- 18 hours ago
STARS IN THE SKY: A Hunting Story is an examination of the lives of American hunters and their sometimes complicated relationship to our environment, presented as an honest exploration of the controversies, emotions, and traditions inherent to this most primal human activity. The latest feature documentary from the award-winning team at ZPZ Films and directed by acclaimed author and MeatEater host Steven Rinella.
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00:00:00To be continued...
00:00:30Today, south wind 15 knots increasing to 25 knots, seas 9 feet, rain.
00:00:58I became a hunter for the same reason that most hunters do, because my father was a hunter.
00:01:14It tends to move along like that, along a line of patrilineal descent.
00:01:21My father hunted, his father hunted, my maternal grandfather hunted.
00:01:25It was what we did, it's who we were.
00:01:34And it's important to mention here that I was introduced to it as an act of love for
00:01:38the natural world.
00:01:41I know now that that sounds suspicious to some people.
00:01:50This idea of hunting as a manifestation of love for the land and its animals.
00:01:56They might reasonably ask, wouldn't it be the opposite?
00:02:01Wouldn't it be an act of aggression?
00:02:05I'm open to discussing this with anyone who cares enough to share their thoughts.
00:02:13Though I have no illusions, there will always be a rift between hunters and non-hunters.
00:02:21Steven, don't you think these animals you've killed want to live as much as you or I do?
00:02:28In fact, isn't this just a rationalization for murdering innocent creatures?
00:02:34To shoot innocent animals, animals that have beating hearts, that run from you simply because
00:02:38they want to live.
00:02:39They're not armed with copper bullets or lead bullets.
00:02:41I think you're not really asking a question, you're making a point, but I'm going to answer
00:02:45like a question.
00:02:48I would say that if you look at the grand spectrum of species on this planet, you'll
00:02:53not find many that don't prey on other kinds.
00:03:00People say generally, behaviorally and anatomically modern humans have been around for maybe 75,000
00:03:07years.
00:03:08On this continent alone, people hunted for 15,000 years, notwithstanding the last couple hundred
00:03:12years.
00:03:13So, to not hunt is a fairly new experiment in a human sense.
00:03:20To ask a wolf not to hunt anymore is an impossible question.
00:03:27So if someone comes to me and says that they don't want human hunting, we don't want to
00:03:33hunt, I kind of am like, coming from what perspective?
00:03:36The life is sacred.
00:03:38Yeah, I know that life is sacred.
00:03:42I admire the deer, but I admire the idea of deer more than the individual deer.
00:03:49And I can assure you that I know more about deer than you ever will.
00:03:55And I've learned that through hunting for them.
00:03:57And I probably care about them in a way that's deeper than something you're going to experience
00:04:01from having a removed perspective on.
00:04:05The rift between hunters and non-hunters, it's been around since biblical times.
00:04:12My hope for the future would be that people who don't hunt would come to recognize hunting
00:04:20is a positive force.
00:04:24What tricks people up in recognizing that is the contradiction that I return to all the
00:04:30time.
00:04:31You love animals, you love animals, and you kill them.
00:04:45The South African writer Lawrence Vander Post wrote that the San hunters of the Kalahari
00:04:51believed that the stars were great hunters.
00:04:53And when the stars twinkled, they were sharing hunting stories.
00:05:05Whether he was correct in his interpretation of their beliefs is not clear.
00:05:12But reading that forced me to consider this idea that there are as many hunting stories out
00:05:18there as there are stars in the sky.
00:05:35Mine being just one of them that happened to begin when I was very young.
00:05:39Sometimes I do wonder about having been introduced to hunting much later in life and under different
00:06:07circumstances.
00:06:12Just to see if I would think of it differently.
00:06:23Because I do admit that I inherited much of my perspective.
00:06:28I reassess it constantly.
00:06:31But the core beliefs were right there waiting for me at birth.
00:06:45My dad hunted deer from up in the trees with his bow.
00:06:49And my two brothers and I spent a lot of time with him, perched up on these portable platforms
00:06:54that we call tree stands.
00:06:58Watching anxiously for a deer to come and pass beneath us.
00:07:03It was like we were some family of cougars waiting on ambush.
00:07:10When you turned 12, you were sent off to sit in your own tree.
00:07:16And I remember vividly the fear of the dark when it fell on the woods.
00:07:23And then the relief of seeing my brother's flashlight coming through the trees to find me.
00:07:33Hunting was a glue that held our family together.
00:07:38And I grew up into a guy who writes about hunting and talks about hunting as an occupation.
00:07:43My brothers became professional biologists and ecologists.
00:07:48Inspired by hunting to better understand the mechanisms.
00:07:52The interconnected cogs and wheels of the natural world.
00:07:57There was just not much thought in it early on.
00:08:04It was just kind of a foregone conclusion that that was the sort of thing you would do with dad when you had free time.
00:08:12We grew up hunting and it was just part of our lifestyle and we always ate off the land.
00:08:20If I was in a position where I had to defend myself to an anti-hunter,
00:08:25the first thing I would do is make it clear that this is about food.
00:08:37When I go on a hunting trip, I'm going out there to bring home every usable scrap of meat on that animal,
00:08:44cut it up and get it in my freezer and spend the next year eating it.
