Killing Tradition

Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies

Simon J. Bronner

• Editorial: The University Press of Kentucky
• Año: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780813138602
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Folklore & Mythology

Across the country and around the world, people avidly engage in the cultural practice of hunting. Children are taken on rite-of-passage hunting trips, where relationships are cemented and legacies are passed on from one generation to another. Meals are prepared from hunted game, often consisting of regionally specific dishes that reflect a community's heritage and character. Deer antlers and bear skins are hung on living room walls, decorations and relics of a hunter's most impressive kills. Only 5 percent of Americans are hunters, but that group has a substantial presence in the cultural consciousness. Hunting has spurred controversy in recent years, inciting protest from animal rights activists and lobbying from anti-cruelty demonstrators who denounce the custom. But hunters have responded to such criticisms and the resulting legislative censures with a significant argument in their defense—the claim that their practices are inextricably connected to a cultural tradition. Further, they counter that they, as representatives of the rural lifestyle, pioneer heritage, and traditional American values, are the ones being victimized. Simon J. Bronner investigates this debate in Killing Tradition: Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies. Through extensive research and fieldwork, Bronner takes on the many questions raised by this problematic subject: Does hunting promote violence toward humans as well as animals? Is it an outdated activity, unnecessary in modern times? Is the heritage of hunting worth preserving? Killing Tradition looks at three case studies that are at the heart of today's hunting debate. Bronner first examines the allegedly barbaric rituals that take place at deer camps every late November in rural America. He then analyzes the annual Labor Day pigeon shoot of Hegins, Pennsylvania, which brings animal rights protests to a fever pitch. Noting that these aren't simply American concerns (and that the animal rights movement in America is linked to British animal welfare protests), Bronner examines the rancor surrounding the passage of Great Britain's Hunting Act of 2004—the most comprehensive and divisive anti-hunting legislation ever enacted. The practice of hunting is sure to remain controversial, as it continues to be touted and defended by its supporters and condemned and opposed by its detractors. With Killing Tradition, Bronner reflects on the social, psychological, and anthropological issues of the debate, reevaluating notions of violence, cruelty, abuse, and tradition as they have been constructed and contested in the twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 1

Ritual and Controversy
at Deer Camp

Many places in America are both venerated and vilified as hunting havens—Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri among them. They rise to the top of national surveys recording the number of hunters licensed. In terms of the percentage of total population participating in hunting, other places with hardy backcountry reputations figure prominently in the picture of hunting in America. In the Wild West badlands of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, for instance, between 15 and 19 percent of the residents hunt. Arkansas, Maine, and West Virginia claim 14 percent—a sharp contrast to the urbanized locales of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, where only 1 percent hunt. In short, hunters are located in every state but are culturally concentrated in several regions that conjure the image of a frontier rich in flora and fauna. From the Rockies to the Appalachians, if publicity is to be believed, going out hunting liberates folks from their routines and lets them get back to nature; it is hailed or cursed as a vitalizing force in modern society, particularly for men. It is associated with an untethered spirit of ruggedness, a hardy mettle required for venturing into the wilderness.

Beyond the statistics are places where hunting as the pursuit of game is etched into the notion of national heritage. Kentucky and Tennessee do not have the largest numbers of hunters, but their backwoods figure in the popular imagination as home to frontier bear-shooters and pathbreakers. These states have promoted the heroic legendry of the likes of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett as hunter-frontiersmen in historic sites and literature. The names of Boone and Crockett epitomize a hunter-frontiersman spirit that supposedly is basic to a founding American character, as evidenced by the reverence given to the Boone and Crockett Club formed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887. Alarmed by the accelerating pace of mass industrialization, Roosevelt and others such as George Bird Grinnell, folklorist and editor of Forest and Stream magazine, worried that America’s wild hunting grounds were endangered along with the country’s pioneer culture. The conservationist organization is known today for maintaining big-game records, and as its Web site declares, it works on the one hand at “preserving our hunting heritage” and on the other at combating the threat “that someday we might lose our hunting privileges and our wildlife populations for future generations.”

