Should We Teach Our Children to Hunt?

Is this subject even worth debating? … Put guns in the hands of children? For shame! Kill something? Even more shameful… My inital thought is what a stupid thing to do, but it may be worth a little more thought.

My Grandfather took me deer hunting when I was young, and he taught me how to hunt-- I never shot a deer- - but I learned a lot in the process. I think he just enjoyed being with his grandson and teaching me little factoids of life. I enjoyed hearing them. He made deer seem ghostly by their stealthy nature; I was sure I’d never see one. He’d point out where they slept, where they ate, the direction they went, and even where they pooped. He’d pick up the pea shaped scat, roll it in his fingers, sniff it and say, “We just missed him.”.  I never saw a deer while I had my shotgun in hand. Now they roam the field behind my house almost every evening like cows. They seem to know that hunting is forbidden there, and take refuge in the sanctity of my back yard.

Ironically, teaching a child to hunt may teach life long lessons about the value of life. By pursuing a deer in the hunt we learn the value of freedom, and when we take a deer it’s important to teach the value of the life we’re taking. We say a prayer over the body of the animal that would give us life. When we say a blessing before dinner, we say “ Bless this food...”. It no doubt derives from a time when we meant, “Bless this animal that gave it’s life for me…”, but we don’t think of the animal too much anymore, only the benefit we derive from it.

I think I’d rather eat the meat of a wild animal that has lived a free and honorable life, than purchase meat from factory farms that treat animals inhumanly, slaughters them without respect for their lives, and without the dignity they deserve. Most hunters revere their prey; they hunt humanly, and consume the animal with reverence and respect. Nobody gets emotional over a Big Mac, and that’s where the killing places no value on life- nobody remembers the poor mistreated animal when they eat it, nor the freedom and dignity it never had.

We teach our children (and they teach us) about “fast food nation”, and all the perils of mistreating animals, mistreatment of immigrant workers, and the destruction of our forests so farmers can raise cattle, but we keep on eating the products of the system we despise. Is there honor in that? Even if we decide to be vegetarians, there’s still the lingering injustice to the immigrant farm workers, the polution of the land with chemicals, and the spread of genetically engineered crops that may drive plant diversity into extinction.

We can’t all grow our own food, nor can we all eat only from organic, local, sustainable farms that treat the land with reverence. We can try, but on average it’s very hard, if not impossible to exist entirely on food from the farmer's market, unless the farmer’s markets could be accessed daily. Even though it's hard, I’m taking a personal pledge to eat only earth friendly food. I would even eat meat if I could have the honor of blessing the animal that gave its life for me.

So call me stupid, but after thinking about it,  hunting doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing to teach children- especially if they get a holistic lesson of what they are doing and why, and they learn the difference between killing and giving life.