Brawny Man

Yesterday, I got into an argument with Alana about hunting. Hunting, the very word can strike up a debate so heated and irrational; it hardly seems fair to give that much attention to a seven letter word. At lunch Maxwell was recounting his weekend’s hunting results and stories to me, when Alana (a hardcore liberal and ardent Catholic, however that works…) starts on a number of tirades, some rational arguments, some less than irrational, against hunting. I don’t have a problem with anyone being against hunting, everyone is entitled to their opinion as far as I am concerned, and however there are good ways to disagree and obviously, not so good ways to disagree. After several loud exclamations and “storm-outs” that seemed more fitting for a Broadway melodrama. Max and I at first countered the usual anti-hunting arguments with rational comebacks that would have won a presidential debate. The arguments against hunting are only so many, so I suggest that if you ever find yourself on the “save the animals” side of the argument, you stop after you’ve made your point 4 or 5 times. After a while of “Didn’t we just answer that?” and probably 25 or so, “…But you KILL things” Max and I decided that we had to get creative. For instance we explained that hunting a duck for food, was nothing more than getting justice for the hundreds of thousands of flies and other underwater bugs that it had hunted, killed, and eaten in its life. Eye for an eye I always like to say. Or my favorite, we explained that she was lazy for having someone else kill her meat for her, hunters are go-getters and do it for themselves.
After our conversation I began thinking about why I did like the idea of hunting. I of course do not like the idea of killing things, nor do I enjoy killing them. It might be the guns and the explosions and loud noises, but its just as easy to go to a gun range or clay pigeon course to experience this, and that comes, while more expensive, with out the blood and gore.
I think I first got excited about hunting while visiting my grandparents in middle-of-no-where-redneck, Northern California. My parents have always been worrywarts; my dad grew up in suburbia Indianapolis, and got an early acceptance to Harvard, my mom had the convenience of just always being a worrywart, while growing up with my grandpa, which all amounted to me having to beg on my knees for a squirt gun, let alone ever shooting a real gun. During my visit grandpa decided to take me out target shooting one day, on the way pointing out the alien size satellite dish that he planned to either make an umbrella or a water fountain out of, and of course his neighbors’ fish pond made out of an old foundation for a house. We went past the shed where he built to store all of his firewood (the ranch only had a wood oven at this point), the security fence he was building out of scratch for my cousin who had theft problems at his workplace, and the river where he and my cousins would drill and pan for gold every summer. We set up a target can to shoot at and I discovered I was a rather good shot with a .22 for never shooting a gun before. From that point on when ever I go hunting or shoot a gun, (my grandpa gave me his grandpa’s 12 gauge for Christmas a couple years back) it reminds me of my grandpa and the rugged, do it yourself, Brawny man lifestyle that I never got a chance to live, but absolutely fascinates me.
If I ever got the chance I would give anything to be up at the ranch drinkin’ a cool beer with my friends under my satellite dish umbrella, watchin’ the fish swimin’ around in my foundation fish pond, telling huntin’ stories that grew into stories about fightin’ bears, which would be responded to with a resounding, “yup” “mmmhhmmm” “tell you what.” And later that night listening to my wife complain about how I can KILL things and still kiss her, all while serving me and the kids my afternoon's prize hunt.