00:08:48I think that's one commonly held misconception is that hunters are out there to satisfy some bloodlust that has nothing to do with food.
00:09:00The modern American hunter is a lot of different things.
00:09:04I don't think he can make a composite and say this is the average or the norm.
00:09:12I think he's just doomed to failure.
00:09:17I was born in Buffalo, New York, but my dad's from Chicago and he was an affirmed city boy.
00:09:22As I matured as a hunter, I was also maturing professionally as a chef.
00:09:26I served all my time in the US military and the Navy SEAL teams.
00:09:29I worked for a software development company.
00:09:31I currently serve in the United States Senate on behalf of the residents of New Mexico.
00:09:36I was born and raised predominantly in Eddieville, Kentucky, next to the Cumber River.
00:09:42I guess it's not the meat, really.
00:09:45I mean, if cabbages had legs and walked around, I'd probably hunt them too.
00:09:49Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be, you know, the guy wandering around in the woods, you know, hunting and fishing and trapping.
00:09:57I had my father up until age seven. He passed away.
00:10:01I then was raised by my uncles.
00:10:04A lot of my uncles were hunters, so they taught me quite a bit about it.
00:10:10Everybody has their own thing.
00:10:12You like to do crochet and paint your house every day.
00:10:16I like to go hunting.
00:10:17The average American walking the street does not think highly of hunters
00:10:22and the way that they're characterized, this kind of macho image of glorifying violence.
00:10:27Hunters in general have a PR problem.
00:10:30A Tampa area man has some explaining to do after he says he mistook his girlfriend for a wild hog and shot her.
00:10:37Got it!
00:10:42In Zimbabwe, Cecil the Lion was as famous as Simba.
00:10:44That is, until this Minnesota dentist came along like some modern-day Ernest Hemingway.
00:10:50Dr. Walter Palmer paid $55,000 for a license to hunt in Zimbabwe, killing Cecil and skinned for a trophy.
00:11:03Some rich asshole wants to go to Africa and shoot a prized lion that's got a GPS collar on it that was right next door to a national refuge.
00:11:22Holy shit. It's the worst example of what hunting is.
00:11:26Yeah, I would say the most egregious method of hunting would be a kind of trophy hunting.
00:11:33I do a certain amount of trophy hunting.
00:11:39Sure.
00:11:40We have a 400-acre farm.
00:11:41It's been in my family for 115 years.
00:11:42I spend a few days every year hunting on the farm.
00:11:55Part of the motivation for hunting is what some folks are going to call a trophy.
00:12:01Mounts on the wall.
00:12:06There isn't a set of antlers hanging on our wall that I can't tell you the story of.
00:12:16This would have been an acorn when my great-grandfather bought the place.
00:12:24What kind of tree is this one, Steve?
00:12:29Hickory.
00:12:30Kind of hickory.
00:12:31Shagbark.
00:12:32What kind of tree is this one?
00:12:34Maple.
00:12:35What kind of maple?
00:12:36Sugar.
00:12:37Red maple.
00:12:38As I was growing up, you saw something with an antler on it, you shot it.
00:12:51A three-and-a-half or four-year-old buck, larger antlers, bigger deer, just didn't exist.
00:13:03And what did exist was a whole bunch of does, 20 or 30 to one.
00:13:12My brother, Matthew, was the first one who started talking about some of the principles of deer management.
00:13:21Matt was much younger than the rest of us.
00:13:27Matt, of all of us, was the one who was most interested in hunting.
00:13:34Steve got really interested in the idea of let the small bucks go so that they can get bigger.
00:13:40Eventually, it became the idea of management to mimic what we would expect in nature, more of a one-to-one balance, doe-to-buck.
00:13:49There was a lot of good reasons for doing it.
00:13:51It was good for the deer.
00:13:52It was good for the freezer.
00:13:54It was good for the trophy management.
00:13:56And as we found out over time, it was also good for our forest and for our crops to try to control that herd a little bit more.
00:14:03The last year that Matthew hunted, he and I had a real successful hunt.
00:14:07The biggest buck I'd seen up to that point jumped up in the field across the road from the buildings.
00:14:13I was able to shoot the deer.
00:14:15The biggest buck I'd shot up to that time.
00:14:18And my dad says, boy, that's a really good buck, Doug. Congratulations.
00:14:25And Matt says, yeah, but that had been a nice buck next year.
00:14:32Matthew was a man of few words unlike the rest of the family.
00:14:35And when he said that, it stuck in my head.
00:14:38And when he died a couple of months later, it took on even more meaning.
00:14:43I got a phone call from my father telling that Matt had been in a terrible accident and didn't expect him to live.
00:14:54We as a family decided we were going to figure out a management strategy for the farm to honor his legacy and our family's legacy.
00:15:09And in those years, we just threw our NBNY, nice buck next year idea that we kept getting bigger and bigger deer.
00:15:21That's the tree that we came to see.
00:15:26It's since died seven years ago from Dutch elm disease that they all eventually succumbed to.
00:15:33Ten years ago, the biggest deer that's ever been shot on this farm, and really the biggest deer that's ever been seen on this farm, was shot from here.
00:15:40We named that deer after I killed it.
00:15:43We called it the standard by which all others will be judged.
00:15:47When I saw this deer, it was about 12 years after Matthew died.