Pennsylvania shares in this pioneer boosterism by drawing tourists to the rough-hewn Daniel Boone Homestead near Reading. The story it tells portrays Boone as a trailblazer, and modern-day visitors can appreciate the life of eighteenth-century pioneers by walking through the site’s sylvan environment. One can go fishing in Daniel Boone Lake and see demonstrations of the Pennsylvania or Kentucky hunting rifles that distinguished the American frontiersmen and supposedly tamed the wilderness. In the modern age, Pennsylvania can also boast that it issues more hunting and fishing licenses than any other state in the nation. It has been home since 2003 to Cabela’s in Hamburg, the largest outdoor goods and hunting supply store in the country, with over a quarter million square feet of space. In popular culture, the forested landscape of Pennsylvania was noticeable as the backdrop for The Deer Hunter (1978), which won the Academy Award for best picture. At the same time, Pennsylvania is depicted in song and story as a symbol of mass industrialization—its rise and fall—from the steel mills of Pittsburgh to the anthracite coalfields south of Scranton. It thus raises sometimes conflicting images of American resources and their claim on national heritage.

If it is a prominent hunting haven, Pennsylvania also commands attention in any study of human-animal relations because it is tucked among headquarters for the largest animal protection organizations in the world: the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in New York City, the Fund for Animals in neighboring Maryland, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in Virginia. The Fund for Animals has a lobbyist devoted to animal rights issues in Pennsylvania, countered time and again by representatives of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs (PFSC), who announce, via the organization’s Web site, that they work to ensure that hunters’ “rights and interests are protected.”

Thus Pennsylvania has emerged as a major battleground over the value of America’s hunting heritage. “Deer camp” is a central cultural symbol that different sides hold up as the best and worst impulses in humans. For sportsmen, it is a time-honored tradition involving the idyllic commune with nature and family bonding. Away from machine civilization, according to this view, one can truly feel alive in the great outdoors and relate to the founding narratives of the country in the frontier experience. For animal rights organizations, camp-based hunting, raising images of a macho military campaign, is one of society’s root evils. It is a scourge that nurtures killing and violence. Though they despise recreational hunting nationwide, their sights are symbolically set on Pennsylvania as the head and heart of American hunting culture. If the honor of tradition can be subverted there, the thinking goes, then anything is possible. With more than a million hunters out in force during buck season, though, they have their work cut out for them.

The opening of buck season is predictable in Pennsylvania. It arrives on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and just in case one forgets, school closings and splashy front-page coverage in newspapers serve as reminders. Its occurrence after the ritual celebration of nature’s bounty, America’s abundance, pioneer heritage, patriarchal family, and a good amount of meat-eating is not lost on reporters, merchants, or hunters (Donnelly 1999; Schneck 2001a). More hunting licenses are issued for this “antlered” deer season than for any other, and stores that issue licenses fill the major dailies with full-page advertisements. Following a festive family feast, then, and buoyed by ample commercial and social encouragement to ritually return to the woods for hunting, many men are especially inclined to extend the social spirit of the season at what they affectionately call deer camp.

Camp may be a cabin one owns and invites friends or family to share, a rental unit, or an organizationally held structure for which one pays dues for maintenance (Carpenter 1999; Maas 1999; Edwards 1985; Lefes 1953, 55–57). Camp is the common destination, because going hunting usually involves taking a “hunting trip” (defined by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as venturing at least twenty-five miles from one’s residence) rather than hunting at home (Center 1998, 8). In the wooded locations known for holding deer in the north-central part of the state, communities of camps form, with supporting institutions of taverns and stores, even though the camps are used only a few weeks out of the year. The traditional camp is not comparable to a second home, because more than likely it lacks the modern conveniences of indoor plumbing and electricity. Heat is probably supplied by a stove or fireplace, light and cooking with propane gas. The camp name implies a remote location, probably in Pennsylvania’s wooded highlands in the central and western parts of the state. It also suggests a shared living situation, probably with all the residents being men, who assuredly lack for privacy during the experience. Hunting lore gives homage to camp with tales of embarrassing moments: wandering to the outhouse in the snow and getting caught with one’s pants down, or the noises emanating from sleeping buddies at night in a structure without interior walls.

