I have grown up in a house where hunting is a part of life. We treat hunting season like any other season, it requires preparation in the same way that the Christmas season requires advanced planning. We plan the next hunting season the day the previous season ends. My father worked for parks and wildlife and I grew up in the outdoors. It became second nature for me to follow in his footsteps and hunt when I grew up. I had been shooting, learning how to follow game trails and identifying tracks as long as I could remember. My family grew up eating the meat that my dad brought home from his hunts. When I was growing up I would help my parents process the animals my dad brought home, this helped me understand the process and how much work went into each and every animal we brought home. My friends didn't really understand this process, their family would go to the grocery store, pick out a roast and bring it home. They thought it was barbaric and horrible that my family would do such a thing. I knew how much work it took to create that roast, I also knew that each and every animal had to be taken care of differently.

I had been following my dad on his hunting trips for years by the time I took my hunters safety class and got my certification to hunt by myself, I had years of experience going hunting. Ever since I was little I have been defending and explaining the numerous benefits to hunting to many of my friends. I grew up understanding that responsible and controlled hunting was extraordinarily beneficial to the herds as well as the rest of the ecosystem. I was the kid in elementary school that knew the scientific names of all the North American mammals and wanted to tell everyone about their habitats. Obviously I was very well informed about the animals I was hunting. I also had very important morals instilled in me from the beginning and a very respectful relationship was formed between hunting and myself. I have a deep respect for the animals I hunt and the process it takes to harvest an animal. This is one of the things that I think was one of the most important things that hunting taught me.

When I was growing up, following my dad step for step in the woods, making sure not to crunch a single twig as we were following a game trail, I used to think I was Pocahontas. I would channel her and sing all the songs from the movie as I would quietly sneak my way through the forest. It was then that I decided that anyone who could do this without feeling it was a spiritual and extraordinarily respectful process did not need to be in my forest. I realized that everything I was doing had an impact on everything around me. I have grown up hunting the same units that my dad has hunted for 30 or more years. I could get people to our hunting grounds more easily than I could direct people to my house growing up. This was my second home. I knew each trail, valley, and forest road better than I knew my suburban neighborhood.

As I got older I was criticized more and more and I started to see how much hate there was towards such an age old tradition. I had to explain to my suburban friends why I loved what I did, and what my hobby did for the environment. Hunting culls the herds in a way that is very similar to how predators cull herds. The strongest and healthiest animals have the best advantage to get away and reproduce. By culling the herd you increase the overall health of the herd by eliminating the sick animals, that keeps them from spreading illnesses within the herd. I also took up archery hunting because as one of the most primitive hunting methods I felt it was the most sportsmanlike. You have to track the animals and get much closer than you need to in firearm hunting. As a sustenance hunter I do not believe in sport hunting, and I believe that it is one of the biggest reasons that people have such bad views of hunting. Hunters like me are constantly trying to protect the sport that we love from the people that give it a bad name. When people hunt legally it is a very good and important thing to the environment. And I for one plan to continue the tradition and pass it down through my family.

So yes I hunt, and no I am not a horrible person.