00:15:54I'm in the stand 10, 12 minutes, and I hear this down on the edge of the swamp.
00:16:03Biggest deer I ever saw, that was the deer.
00:16:06That was the deer.
00:16:07I knew instantly when I saw it that that was the deer.
00:16:13He walks up within about 25 or 30 yards of that stand, and I put the crosshairs on his chest and pulled the trigger.
00:16:21It was instantly dead.
00:16:22It absorbed all the energy of that bullet.
00:16:28After I shot it, it was just this moment of thinking about my brother,
00:16:34his ideas about let's manage.
00:16:37I was overwhelmed by it, quite honestly.
00:16:44That's the story of the standard.
00:16:49You want to call it a trophy, I call it remembrance of a hunt.
00:16:51In the earliest years of the 20th century, the Arctic explore villager
00:17:09In the earliest years of the 20th century, the Arctic explorer Viljalmer Stephenson was
00:17:22still out making initial contacts with groups of Inuit hunters in the Canadian High Arctic.
00:17:28And he describes these hunters' practice of bringing home the heads of bears in order
00:17:36to place their head in their home or lodge so that the bear would be able to observe the
00:17:41hunter and his family.
00:17:45The thinking being that the bear would in some mystical afterlife explain to other bears
00:17:50that if you're going to get killed by someone, this guy is a good choice because he's an
00:17:56honorable man.
00:18:00Now I decorate my home with all kinds of hides and skulls from the animals that I've hunted
00:18:05and eaten.
00:18:06And it does occur to me at times to ask, if they are looking out on me, what do they see?
00:18:31At the end of the 19th century, there's a pretty influential historian by the name of
00:18:34Frederick Jackson Turner.
00:18:36And he famously decrees that the frontier is closed.
00:18:42In essence, what he meant was that white settlement had expanded across the continent.
00:18:48And he was concerned about what this might hold, as were many others, for the future of the country.
00:18:57Many Americans at the turn of the century believed that America's unique character stemmed
00:19:01from the process of frontiering, stemmed from engagement with wilderness and fighting against
00:19:09indigenous peoples and sort of the conquest of the continent.
00:19:17Among a certain subset, particularly urban men, hunting embodied a certain rugged individualism
00:19:25that they associated with the national character.
00:19:29There have also always been subsistence hunters who hunted for utilitarian reasons out of necessity.
00:19:36But the emergence of the sport hunter as an iconic American figure is something new.
00:19:42The victory flash electrified Times Square keyed to the bursting point as the magic word
00:19:53of complete surrender came through.
00:19:57The end of World War II is a hugely significant moment in the history of hunting.
00:20:04As millions of American men are returning home from tours of duty, sport hunting experiences
00:20:11has a surge in popularity.
00:20:16They take to the field in record numbers, many of them for the first time in their lives.
00:20:23As the editor of Outdoor Life put it, you can't expose millions of young men to the joys
00:20:29of living outdoors and using firearms and not make hunters out of them.
00:20:37The number of hunters skyrockets in the 1940s from about 8 million to 13 million.
00:20:44And that means that roughly one in four American men were hunters.
00:20:49через the park's 이걸 searchали since the UN Swiss Anyone who is in the UNWow
00:20:57for quite a hundred years.
00:20:59繼續 bagging TRAILS
00:21:07One of many things I love about hunting is that it pushes me to get a watch
00:21:12that I cannot steal in right out to my legally.
00:21:14One of many things I love about hunting is that it pushes me to go to places I would otherwise have no business going.
00:21:24It melds wanderlust and pragmatism.
00:21:31I respect a mountaineer who goes up a mountain and comes down with nothing tangible.
00:21:37But I'm drawn to the kind of climbing that has you coming back down with a load of meat on your shoulders.
00:21:44In anthropology, there's an idea that it was both of those things equally,
00:21:51a curiosity about what's over the next hill and a desire to eat it,
00:21:57that accounts for our species' stunningly rapid colonization of the world.
00:22:05The first Americans who passed through Beringia and entered the Western Hemisphere
00:22:10started hunting this continent some 20,000 years ago.
00:22:13Euro-Americans have been hunting it for 500 years.
00:22:20I think of those earliest hunters often.
00:22:24Would they be surprised that the subject of ethics has become so intertwined
00:22:29with all of our conversations around hunting?
00:22:33How could such an ancient ancestral practice be governed
00:22:37by such contemporary notions about morality and behavior?
00:22:46It's not a small thing to take an animal's life.
00:22:49It's very intense.
00:22:50It's very emotional.
00:22:52We're hunting sentient beings who suffer and who are highly complex,
00:22:57who have moral status.
00:22:58There's something that we have to consider now that we're a little more enlightened,
00:23:01the burden of morality, the burden of being ethical.
00:23:05And when I first see the deer that I'm going to shoot,
00:23:17my concentration is on getting to where I'm going to have a steady, clear, concise shot
00:23:25so that that animal does not suffer.
00:23:28And that's all that's going through my mind.
00:23:33It might not work out.
00:23:35You might not see the animal.
00:23:37You might not get close enough.
00:23:38You might get winded.
00:23:40You might even miss.
00:23:40But did you do your best to make sure that none of those things happened?
00:23:46And if you don't, you feel terrible.
