The Elusive Hunter

I remember the first time I ever killed something. It was a rabbit, and I was about 12 years old. I put my gun to my shoulder and aimed--taking care to lead the target--and pulled the trigger. The animal seemed to tumble end over end in slow motion. I ran up to him excitedly and he looked up at me, shaking and still alive and making a little whimpering sound. My father reached down, picked up the rabbit by its hind legs, and gave him a karate chop on the back of the neck, killing him instantly. He looked up at me and said, "Good shot, boy!" and handed me the rabbit.

I was proud and devastated all at once. The rabbit felt warm in my hand, and I was trying really hard to fight back tears. The other men in the hunting party came over and slapped me on the back. Little did they know that I would have given anything to bring that rabbit back to life. I would feel sad about it for weeks. I went on to shoot a lot more game over the years, but none ever had the same emotional impact, nor did I ever get teary-eyed at the moment of the kill. In my culture, in the rural America of western Virginia, that was the day I began to change from boy to man.

There aren't that many boys today who grew up the way I did--kids who are willing to put down their Gameboys, pick up a rifle and head out into the field. Hunting in America has entered a long twilight. The number of license holders--roughly 15 million through 2004--has actually shrunk by about 2 million people since 1982, when the population was 230 million (versus 300 million today). Since 1990, the number of license holders in Massachusetts has dropped by 50,000, or 40 percent; in California since 1980 the number has fallen by almost half, from 540,000 to 300,000. In Michigan, there were 1.2 million licensed hunters in 1992--but fewer than 850,000 in 2004. Hunters are aging: about seven in 10 are older than 35 (in 1980, only four in 10 were over 35). The reasons for hunting's decline are pretty basic: fewer fields and streams and hills full of game to hunt (Census data show that urban America more than doubled in acreage from 1960 to 1990); more restrictions and lawsuits; more videogames and diversions to keep junior (and his dad) on the couch.

Many people are not sorry to see the hunters go. Groups like PETA, the Fund for Animals and the Humane Society of the United States have long lobbied to curtail hunting around the country. The Humane Society's Web site describes hunting for sport as "fundamentally at odds with the values of a humane, just and caring society." To city dwellers and suburbanites, hunters can seem bloodthirsty. The people who live in hunt country are also wary of reckless weekend warriors. Farmers have been known to hang this is not a deer signs on their cows. Where I grew up, on the slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Bath County, Va., my father was a game warden who would investigate hunting accidents, and he brought home stories of careless hunters falling out of deer stands or tripping over fences and blowing their limbs off. One of my neighbors got shot just by stepping out of the passenger's side of the car. His buddy, the driver, had illegally laid his rifle across the car roof to steady his shot. According to the International Hunter Education Association, there were some 800 total hunting "incidents" involving shooting in the United States in 2002, the last year for which complete statistics are available. Seventy-five of those resulted in fatalities.

Most hunters, however, are taught to be careful. I learned, like most boys do, from my father, Bill. With him, there were strict rules to follow as you worked your way up the gun ladder, from BB gun to .22 rifle, to .410 shotgun to .20 gauge, and finally to 30.06 deer rifle. If you didn't respect the gun or what he said, you didn't get to move up or go hunting. Every time you picked up a gun you checked to see if it was loaded and the safety was on. You never mixed drinking and hunting. You always stored the gun and ammunition separately, and never kept a loaded gun in the house. You always knew where your buddies were, and you shot to kill, so the animal did not suffer.

Hunting where I grew up was a ritual of male bonding, but the whole community was caught up in it, boys and girls alike. School was let out the first day of hunting season in late November. On opening morning you could hear the shots popping off in the distance, one after another, all day long. The population of my little rural county swelled by thousands (my school friends and I called the city slickers in their fancy new gear "Fudds," as in Elmer). Men grew beards and didn't shave them until they got their first buck. Men who shot and missed a deer had to cut their flannel shirttails off--or their buddies did it for them. (In rural Scotland, ancestral home of many of these Appalachian men, young boys still have grouse blood smeared on their faces after their first kill in the field.) You learned to skin and eat what you killed. I hated gutting and cleaning animals and always wondered if I were the only one, and was happy to see my grandfather, Colvin, gag as he dressed a deer. He had been a veteran of Omaha Beach, so it gave me cover.