology, Stone Age Pursuit” (originally published in Bugle, Winter 1995) appears in A Hunter’s Heart, 182-190.
Thomas Berry reportedly expressed his thoughts on “the great conversation” while talking with high school students. His words are transcribed in Rich Heffern’s “Prophet for the Earth: An Exploration of the Thought of Fr. Thomas Berry,” Eco Catholic (blog), National Catholic Reporter, January 4, 2011, http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/prophet-earth-exploration-thought-fr-thomas-berry: “We are talking to ourselves. We are no longer talking to the rivers and forests, we are no longer listening to the winds and the stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation, we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of this spiritual autism.” A very similar passage appears in Berry’s Befriending the Earth: A Theology of Reconciliation Between Humans and the Earth (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991), 20.
Philip J. Deloria’s line about “the dispossession and conquest of actual Indian people” comes from his book Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 182.
Robert Kimber’s thoughts on animals, gifts, and “property rights” are from Living Wild and Domestic, 79.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from Nelson’s Heart and Blood, 286.
Chapter 12: Fickle Predators