00:23:51The fact that hunters themselves acknowledge
00:23:54that there should be a sportsman's-like way to dispatch, say, a deer,
00:24:01that speaks to the fact that they believe that
00:24:04there's a moral and ethical aspect dimension to that act.
00:24:10Animal ethics, in a nutshell, is to have more people recognize
00:24:19that you're dealing with moral beings, not just objects.
00:24:24Human beings were always thought to be superior,
00:24:29not only intellectually and physiologically in certain ways, but morally.
00:24:34This is a view known as human exceptionalism.
00:24:37And that claim starts to be challenged.
00:24:44The question in animal ethics, it's what makes all human beings
00:24:49morally superior to every animal on the planet?
00:24:53Why is it this way and should it be that way?
00:24:57And that's a tough question to answer.
00:25:03The actual killing of an animal,
00:25:07the finality of it is hard to describe.
00:25:13But you've done something that you can't undo.
00:25:15What does go on between a hunter and his prey?
00:25:24The biologist E.O. Wilson popularized the term biophilia.
00:25:39The idea that humans have an innate desire to connect with nature and other forms of life.
00:25:44Hunting can bring about an extreme form of that.
00:25:53Let's say bio-obsession.
00:25:56Where the continued study and pursuit of animals brings about in the hunter feelings of deep admiration,
00:26:03a desire to emulate, and yeah, something akin to love for the animals that they hunt.
00:26:10What else do you sit down with your pair of binoculars glued to your face and just look
00:26:21at the landscape and look at animals for hours at a time?
00:26:25It kind of forces you to learn so much.
00:26:27I've never learned so much about a single species of animal as I did when I started hunting whitetail.
00:26:33Judging bears, you know, what to look for, size of their heads, you know, the size of their ears compared to their body.
00:26:39Sources of food that I've seen the squirrels eat, of course, we've got the hickernuts in our areas, all the acorns.
00:26:50You're going to become a successful hunter. You have to learn everything about that animal.
00:26:54Let's call it the psychology of a deer.
00:26:58Beach trees, you know, they love hitting those things.
00:27:01Watching animals interact with each other, watching animals interact with the landscape.
00:27:04Dogwood berries, they like eating those.
00:27:07You understand them, then you understand where they're going to be at certain times.
00:27:11I've never seen anything eat a gumball.
00:27:14This deer call here used to be my favorite one.
00:27:21And it would call in bucks at a pretty good rate.
00:27:27I mean, they'll come charging in, usually with a full erection.
00:27:31And they're there for one thing.
00:27:34No, it's not there.
00:27:59That one doesn't, but that there is a little bit too high-pitched one.
00:28:14That interplay between loving the game you're pursuing and killing the game you're pursuing and taking that life, I feel lucky to wrestle with those issues.
00:28:30I mean, I think there isn't a single animal I'm going to go after that I don't have tremendous respect and love for and really enjoy looking at as much as I want to go hunt.
00:28:40It's, uh, I think it is a connection to the natural world that very few people get.
00:28:46I mean, I actually think being a hunter falls much more in line with the way we've developed, you know, genetically, culturally, than not being a hunter.
00:29:02I mean, if our forefathers weren't probably, you know, whacking a critter with a rock and a stone and figured out a way to cook it and eat it, we're probably not sitting here.
00:29:09So I think there is a very primal part of hunting that seems 100% natural to me.
00:29:16Some people would say, well, if it's natural, that's a justification enough that we should do.
00:29:24So the should just comes from the fact that it's natural.
00:29:27Look, I'm a vegan, but I can't say that there aren't times when I think bacon smells really good.
00:29:32And I smell, I'm like, damn, I could go for some of that bacon.
00:29:35Now, I'm denying myself.
00:29:37You could say, you're not doing what's natural.
00:29:39But I could say, I know I'm not doing what's, quote, natural.
00:29:43That's because I'm a moral being.
00:29:44And that's what moral beings do.
00:29:46We don't always follow through on our instincts.
00:29:49That's what makes you moral.
00:29:50Could it be true that our canine teeth and our forward-facing predator eyes are really just relics, just vestigial traits, like our wisdom teeth and tail bones?
00:30:12If so, the transition feels incomplete, at least inside of me and inside of many others.
00:30:21There's a psychological piece to being in the woods pursuing my food.
00:30:26Civilization does us the favor of removing us from so many unpleasant and unsightly processes, all of the tasks of life.
00:30:36It allows us to lead cleaner, more sterile, more sedentary lives of our choosing.
00:30:41But we do carry the physical, specialized tools of hunters.
00:30:46We're built for it.
00:30:48That might make you uncomfortable to think about, but it warrants being reckoned with.
00:31:01Hunting colors everything I am.
00:31:04I wouldn't live in the middle of nowhere with a corgi and pack llamas if I didn't hunt.
00:31:15I started getting some sciatic nerve pain in my left leg.
00:31:27When I found out that the sciatic nerve pain was an extension of back problems, I knew immediately that it was from carrying heavy packs of meat.
00:31:35So I just knew then that if I was going to keep doing the thing that I loved for decades to come, I was going to have to do something differently.
00:31:48So I started getting pack llamas so I could keep hunting and they would carry my stuff.
00:31:59I'm trying to desensitize his head a little bit, both of these guys' heads a little bit.
00:32:06Good boy.
