Originally posted on August 9, 2012

I’m proud to say I’m not a former hunter. I never had to kill an elk or a bear or a swan or a goose to know how bad I would feel about it afterwards. My “problem” might be too much empathy; I could readily imagine the sense of self-loathing that should come with destroying such beautiful and noble beings.

When in my youth I had to put down a wounded buck deer I’d hit with my truck, I found myself apologizing to him even as I made the cut that put would him out of his misery. I knew I’d never want to go through that in the name of sport.

The only time I hunted for food was during a brief live-like-an-Indian phase. I had enrolled in an “Aboriginal Life Skills” course— the same one that the author of “Clan of the Cave Bear” later took to learn how Cro-Magnon…