The reasons we hunt go far beyond enjoyiing the outdoors or spending time with friends. The deeply personal motivations that lead us afield and the sense of connection with our quarry are much more difficult cocepts to put into words.
At the same time a conservationist says humans need to do a much better job of protecting Earth's biodiversity, he is optimistic about the future of wildlife.
The hunting community needs to demonstrate its commitment to conservation and to do so by directly speaking to and engaging the general public. Our safe ledges, from which hunters look down on the uncertainty of public discourse, can keep us for only a little longer. Social, economic, and ecological realities leave hunters absolutely no choice. Hunters must either convince society of hunting’s modern relevance and value, or perish.
The sad and often perverse slaughter of wildlife that marked the European colonization of North America, remains one of the great examples of how selfish purpose has the capacity to improverish both nature and society. Fortunatly, the great innovation we term conservation was itself an outcome of this unfettered onslaught and exemplifies, how the spur of crisis can raise both a nation's conscience and its resolve to progress. Indeed, the fading thunder of the once innumberable bison still echos in our consciousness.