00:32:07Good boy.
00:32:08Good boy.
00:32:30run away they do not like to have their feet handled so then you reward them by
00:32:34walking away and take the pressure off of them like this this is just from a few
00:32:50training sessions that I can do this very protective of their feet
00:33:00come on buddy give him a kick in the butt
00:33:05God these are nothing like your old ones oh this guy's way better than the old ones oh is he not
00:33:11Peggy but he's way better than Timmy it's just what Steve you wouldn't believe this guy on the
00:33:16trail he's fantastic it's just around the barnyard
00:33:19I have a very deep love for the places that I hunt and it's sometimes mixed up with fear I mean some
00:33:38of these places are way back in there and they're kind of spooky I spend a lot of my bow hunting time
00:33:47alone which is often not fun can be boring and grueling but it requires a level of dedication
00:33:58for me personally when I get an elk with my bow that's a major accomplishment and I'm gonna probably
00:34:05not remember the squirrels I shot two years from now but I'll remember every single elk I've ever
00:34:13gotten with my bow there's been many hunts where I've been on where I've fought the desire to go home
00:34:21every hour every day for days and then build my tank in a way I feel like I'm stuck being a hunter I
00:34:36don't have any choice I can't can't help it I have to uh hunt that's just what I do that's what my
00:34:43that's what preoccupies my thoughts that's what I how I spend my spare time I'd be I'd be powerless to
00:34:51try to try to make it go away if somebody took issue with me hunting my first question to them
00:35:04would be do you eat meat um now let's say that this a person that doesn't like the fact that I hunt but
00:35:15they're a vegetarian or a vegan I don't know what to say to them I they might have a point I do not
00:35:23think that vegans including myself are outside the web of killing and suffering I do not think that I'm
00:35:30morally superior because I'm a vegan if I eat you know a carrot there's probably some sentient field
00:35:37animal that died in the tilling of the so I have no illusions about vegans or vegetarians being morally
00:35:45pure or morally superior that's not my brand of veganism I want that clear what I am saying is is
00:35:50that there seems plenty of ways to deeply and spiritually if you will commune with nature that
00:35:58don't involve the killing of a complex sentient being when I was young I first started hearing
00:36:17the word like environmentalist I was kind of intimidated by it because I just thought it
00:36:20automatically meant somehow that you were against the things that I liked which is to hunt fish and trap
00:36:28then later I learned that in in the hunting world or in the hunting community we have our own word for
00:36:34it we just call it conservation the conservationist is an environmentalist with a gun
00:36:42the conservation ethic came to me out of a very selfish desire to not lose the things that mattered a lot
00:36:51to me so I'm like so what would I need to do what is the best step to protect this landscape
00:36:58where I like to hunt to protect my hunting grounds so that I can continue to enjoy it that was the
00:37:05first step for me the second step was to also and be like okay I like this spot and I might not ever go
00:37:11to that one over there but I'm just gonna extend my desire to protect this place and go like okay I like
00:37:19that one the distance too you know and maybe I like something in South America as well and I think I
00:37:25just very gradually sort of began to have a conservation ethic that stands outside of selfishness but took me
00:37:36a long long time to shed that idea that you can just take and take with no regard to what's down the road
00:37:55if it's a perfect morning it is completely dead calm and you'll get to your listening spot
00:38:11generally the first thing you hear is a cardinal and then the tufted tip mice are going to start
00:38:19calling then all the other birds join in and when the first crow calls and if all goes according to
00:38:26plan you'll be answered by a goblin and a turkey sees movement and he'll look at it and he'll see
00:38:37movement a second time and he's gone as soon as it came out of that egg every movement that it
00:38:42experienced it it interpreted it as something trying to kill it and eat it if you're good enough to kill
00:38:50a bird every three or four or five hunts you're pretty good turkey hunter we can't forget that we're not
00:39:08turkeys we are we're mammals so when we're looking at a turkey we're looking at them with mammal eyes
00:39:13when a turkey is looking at a turkey or a turkey is looking at a decoy a turkey is looking with with
00:39:19bird eyes with avian eyes my son came up with the idea well you know why don't you just glue each feather on
00:39:27individually well that'll take too long that's crazy well then he did it and it doesn't it's like
00:39:34everything it doesn't work every time but it works enough I did not grow up hunting turkeys we had
00:39:43no turkeys anywhere around I remember the first turkey I saw which I was in high school and it was
00:39:49it was crazy I mean I couldn't believe it I could not believe I had seen a turkey by the time I was born in
00:39:55the mid-50s North Carolina only had turkeys in the most remote parts the turkey population started
00:40:03crashing in the 1800s as soon as the settlement started I mean these were a large bird they were
00:40:09good to eat and people killed them and ate them and they killed them and sold them for the market
00:40:13and they disappeared from most of the United States but it's not that way anymore historically and in
00:40:20the 20s and 30s and 40s we believed that you could take a wild turkey hen and take the eggs raise
00:40:28them up into young turkeys and go out and turn them in the woods and that went on for decades it was it
00:40:33was a massive failure it just did not work and the restoration really didn't get started until we
00:40:39figured out how to trap them and how to move them we started using rocket nets to capture the birds and
00:40:45it was hunters that funded the whole thing it was an army of biologists and technicians and hunters all over
