UF PRISM

“Alright, class,” says my teacher. “Let’s all go around the room and share our names and something unique about ourselves!”

It is the first day of classes. I am fifteen, just beginning my sophomore year of high school. When the question circles around to my desk, I smile at the teacher sitting at the desk in front of me. “Hi, I’m Hanley, and I like to hunt.”

Every other student in the class knows this already; I’ve attended the small private school for nearly five years now, and every class begins with the same ice breaker questions, to which we all seem to give the same answers.

“But you’re a theater kid,” says the teacher, laughing at himself as if he’s said something funny.

“Yeah,” I mutter open-endedly, giving him that scrunched-up reluctant smile that comes with the admission of guilt or some wrongdoing – an expression of shame, embarrassment. There is no defense, no words to justify the paradox that he has apparently just identified; I let the moment slip away. He moves on, still chuckling at his little joke.

He meant nothing by it, but still, it struck a chord. This was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that someone would find that my passion for hunting clashes with some other hobby of mine; that it invalidates my political or social views; that I couldn’t be gay and still participate in such a “right-wing” pastime.

But hunting is not a political act. It says nothing whatsoever about one’s beliefs. It does not prescribe a particular set of views, nor does it define what type of person someone is simply because they condone or reject the hunting lifestyle. Hunting is not a political act; it is a human one. Not because we are genetically predisposed to be omnivores, or because of our species’ long history of hunter-gatherer societies. Rather, I believe hunting is a human act because it is an act of the soul.

For the purpose of simplicity, I define the soul as the deepest center of one’s being, where we feel our emotions most fiercely and passionately. Hunting is an experience that allows us to channel this fierceness and passion into something greater than ourselves.

I liken hunting to gardening — a means of channeling this fierceness and passion into something larger and more powerful than the human dimension. Just as a gardener puts their time into nurturing their plants quite literally from the ground up, hunters launch themselves into the lifestyle of living off the land. Many hunters, myself included, put their best efforts towards only consuming meat that they harvest themselves. In this way, we become intimately aware of the lives game animals lead.

A gardener spends hours weeding the beds around their crops, trimming sick or rotting leaves from plants, and closely monitoring the ripeness of fruits and vegetables so that they do not go to waste; similarly, a hunter spends just as many hours learning the travel routes of game animals, observing the behavior of young deer and turkeys as they are trained to recall the patterns of their parents, and watching as the natural world races by, often with no discernible differences between hunters and other naturalists whatsoever.

But of course, there is something that sets hunters apart, and this is where the soul truly comes into play.

Many conservation and preservation areas enforce “leave no trace” policies so that the users of the land have no effect on the ecosystem; they are merely observers, which is a beautiful thing in itself. But as hunters, we intentionally do leave a trace. Granted, it is a carefully calculated trace, researched and tested for decades by Departments of Natural Resources and Wildlife and Game Commissions around the world in order to ensure that we are not upsetting the natural balance of the ecosystems in which we hunt. But it is still something that directly affects the ecosystem; there is a knowledge, deep down, that we are personally affecting the course of nature.

When you take an animal, be it a deer, rabbit, quail, fish, or other any manner of fauna, you can feel within your most inner self the impact you’ve made, the energy that you’ve both put into and pulled from a world that is entirely untouched by humanity; and in a way, you lose a bit of your own touch with humanity, in the best way possible. By joining the natural circle of living things, the hunter becomes absorbed in the beautiful fluctuations and the timelessness of the natural world. A small piece of the hunter’s soul becomes attached to each kill, each hunt, and each animal they witness; a branching process so intricate that it would be impossible to separate hunter and nature after enough time.

Taking an animal is cathartic, an act more of emotion than logic. In order to make an effective shot, one must remain as still as possible: controlled breath, controlled nerves, control, control, control. But with the squeeze of the trigger or the release of a bowstring, the control instantly dissipates, pushed aside by a rush of euphoria, raw emotion cascading from the heart to the fingertips as anxiety and tension release into a sense of power and pride. It wrenches something within you; it squeezes your soul in such a way that you cannot help but let go of the burdens on it, releasing them back out into the world and taking in a profound calm. It is thoroughly grounding.

The only experience I can begin to compare to hunting is the rush of live theater.

Performance is cathartic, an act more of emotion than logic. In order to put on an effective production, one must rehearse and focus as much as possible; achieving controlled movements, lines, and character, controlled nerves, control, control, control. But with the flick of the stage lights, or the applause of an audience, the control instantly dissipates, pushed aside by a rush of euphoria, raw emotion cascading from the heart to the fingertips as anxiety and tension release into a sense of power and pride. It wrenches something within you; it squeezes your soul in such a way that you cannot help but let go of the burdens on it, releasing them back out into the world and taking in a profound calm. It is thoroughly grounding.

It’s the same experience. The same catharsis, the same act of the soul. In both instances, the actor and the hunter are connecting to some larger work, something eternal. All of one’s effort is placed into preparing for one final show or one shot; that one moment occurs in the present — and then never again. It cannot be replicated. An actor may perform the same show on the same stage night after night, a hunter may embark on a hunt for the same game animal in the same woods season after season, but no single moment in live theater or in hunting is ever repeated.

This is what reminds us that we are alive; that our lives are both finite and so, so wonderful; and that once a feeling or moment is gone, it is confined only to memory and legend. Hunting stories are told year after year, sitting around a campfire. Theater productions are performed year after year, on stages around the world. And despite our finitude, there is something eternal in that.

“But you’re a theater kid.” I am also one of the most passionate hunters you may ever come across. But for me, that is in no way paradoxical. The experiences are not mutually exclusive; rather, they complement one another.

I spend half of my time in a tree stand, and the other half on a stage, appreciating each experience that reminds me of my humanity; each moment that makes me appreciate the next just a bit more.