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Ethics After the Shot
by Jim Posewitz

(Excerpted from Beyond Fair Chase, by Jim Posewitz.)

Earlier in this book we said, "If there is a sacred moment in the ethical pursuit of game, it is the moment you release the arrow or touch off the fatal shot."

To this we add the idea: If there is a time for reverence in the ethical hunt, it is when you claim, or accept, what you have killed.

For a hunter, this can be the most serious and meaningful moment of the hunt. The significance is the same whether you are claiming a grizzly bear in the wildest country left on earth, a cottontail rabbit in a tiny woodlot, or a duck from a wet retriever that is shaking from its own excitement of the moment.

What you have before you is a wild animal, and it is the product of many things. It is an appropriate time to pause and appreciate what has just taken place. You have taken an animal in a hunt. It has come to you:

through the land and the trials of natural selection,

through the efforts of people who protected your opportunity to hunt,

through conservation programs that restored wildlife to a depleted land,

through land management efforts that protected the place where you stand,

through wildlife management programs that insure wildlife harvest is balanced with wildlife production, and

through those people who taught you to hunt and hunt safely.

The animal lying at your feet or resting in your hand contains all of these things. If any one of them were missing, or were to disappear, you would be standing alone and both your heart and your hand might be empty.

This animal that is now yours is the product of centuries of natural evolution. It is also the product of the more recent evolution of hunting and wildlife management in this country. In this way it represents:

the exuberance of former President Theodore Roosevelt who campaigned for the preservation of wildlife,
the boundless energy of forester Bob Marshall, who argued for preserving the wilderness,
the thought of biologist Aldo Leopold, father of wildlife management, who articulated a beautiful hunting philosophy, and
above all else, the work of generations of hunters who would not let these animals and the places they need be destroyed.

There is a lot to think about and be thankful for. It is well to think of these things when you anticipate hunting, now and then when you are hunting, and always when you claim an animal that is, in so many ways, a precious gift. It is a gift that comes to you from ancestral hunters in the caves of our origins, from native hunters of all lands, from those who won our independence from kings, from our nation's first conservationists, and from all those who work to protect wild places and the wildlife that lives there. Most of all, it is a gift that comes from the land. Appreciate it.

Copyright and permission from:
Posewitz, Jim. Beyond Fair Chase
Falcon Publishing Co., Inc. In Cooperation with Orion - The Hunter's Institute.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission from the publisher.

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