If you are a hunter, you have most likely been confronted with questions about the drivers that send you afield, either spit at you dripping with the venom of the convinced anti-hunter, with no expectation of a reasonable answer, or inquisitive, by an open-minded non-hunter, who is seeking to understand. You may have any number of ready-to-go responses that cover both situations. If you take the trouble to read “A Hunter’s Heart – Honest Essays on Blood Sport” cover to cover, all of your standard replies will be challenged.
The book contains 41 essays, that range from memories from the field and accounts of personal experience and emotional evolution in hunting, to analysis of arguments and ethics. If all you want to read are stories that highlight the accomplishments and benefits of hunting and hunters, you will not like this book. If you like to see confirmed in writing that anything in hunting, be it technological or behavioral, as long as it is legal, is sufficient justification for our actions, you have picked the wrong read. If you want to learn about what has driven others into or away from the pursuit of hunting, if you want to discover how some of our go-to arguments in defense of hunting sound hypocritical to some non-hunters, but also if you are keen to read good reasoning in favour of hunting, this might be the book for you.
It is hard to summarize this work in a few paragraphs, because its constituent chapters are so divergent in nature. Some are uneasy to read, because they hold up a mirror that doesn’t always show the hunter in the best light. Read them anyway, and see how others might see us. You may not read this book from beginning to end in a captivated daze, as you might an adventure story, and probably that is good, because the food for thought offered is best consumed in bite-size chunks. That said, I read it quickly, and read it whole, and enjoyed it, and feel that I need to read it again.
A lot of the material could have been written with the traditional bowhunter in mind, as it speaks of the journey that many of us have gone through, seeking experiences rather than the quickest way to a kill, finding challenge in doing with less technology instead of adopting more.
Published 20 years ago, some observations are a bit dated, but most are as relevant today as they were then. A highly recommended read for anyone willing to be challenged in their thinking, and looking for a deeper understanding of the motives that drive a hunter, and the image we uphold to the outside world.
The book is still available from a number of outlets, such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
FD