People hunt for a lot of different reasons. One extreme is the men – I’m sure there are women who do this too, but I haven’t come across any – who go after big game so they can show off their trophies, the antlers or hides that prove what they managed to kill. At what I would call the other end are the people who hunt primarily for food, people who take seriously the taking of a life, honor the animal, and do their best to be merciful. (For a poetic reflection on this relationship, I recommend Leah Naomi Green’s poem, “The More Extravagant Feast,” from her collection of the same name.)
Sam Shoaf is solidly in the latter camp. He’s thought hard about what it means to take a life, reflected on the suffering he caused when, as a young hunter, he shot a deer while it was moving and couldn’t find it until the next morning. He has immense respect for the species he gets to know in the woods.
Spending all that time in the woods made him want to take care of native habitats – and not just so he could keep hunting. Studying ecology in college, he realized he loved learning plants, and identifying birds by their songs. Now he works in ecological restoration. He still hunts, too. For Sam, both practices are ways of becoming a participant in the landscape, which is necessary, he says, if you want to take care of a place.
Sam and I took a walk in the woods owned by his next-door neighbor in early June. With his full-time job, and a young family, that’s the best place for him to hunt these days. We talked about calling turkeys, public lands out west, fire ecology, and what hunting is all about for him.
Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. We have additional music from Ramón Monrás-Sender and Airport People.
