Tovar Cerulli
Page 27
Ted Kerasote’s description of the mother elk’s response to the death of her calf is from “A Killing at Dawn,” Audubon 102, no. 2 (2000): 38-41. Kerasote offers other intriguing thoughts on anthropomorphism and interspecies communication in his book Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog (New York: Harcourt, 2007), 10.
Regarding the history of deer populations and modern hunting seasons in Vermont, I relied on Marc Boglioli’s A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009).
I also relied on archival materials and historical data helpfully provided by John Hall, Lilla Stutz-Lumbra, Chris Saunders, and John Buck of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, including Leonard E. Foote’s A History of Wild Game in Vermont, 3rd ed., rev. (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Fish and Game Service, 1946).
Louis Warren’s line “How one hunted and what one killed” comes from The Hunter’s Game, 14.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from a column by Pulitzer Prize winner William A. Caldwell—“Hawk and Hare Are One,” Bird Watcher’s Digest (September 1978): 61-62—in which he contemplates life, death, and predation. The column’s title is an abbreviation of a line by Gary Snyder, “The hawk, the swoop, and the hare are one,” from Earth House Hold (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1957), 92.
Chapter 13: Blood Trails
The quotes referred to by Marti Kheel in “License to Kill” are from Paul Shepard, The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 173, and Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting, 101.
The Connecticut and Maryland wounding-rate studies referred to are discussed by Howard J. Kilpatrick and W. David Walter, “A Controlled Archery Deer Hunt in a Residential Community: Cost, Effectiveness, and Deer Recovery Rates,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 27, no. 1 (1999): 115-123, and M. Andy Pedersen, Seth M. Berry, and Jeffrey C. Bossart, “Wounding Rates of White-tailed Deer with Modern Archery Equipment,” Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies 62 (2008): 31-34.
David Petersen discusses the humaneness of bowhunting, and relates several anecdotes of people being hit by broadheads, in his book Heartsblood: Hunting, Spirituality, and Wildness in America (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000), 172-174.
Leopold’s passage on the “peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics” is from A Sand County Almanac, 212.
This chapter’s epigraph is from Susan Ewing, “To Each Her Own,” in Heart Shots: Women Write about Hunting, ed. Mary Zeiss Stange (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003), 73.
Chapter 14: Hunting with the Buddha
Richard Nelson’s line “the exploration has turned inward” is from his book The Island Within (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989; New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 172; citation refers to the Vintage edition.
This chapter’s epigraph is from Kimber’s Living Wild and Domestic, 148.
Chapter 15: The Red Deer
Christopher Camuto’s line “I’ve long had an odd thought” comes from his book Hunting from Home: A Year Afield in the Blue Ridge Mountains (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 288.
Ortega y Gasset’s “case in which the killing of one creature” is from Meditations on Hunting, 101. Rachel Carson’s “We cannot have peace among men” is from an undated letter, Rachel Carson to Fon Boardman, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (New York: Doubleday, 1928; New York: Penguin, 1976), 25; citation refers to the Penguin edition.
Chapter 16: Reckoning
In this chapter, I refer to a letter written by Thich Nhat Hanh, “Letter from Thây,” October 17, 2007, http://www.plumvillage.org/letters-from-thay/27-letter-from-thy.html. Nhat Hanh’s words on paper, clouds, rain, and loggers are from Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 95. His words on tangerine blossoms are from page 21 of the same book.
This chapter’s epigraph comes from Stange’s Woman the Hunter, 189.
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks:
To Catherine Cerulli, for all the forms your love takes, for embracing my transformation, for believing in my writing before I did, for doing more than your share on the home front when I was glued to my desk, and for your keen editorial eye.
To Mark Cerulli, Jay Mason, Richard Czaplinski, Rob Bryan, Steve Wright, Damien Middelton, Ryan Johns, Tom Cady, and Drew Lanham, for accompanying me on the first legs of my journey into hunting, for helping me see what the pursuit could mean.
To Jan Clausen and Jane Lazarre, for encouraging my writing almost twenty years ago, and Ted Gup, for doing so more recently; and to Stephen Long, Jason McGarvey, and Nathan Kowalsky for providing the first opportunities to bring parts of this story to the printed page.
To my agent, Laurie Abkemeier, for having the skill, insight, good humor, and raw tenacity necessary to shepherd this book—and this author—through the wilderness of publishing; to my editor, Jessica Case, for being so enthusiastic about bringing this project to fruition, for doing everything possible to make it a success, and for offering many helpful questions and suggestions along the way; to everyone else at Pegasus Books who helped create this book; and to everyone at Open Road Media who published the digital versions and helped spread the word.
To Catherine Cerulli, Mark Cerulli, and Richard Czaplinski, again, and to Eric Nuse, Beth Segers, Mary Colleen Sinnott, Susan Morse, Daniel Herman, Adam Shprintzen, Ted Kerasote, Mary Zeiss Stange, and Marc Boglioli for reviewing portions of this manuscript and offering constructive comments.
To all my friends and family, for supporting this book even when it was only a glimmer of an idea, for asking questions and offering reflections, for helping me understand what this story was about; and to all the readers of my blog, for commenting on my posts and engaging each other in spirited and civil debate, for opening my eyes to new perspectives and challenging me to reconsider my own.
To the places that have shaped my life and to the creatures who have nourished me, body and soul.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Portions of this book were previously published, in somewhat different form, as “Life and Death,” Northern Woodlands 13, no. 4 (2006): 9; “Whitetails: The Ever Changing Challenge,” Massachusetts Wildlife 61, no. 4 (2006): 9-17; “Full Circle,” Outdoor America 73, no. 1 (2008): 18-20; and “Hunting Like a vegetarian: Same Ethics, Different Flavors,”in Hunting—Philosophy for Everyone: In Search of the Wild Life, ed. Nathan Kowalsky (WestSussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 45-55.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint “The Peace of Wild Things,” Copyright © 1998 by Wendell Berry from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Reprintedby permission of Counterpoint.
copyright © 2012 by Tovar Cerulli
interior design by Maria Fernandez
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