As a child, I spent a lot of time in the woods. I found magic in the forests and always enjoyed cutting trees to build forts and hunting birds without realizing the environmental impact that I was having on the forest. I knew nothing about conservation as a child, but I was developing a connection to the forest that would stay with me for the rest of my life.
Standing in freezing water
I also did a lot of duck hunting in the flooded timber lands of eastern Arkansas. One of the greatest things about standing in ice-cold water in waders at four o’clock in the morning is realizing how much a part of nature I was. I usually went hunting with my dad and some other older men that knew the area well. To me, the flooded forest was an unnavigable maze of sloughs and creeks that I would have surely been lost in forever had it not been for my dad’s skills in finding our way through the darkness.
One particular hunting trip comes to mind many years ago in Arkansas. It was just about daybreak and there were hundreds of mallards circling above us. I did my best to hide against the big oak trees so the ducks would not see me. Ducks, unlike deer, are not colorblind and can detect movement very well.
The Firing Squad
After some hail calls and feed calls and several rounds of circling above us, several ducks finally landed. There was always an eerie silence after they landed and then some old man shouted, “Get ‘em boys!” The next few moments were full of gunfire and probably the closest I have ever been or would want to be to war. The thing that scared me the most was that the hunters were not always in a straight line. Sometimes it was more of a semicircle, which meant that if a hunter on one end swung his gun barrel to far towards the semicircle he could graze a hunter on the other end with a few pellets. Fortunately, this never happened when I was there.
Where does your food come from?
To some people who have never hunted before, this ritual may seem a bit barbaric. Perhaps it is on some level it is, but the relationship that a hunter has to his/her prey is unmistakable. When you shoot an animal you have to watch it die, (usually quickly if it is a clean shot) you have to clean and then cook it. It is a whole process and has much more meaning to me than simply buying a piece of meat at the grocery that may have come from a farm thousands of miles away.
Your Call to Action
Hunters and conservation go together by necessity. If there is no land to hunt on, then hunters are out of luck. Ducks Unlimited has done a lot of good work to preserve land across the U.S. through partnerships with hunters and many other concerned parties, but there is much work to be done. As physical beings, we humans must find a way to interact with land without paving it all over and destroying the habitat which supports us and all other species on the planet. One of the most effective ways to help everyone realize our connection with the land is to be on it and observe the relationships that other plants and animals have with each other. This is not anything new. It has been done for thousands and thousands of years by some cultures, but it is becoming increasingly rare in the modern world.
If you are interested in helping people of other cultures preserve their land, Survival International does wonderful work with many indigenous groups around the world. Conservation is not just a fad, it is a way of life.