By Fall is harvest time, and that includes game animals. The bow hunters are looking to stick deer. The partridge hunters are looking to put down pats. I think the pheasant, duck, woodcock, squirrel and rabbit hunters are sniffing around the woods and swamps as well.
I've lost my interest in these pursuits. It may be an age thing. More than one older feller has told me of the same experience. Maybe it's losing one's feeling of immortality (which the young are famous for). Whatever the reason, I'm far less inclined to go hunting anymore.
The last time I was hunting, and this was several years ago, my brother-in-law winged a ruffed grouse. We found it later, still very much alive. I was able to catch it by hand. It was a beautiful bird, very alert but injured. We felt terrible. There were half-hearted remarks about taking it to a veterinarian, then we did what we had to do.
Haven't been hunting since. Maybe some day for food. We'll see.
Back when I was a young child, I used to fish every summer. I'd catch 4-7 rainbow trout, and I would clean them before we ate them for dinner. Fast-forward to about 10 years ago when my husband and I were first married, and I wanted him to catch a fish. He had never done that before. Well, to this day he still hasn't. That fateful morning when I took him fishing 10 years ago, my line snapped, and I told my husband that he had to reel it in since he had never done so. He did and then asked me what to do next. I told him that he needed to kill it. So, he banged it repeatedly on a rock until FINALLY it died. I started to cry. To this day, I don't know why. We haven't been fishing since.
Tiff, the hunting/fishing/gathering area of our history and psychology is complex and conflicted. Most of us accept that killing and eating other creatures is natural and actually healthy for the ecology. Most of us accept that humans fit in this natural order.
We get off into the weird and fuzzy with 'modern' humans, because we have a choice. On the one hand, we don't need, generally, to hunt or fish, but if we do for consumption, fine.
On the other hand, we modern humans have developed 'sport' hunting and fishing, where the kill is more about trophies and ego, and less about consumption. Not so fine with many of us.
I don't know where many of us, including you and me, get our compassion for animals. Society? Mass religion? Genes? Common sense? Wiccan intuition? Pagan empathy? Mother Earth common sense?
I do know how I feel about hunting and fishing. I will do both now only if I honor the dead prey by killing them humanely, and by eating them. I can no longer catch little bluegills off the dock for the heck of it...getting pleasure by causing pain is wrong. And when I keep fish and clean them, I apologize to them and thank them for their sacrifice as I tunk their foreheads.
Maybe I'm a sap...so be it.
You should go fishing again, and you should eat what you catch, and you should show your mate how to properly, and respectfully, dispatch your catch.
I feel better. How about you?
Very nicely said, and I agree wholeheartedly... except for that Wiccan part. The broomsticks kept giving me splinters. Seriously, I'm a sap too, and I do feel better.