Last Fall, I was square dancing at Moosilauke. Everett had the music thumping, people were in high spirits and it was a good time. During one dance, I began talking with a woman from Dartmouth. We got to the subject of DOC trips, and I mentioned that I had led the fishing trip.
"The fishing trip?" she replied. "You take joy in stabbing fish in the mouth and then jerking them out of the water? That just seems cruel to me." Needless to say, the conversation died after that, but it brought to mind something that has bothered me a bit during my time in Hanover. It's the way that we view nature, and how it is to be enjoyed.
What confused me the most when I was first at Dartmouth was the way in which people were divided by the way they treated the outdoors. Generally, there were the DOCers who were referred to as "crunchy" by everyone else, and then there was everyone else, the people who called themselves "normal" while the DOCers might sometimes call them "yuppie investment bankers" or something of that sort.
There is, however, a way of approaching nature that is relatively uncommon here. It is possible to make consumptive use of the outdoors through fishing and hunting and still have a very good appreciation of nature. This viewpoint isn't always appreciated within the DOC. There is occasional grumbling about the existence of the Bait and Bullet Club within the DOC, because it is seen by some as contrary to what the DOC stands for. I would like to say that is not so.
In high school, my track coach liked to refer to himself as a conservationist. He was a member of Ducks Unlimited and firmly believed it was important to set aside wilderness for future generations. Yet, he was also an avid hunter and fisherman. "If it flies, it dies," he was fond of saying, backing this up by participating in every bird hunting season available. During cross country season, he gave us two weekends off: one for the opening of deer season, and the other for the opening of goose season.
Depending on your point of view, you could call him a hick, a killer or a hypocrite for his actions. That is if you don't see the whole picture. As a naturalist, my coach was incredible. He could identify waterfowl by the way they flapped their wings when they were so far off I could barely make them out. He knew where game animals would be concentrated at any time of year based on weather and the availability of food and water. He was as in touch with the wild as anyone could be. This is true of most good hunters and fishermen, for you must not only be able to identify an animal, you have to understand how it thinks.
As for being a killer, you have to look at the way in which people kill. He did kill for sport, as most hunters do. However, it is not a random dash through the woods shooting anything that twitches. Only legal game species and only in their legal amounts. This made his actions sustainable. Finally, and most importantly, anything killed was eaten. This meant the kill was not for nothing, that the hunter had respect for the animal taken.
Was my coach a hypocrite? I don't think so. There was method to his madness. If we don't preserve wilderness, there will be no animals left to hunt, no streams left to fish. Hunters and fishermen are conservationists, and in this respect, they put their money where their mouth is. They provide a billion dollar reason to preserve wilderness. The industry surrounding hunting and fishing generates billions of dollars each year and foots the bill for such state and federal entities as the Fish and Wildlife Service, which work to protect endangered species and ecosystems.
I will admit that hunting and fishing are interests that can border on addiction. I have fished nearly my entire life, but every time I have a fly on the water and see a fish rise, my heart leaps to my throat and my hands shake. It is a thrill, but it has a positive side. Hunting and fishing bring us closer to nature, allow us to understand what it means to kill and provide the economic incentive to preserve nature. So look kindly on the hicks, you I-bankers; praise those killers, crunchies, for without them both economy and environment would suffer.