00:40:54this country that contributed the money and trap the birds and did the habitat management that allowed
00:40:58the birds to come back now while turkeys are found in all 49 states or not Alaska and throughout southern
00:41:08Canada and down in New Mexico you know the question is did I do the restoration in order to be able to hunt
00:41:18turkeys all over the country and maybe a part of me did but we get that question a lot well you only
00:41:26wanted to turn those turkeys loose so you can shoot them and it's like that doesn't even come close to
00:41:34the experiences and the people I've met and the guys that that might raise money and work for for
00:41:42years to try to get a wild turkey or elk or white tailed deer or mule deer or pronghorn restored to
00:41:52habitat I just don't see that level of commitment with any other wide group of people other than hunters
00:42:12these wild animals have a social and cultural value because of what they represent they represent a
00:42:27social cultural commitment to their existence and the fact that we have worked so that they can co-exist
00:42:35with a civilized society and still remain wild and that has given them a value the European method of
00:42:48wildlife management attached wildlife to privilege or property you could get hung for killing the king's
00:42:56deer one particular code in England was that if you should take so much as a hair you shall have
00:43:04your eyes torn out by virtue of the declaration of independence where the people became the
00:43:13sovereign those rights and privileges that belong to the royalty passed to the people and they would
00:43:22be held in trust for the people by the states the irony is that before and after our decision about
00:43:29who owned the wildlife of this country we were systematically eliminating
00:43:38Lewis and Clark came up here in 1805 and 1806 they described that wildlife resource as a resource that
00:43:45exceeded anything the eye of man had ever looked upon just the sheer abundance of wildlife that was out on
00:43:53the Great Plains at that time
00:43:55eight decades later it had fallen to zero
00:44:01we had become the wildlife boneyard of a continent
00:44:08throughout history there have been people who hunted for utilitarian reasons or for commercial purposes so the United States had market hunters
00:44:21market hunters were individuals in the 19th century who would go out and kill wild animals to sell their meat or hides to markets in the East
00:44:34in 1876 Fort Benton shipped 80,000 buffalo hides down the Missouri River
00:44:42that's kind of a centennial mile post at least out in the west where we were
00:44:49sort of a maximum killing capacity not only of the buffalo but of all wildlife
00:44:55Theodore Roosevelt he has an intense interest in nature and this passion to go hunting and he comes to the west to get to a bison before they were gone
00:45:08he hires a guide named Joe Ferris they hunt for seven days and he shoots a lone wandering bull and he is so excited that he does a war dance around the fallen bull and then he gives his guide $100
00:45:26In 85 he had published the hunting trips of a ranchman and wilderness hunter and he left a passage in there of a rancher that he had talked to who had made a journey of a thousand miles in northern Montana
00:45:42To use the ranchman's own words I was never out of sight of a dead buffalo and never in sight of a live one
00:45:57Roosevelt shoots a second buffalo and his reaction to it is no longer the dance
00:46:03His commentary about killing that buffalo is a reflection on this nearly gone and vanished species
00:46:12This noble beast and he has a conservation epiphany
00:46:19And that was a pretty important event
00:46:24Theodore Roosevelt gets shunted into the vice presidency in 1900 as a candidate on the McKinley ticket
00:46:34And then McKinley gets shot and all of a sudden Theodore Roosevelt's the president
00:46:41The National Republican Party boss said I told William McKinley it was a mistake to nominate that wild man
00:46:49Now look that damn cowboy is president of the United States
00:46:56His first message to Congress was on conservation
00:47:00He adds 140 million acres to the national forest system
00:47:05And in that process western district congressmen from six western states panicked
00:47:12They put a rider on an ag appropriations bill to prohibit him from setting aside any more national forests
00:47:20He has seven days to sign or veto that bill
00:47:24In those seven days he adds 16 million acres to the forest system
00:47:29Creates 21 new national forests
00:47:31Signs the executive orders creating those public states
00:47:36And then he signs the bill forbidding him from ever doing it again
00:47:42That's leadership
00:47:45One generation later
00:47:48We have the great economic depression
00:47:52The drought and the dust bowl
00:47:55In the depths of that despair
00:47:57We have Franklin Roosevelt now president
00:48:00And he calls the very first North American Wildlife Conference
00:48:06This is what they told the hunters and the fishermen
00:48:09Says look people if you want these resources you're gonna have to do it
00:48:13And the wildlife conservation ethic begins to take root
00:48:18They put through Congress the Pittman Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act
00:48:25And has been fueling wildlife restoration for 80 years
00:48:31The hunters that rose up in the wake of the market shooters
00:48:38Rose up with the conservation ethic because it was essential
00:48:41We wouldn't have hunting if that hadn't happened
00:48:44I mean I think it's worth considering that
00:48:56Many of the animals that we see all the time
00:48:59Used to be really rare
00:49:01You know if you go to places where those species don't have that cultural
00:49:07Or economic value
00:49:09Over time they get crowded out
00:49:12They're not there anymore
00:49:14It happens all over the world
00:49:16And it's not that way in the United States
00:49:25We have not only public wildlife through the North American model
00:49:29But public lands
00:49:31Hunters pay for that conservation
00:49:35The picture of hunting revenue in the U.S.
