For the most part, hunters and fishermen i've known are also the most committed conservationists i've known too. People who get out and actually use--that is, interact with--nature value it...not necessarily more, but certainly differently.

One of Michael Pollan's books ends up being a treatise on environmentalism from the point of view of a gardener. (A fine read, sorry, can't remember the name) It's much the same situation. The serious--as in trying to accomplish something--interaction with the natural world has the ability to shift perspectives.

Trying to make nature into some sort of wild museum is almost as dangerous as pillaging it wantonly; both stem from a misguided belief that we humans are somehow outside of nature.

And, yes, that's a heartbreaking story.

Since we have exterminated deer's natural predators that has become our job. When folks talk of "animal rights" I proclaim "plant's rights" referring to the dwindling native plant species due to over-population by deer in our urban forest preserves. I also propose a knife-hunting deer season here in Chicago. We have plenty of long distance runners that could run down a deer.

After I killed a ratte-snake I experienced great sadness over the ease of the "kill". I was walking with some friend's kids near their house. We came upon a rattler by a trail. I asked what their parents did and they said kill it with a hoe. While I kept an eye on the snake the fetched a hoe. It turned out to have but a three foot handle and would have placed me too close to use it against the snake. Instead I grabbed a five pound rock and lobbed it onto the coiled snake. The parents were mad at me for ruining a good snake skin.

Me, I have regretted killing that snake ever since. It was just too easy.

to agree with Lex on the point of hunting and conservation. Gone are the days of "shooting your limit", common in the 60's and 70's here in Texas. My family are meat hunters. Like SP's dad, we teach, and were taught, only to kill what we will eat. Granted, there are some mitigating circumstances when we will pop a coyote...but we don't go looking for a kill. I have friends that hunt hogs with dog packs for a price per head...and then just leave the carcasses for buzzards, et. al. To me that is quite a waste. I understand why this practice is common (eh, Don?) but again, I think it's terribly wasteful. We also hunt and trap hogs, but we eat them. There is an imbalance in the ecosystem that is addressed by hunting...hunters are for the most part are providing a valuable service.

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Distrust anyone who wants to teach you something.

something we'd damned well better take seriously. I have fished since I was about five years old, scared to death as I waded at the edge of a dropoff in one of the big rivers in upstate New York at the bottom of a 300-foot gorge with my Dad. He was nuts to have me doing that then, but since I didn't drown I'm glad he did it. Now I spin fish and fly fish wherever there is clean water, fresh or salt. I always intend to bring home food, whether it turns out that way or not, and when I kill a fish I know I'm killing a being and I express thanks for its feeding me. Nothing fancy or sanctimonious. It's just the reality. Knowing what it feels like to kill is, I think, the very least a flesh-eating person can do, and to me it's a sickness for a society to create the habit of eating dead creatures while shielding people from any experience of the killing. I know some catch-and-release fishermen and women who regard catching-to-eat as inhuman, and I respect the conservation ethic that makes this necessary in some places due to our mistreatment of nature. But to me personally, making fish suffer purely for your own pleasure, when you intend simply to throw them back, is barbaric. I just don't get it. Hunters, I guess, have the advantage of choosing which animals to shoot, while even if I'm stalking a certain fish that I can see, I can't control my sometimes catching a young fish that I need to put back. So it's not a tidy or clean affair, and I admit that. But I do think flesh-eaters' being separated from the reality of animals' deaths is bad. For everyone.