Cross-posted from the Fair Chase blog.
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One opening day on Cayuga Lake several years ago, a friend of mine accidentally shot a grebe, mistaking it for a coot.
Derek had recently trained a new puppy for waterfowl hunting, and the hunter and his young dog were having a fine morning. The birds were flying well, and a mixed bag of puddlers and divers was hanging by 10 am. As the action slowed, a flock of coots swam through the decoys, and he ignored them.
But seeing how eager his dog was to retrieve, he began to regret that he did not shoot a coot for the dog, so he resolved to shoot one if they came by again. Ten minutes later, a lone bird came swimming up the shore, bobbing its head a bit and meandering through the decoys. It was promptly dispatched and retrieved.
A little while later, a pair of conservation officers could be seen making their rounds, from blind to blind, through the marsh, checking bag limits, ammunition, licenses, and duck stamps. When the officers arrived, Derek listed his bag: two mallards, one black duck, one bluebill, and one coot. The officer asked to see the bag. The stringer of birds was handed to the officers, who scrutinized the birds.
“Well, that’s a nice bird, but I have bad news for you,” said the senior officer, pointing at the smallest bird. “What’s that?” my friend asked. “Your coot is a grebe.” Derek answered, dejectedly, “I was afraid of something like that.”
“Then why didn’t you get rid of it?” the younger officer interjected. “Most guys would have.” To which Derek responded: “Because I shot it, and my dog retrieved it. And because it would be wrong to just kill something and throw it out. I wish I wouldn’t have shot it, but I did. I thought it was a coot, and that’s my mistake, which is bad enough. But I wouldn’t want to make matters worse by lying and cheating.”
The officers proceeded to inform Derek that his mistake was a federal offense, but they also seemed to recognize and respect his efforts to honor the hunt, the dog, the birds, and the traditions of hunting. I think that in the end they were somewhat easier on him than they could have been.
Fair chase and ethical hunting are usually what come to mind when people think of Orion. Although these terms probably don’t lend themselves to strict definition, I think that fair chase and ethical hunting can be summarized by the maxim, “Honor the hunt by hunting with honor.”
Now, I recognize there are rhetorical pros and cons to the idea of hunting with honor. It is almost an old-fashioned notion. Advantages include the positive connotations with fair chase; the respect for game animals and for the sport of hunting; and the positive idea of “honorable behavior” or hunting honorably when no one is looking.
Negative associations, on the other hand, may include the elitist or aristocratic connotations of the term “honor,” as in “Your honor” and deference to high rank.
Although some of the Orion members I have spoken with are sensitive to the negative connotations of “honor,” they argue that allowing some interpretation of what it means to hunt with honor isn't necessarily a bad thing. They point out that to some people, honor will mean respecting the animal, whereas to others it may mean respecting other hunters and landowners, and hunters being true to their own value system.
To me, honor as an ethical term carries more positive than negative associations. When we speak of an honorable person, we think approvingly of an honest and trustworthy individual who is able to follow his/her convictions and act with integrity. In this way, honor and integrity function as moral virtues. “He is a man of honor and therefore will keep his word.”
In one of the few sustained book-length works on the topic, Honor, anthropologist Frank Henderson Stewart argues that honor is best understood as a right to respect. This interpretation, too, has certain advantages to hunters. Ethical hunters command the respect of their fellow hunters. At the same time ethical hunters ask that society extend the same respect to them and to ethical hunting.
I believe it makes sense to examine the ideals of respect and honor in the traditional terms of sportsmanship. Sportsmen do not take advantage of the animal—rather they give it. Fair chase is all about giving every possible advantage to the animal within the limits of the hunter’s own individual abilities and skill level. Novice hunters begin on a more level playing field than experts. Experts accordingly limit their advantage over the game with ever more restrictive techniques, including stricter rules, less efficient technologies and voluntary restraint. Advanced deer hunters may forego the gun for a bow, impose antler restrictions, and hunt only by stalking their prey on the ground rather than using a tree stand. Each of these voluntary, self-imposed choices confer advantage to the animal while removing advantages from the hunter.
These voluntary choices are born of respect for the game animal, but they are also in an important sense born out of respect for the hunt itself. Hunting does not take place in a cultural vacuum, but instead occurs within an ongoing historical tradition that identifies the moral bounds of honorable and ethical hunting.
Fair chase is sportsmanship, therefore, in an important sense. Honorable fair chase hunting is hunting with honor, but fair chase hunting is also deserving of honor—that is, the honorable fair chase hunter is someone who has earned the right to society’s respect.
I believe this is the image of hunting that Orion - The Hunter’s Institute wants to communicate and promote. We should embrace the fact that ethical hunters deserve respect.
We also should acknowledge ethical hunters deserve a kind of “deference to high rank.” After all, the ethical hunter who holds to a high standard of fair chase is truly elite, in the best sense of the word.
Ethical hunters are worthy of our respect and deference. In the same way we defer to skill and knowledge in other contexts—dentists and doctors come to mind—we should hold up the example of good hunters as models to follow. We can and should defer to the experience of skilled hunters, and we should hold their hunting knowledge in the high esteem it deserves.
But to be absolutely clear: elite hunting is not simply about having superior knowledge or the most refined technique. Most importantly, the term elite refers to moral character. Derek the grebe shooter was hardly elite in terms of knowledge or technique—after all, he sluiced a grebe on the water. But he stands above other hunters in his ethics and character. He made a mistake, admitted his error, and accepted the consequences of his actions. Derek, too, is an elite hunter—an ethically elite hunter who has learned from his past mistakes, and this makes him a better hunter in the long run.
Orion strives to make better hunters. No hunter is perfect, but every hunter can strive to improve. In this way, Orion the Hunter’s Institute can promote a vision of admittedly elite hunting, and of elite hunters. Why wouldn’t we? Elite hunters, that is to say, who honor the hunt by hunting with honor.
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