00:49:39Is on both a state and a federal level
00:49:43On the state side you've got the sale of hunting licenses
00:49:46Tags and stamps as the primary source of revenue
00:49:50For fish and wildlife commissions
00:49:52And that's to the tune of about a billion dollars annually
00:49:54Across the country
00:49:56That is only paid for by people who are hunting
00:50:00On the federal side you've got
00:50:02Stemming from the Pittman Robertson Act
00:50:04A federal excise tax on hunting equipment
00:50:06So it only hits people who are buying hunting equipment
00:50:09And that money gets put in the federal fund
00:50:11And that fund is then distributed to these states
00:50:15But only if they meet certain requirements, right?
00:50:17And the first requirement is that all the money that the states generated
00:50:21Via the sale of hunting licenses, tags, and stamps
00:50:24Has to be spent by that actual fish and wildlife commission
00:50:28It can't get diluted across the budget
00:50:30It has to stay for fish and wildlife
00:50:32And this is a cool part too
00:50:33Is if that money is for whatever reason not spent within two years
00:50:38It gets reallocated to the Migratory Bird Conservation Act
00:50:41In a holistic sense it's a really, really tight structure
00:50:45It's an example of pretty effective regulation
00:50:47And it's cool to see the mechanics of how it all works
00:50:58I hunt many things in many places
00:51:17But I feel best and most fulfilled hunting in places
00:51:20Where it's physically difficult and a bit hazardous
00:51:24I enjoy moving through nasty country
00:51:29I like to climb, I don't mind suffering the cold
00:51:32I like being in places where I have to struggle against obstacles
00:51:37I could get a deer in other places and in easier ways
00:51:41But intentionally handicapping our endeavors
00:51:44Is one of those peculiar hallmarks of our species
00:51:49In hunting, we refer to this system of handicapping as fair chase
00:51:53Now it's a slippery concept
00:51:57And that is hard to define in a way that everyone is going to agree on
00:52:02But it has to do with evening the playing field between predator and prey
00:52:08Diminishing, sometimes greatly, the certainty of the hunter's success
00:52:14Many of these handicaps are codified by law
00:52:17Weapons that can and cannot be used
00:52:20Hours of the day that are allowable for hunting
00:52:23Restrictions on age classes and gender of animals that can be harvested
00:52:29But many hunters go at one better and add layers of personal prohibitions
00:52:35Weapons they could use but don't
00:52:38Age classes of animals they could kill but won't
00:52:41Much of it is subjective
00:52:44It's deeply personal
00:52:46Hunting plays out in your head as much as it does out on the land
00:52:52Your version of it needs to leave you feeling right
00:52:56It needs to leave you feeling good about what you've done
00:52:59All hunters need to find that line for themselves
00:53:08All hunters need to find that line for themselves
00:53:12All hunters need, such a terrible demon
00:53:14In the world ofander, this is Gibralum
00:53:15Oh georgi
00:53:16You are one May.
00:53:40The first time I killed a deer, I was 13.
00:53:49I got with a rifle in Michigan where I grew up.
00:53:54It was so close, I couldn't miss.
00:53:57I just held right where I could see on it.
00:53:59Bam!
00:54:04I got up and I ran over there,
00:54:06and I was kind of surprised to see the deer hadn't died yet.
00:54:11You know, and now looking back on it,
00:54:14you just very quickly shoot it again,
00:54:17but I was young and inexperienced, and I didn't know,
00:54:19and I jumped in there and I killed the deer with a knife.
00:54:27And, like, looking at it, I'd be like,
00:54:29yeah, it was kind of like a violent act.
00:54:32And I recognize that there's a violence to hunting.
00:54:36It's different than a human-non-human violence,
00:54:39but there's a violence to it.
00:54:44But I think that it's a funny little exercise
00:54:48to act as though you can be alive today
00:54:51and be a breathing, living, eating person
00:54:56who's dining in restaurants
00:54:58and going to the grocery store
00:55:01and to somehow feel as though you've escaped
00:55:05the cycle of violence that drives all existence
00:55:09and that drives nature.
00:55:11Whenever I kill a deer, I always have that degree of sorrow
00:55:33for the animal, for the kill.
00:55:36I don't feel guilty about it,
00:55:39but you feel sorry for the animal
00:55:42and taking them out of life for your benefit.
00:55:46And I don't think I'll ever get over that.
00:55:49I think it's what every hunter should have.
00:55:55Those emotions should be listened to
00:55:57because they represent the better parts of our nature,
00:56:01the feelings of empathy and sympathy,
00:56:05the feelings of having ended an animal's life.
00:56:08And I think the question then to ask is,
00:56:12was it necessary what I just did?
00:56:14Did I have to do that?
00:56:15Is that...
00:56:17What is my heart telling me about what just transpired?
00:56:22We're human beings and we're of this earth
00:56:27and we've been hunting animals for thousands of years
00:56:31and to think that that no longer applies
00:56:33just because we have technology
00:56:35that allows us to not necessarily hunt anymore
00:56:39seems kind of ridiculous to me.
00:56:41Why do some people respect every predator but themselves?
00:56:54Think of an owl perched up in a tree,
00:56:58watching for a rabbit that it's going to pounce on and kill.
00:57:03It does not occur to the owl to ask,
00:57:06do I belong here?
00:57:10Do I have the right to eat this rabbit and live?
00:57:15It just is one with the natural world.
00:57:22It's impossible to untangle it as a creature
00:57:26from its impending actions.
00:57:29And I admire that owl.
00:57:34How good to be so unapologetic about one's sharp talons.
00:57:59Let's do it.
00:58:04We try to make little p twists...
00:58:06Now the leur docs...
00:58:08and I just want to bring them up into an eye.
00:58:10Then we select the shadow of the owl.
00:58:12Then we bring the the owl afterwards
00:58:13and then we use it.
00:58:15I see and then I want to play in the front of my eye.
00:58:17What's left hand has changed?
00:58:18The beworsight
00:58:25The rare Ländern
00:58:57Morally, that animal, the instant it dies, it is my property, and I have an obligation to that animal to get it skinned, get it cooled down, keep it clean, and start the long, arduous task of getting all that meat home.
00:59:16I'm going to take an animal. I'm going to utilize everything. Everything. We don't let anything go to waste. Whatever we can utilize, we utilize.
00:59:25I don't buy meat. I just eat game meat. So that is something that I value very highly.
00:59:32If you're going to take an animal's life, if you're going to consume meat as part of your diet, you have a responsibility to use every last bit of that animal that you can.
00:59:43If someone chooses to be a hunter and that person decides to say, quote, honor or respect the prey by using all the parts of it and doing it in this kind of honorific manner, does that make a difference morally or ethically?
01:00:03It doesn't make a difference to the animal. The animal's dead.
01:00:10The animal's not going to say, hey, thanks for shooting me and really caring and respecting me.
01:00:16That's better than you doing it maliciously and not caring.
01:00:20The animal's dead.
01:00:21The animal's dead.
01:00:27The animal's dead.
01:00:48The animal's dead.
01:00:48Most of the hunters that I've known in my life, and I have known a great many, struggle
01:01:17in some way with the violence, but we're the rare few, really, who are willing to reckon
01:01:27face-to-face with the fact that our lives cause death.
01:01:38As a hunter, you do strive for humane slaughter, which might not happen every time, but the
01:01:43intention is there, and the animal lives in the purity of the natural world, uncorrupted
01:01:54by domestication and confinement until it passes into the phase of becoming food for
01:02:00me and my family.
01:02:04Who eats more purely than that?
01:02:11This is just purely personal opinion.
01:02:14I can't back this up with anything.
01:02:17I think that a lot of people feel in their heart, right, that they want to be a hunter.
01:02:26They feel that need to be a hunter.
01:02:29But they've been told that they can't be, or they've been told that it's wrong.
01:02:34And what they're looking for when they hear about food and this idea of, like, humane slaughter,
01:02:40sustainable resources, organic, I think that what they're doing is they're finding a way
01:02:46in.
01:02:49Somewhere they know they want to go, but they haven't been able to justify the leap.
01:02:52And they're trying to find, emotionally, a way to put a foot into that place.
01:02:58And they're just begging for a way in.
01:03:07I don't know how many are going to actually make the leap, but I feel that right now, for
01:03:13some reason, a lot of people are wondering what's been taken from them and how they might
01:03:23get some semblance of it back.
01:03:44The writer Tom McGuane has an essay about hunting in which he recounts a conversation where someone
01:03:50takes a hunter to task by asking him, why do you have to go and kill deer?
01:03:58Why do deer have to die for you?
01:04:02Would you die for deer?
01:04:05The hunter replies, if it came to that.
01:04:13The conversation illustrates that central paradox.
01:04:18You love animals, but then you kill some of them.
01:04:23When wrestling with it, I believe it's important to remember that many of our most influential
01:04:29conservationists had a love of hunting that inspired in them a desire to save the land
01:04:36and restore wildlife.
01:04:38My hope is that hunting will continue to do this, to inspire in people a sense of active
01:04:44ownership, active stewardship for the land many generations into the future.
01:04:52Those early hunters talked about the generations within the womb of time.
01:05:06To the extent that each generation has a responsibility to the future, and I'm going to sneak in on a personal
01:05:15story now.
01:05:16Hearing him out in the National Forest, I walk there from my house, I see three hunters
01:05:22coming up that trail.
01:05:25And it looks to be a father and two young sons.
01:05:29And they're like poster children, not a hunter education.
01:05:32Control of the gun, blaze orange, serious expressions.
01:05:37And the father tiptoes up to me and whispers, we don't want to get ahead of you.
01:05:43And I saw this old guy sitting by the trail.
01:05:47And I said to the father, I think I know what you're doing, and I want you ahead of me.
01:05:55And so I gave him the high sign, and the kid's face lit up in the pre-dawn darkness with
01:06:00a bright smile.
01:06:03And I watched him go up the ridge.
01:06:05And then I thought, here was three generations of people meeting in the National Forest, enjoying
01:06:15the beauty of living and the joy of life.
01:06:18I put my head in my hands and I wept, because of what that meant.
01:06:23I was like, I'm going to read the story of living and the love of living and the joy of
01:06:31living and the joy of living and the joy of living and the joy of living.
01:06:36So it's just a week for me to just follow me.
01:06:41I'm going to try to make it a new way.
01:06:44And I'll show you guys, and I'll show you guys.
01:06:46I'm going to be a new way.
01:06:48And I'm going to be a new way.
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