Storytelling at Camp Hunter, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Simon Bronner)

By the Fish and Wildlife Service’s count, 92 percent of all hunters in the state are men (U.S. Department 2003). Although the large majority of hunters in Pennsylvania camps are state residents (86 percent), these sites attract hunters from throughout the United States. The result is that Pennsylvania usually leads the nation in the number of deer licenses issued and the number of days hunting (U.S. Department 1993, 53; Steele 1998). In fact, Pennsylvania is one of the few states where the number of people participating in hunting actually increased between 1996 and 2001 (U.S. Department 1998, 2003), although there is general concern about the decline in numbers in both the state and the nation since then—reportedly around 4 percent between 2001 and 2006. Yet this decline in hunting activity has not necessarily meant disapproval. One scientific survey by Responsive Management Inc. in 2007 reported that 78 percent of Americans support hunting as an outdoor activity, up from 73 percent in 1995. Eighty percent of respondents indicated that “hunting has a legitimate place in modern society.” Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who say they disapprove of hunting declined from 22 percent in 1995 to 16 percent in 2007 (Moyer 2007). What is going on?

At the third annual Governor’s Hunting Heritage conference held in Hershey, Pennsylvania, as the new millennium dawned, the need to create a positive image for hunting weighed heavily on the minds of attendees. They freely shared anecdotes about the competition for potential youthful hunters from the entertainment world and organized sports. They worried that older hunters were not handing down their traditions to youth. Some believed that the reconstitution of hunting as the original “extreme sport” (or X-sport) would tap into the teenage rage for the intense dirt, danger, and sweat of motocross and BMX. Others argued for hunting’s modern role as a form of environmentalism to increase public support, if not increase the ranks of hunters. Hunting could also be presented as socially conscious, with programs to donate venison to food banks and encourage and empower women to become involved. At the same time, the refrain from animal rights group could be heard: the decline of hunting was a natural evolution that needed to be accelerated. There was little difference from the rhetoric of cruelty and barbarism pronounced by Henry Salt at the beginning of the last century: “In a civilised community, where the services of the hunter are no longer required, blood-sports are simply an anachronism, a relic of savagery which time will gradually remove; and the appeal against them is not to the interested parties whose practices are arraigned—not to the belated Nimrods who find a pleasure in killing—but to that force of public opinion which put down bear-baiting, and which will in like manner put down the kindred sports (for all these barbarities are essentially akin) which are defended by similar sophistries” (Salt 1915, vii).

Hunters as a group constitute about 5 percent of the American population, but many more people are involved in a public debate about their place in society. The only other area to show growth in the number of hunters is the West–South-central region (U.S. Department 1993, table B-2). The middle Atlantic region has held steady at around 6 percent of the total population since the Fish and Wildlife Service began its national surveys in 1955. The height of participation in the middle Atlantic region was 1975, when 6.9 percent of the population hunted. Nationally, participation in hunting diminished from a high of 11.2 percent in 1960 to 5 percent in 2006. Involvement in hunting nationally also peaked in 1975, when more than 17 million residents over the age of twelve participated (U.S. Department 1993, table B-2). The Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that in 2001, the number of hunters in the United States over the age of sixteen was 13 million. In Pennsylvania, the number of deer killed is rising, even if the number of hunters is steady or declining. In 2003, hunters killed—or “took,” using the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s terminology—142,270 antlered deer. The year before, the harvest set an all-time record for the state at more than half a million deer, and records were set in the two previous years as well.

One factor in the perception of hunting is its integration into the American holiday season. By the time Thanksgiving is over in Pennsylvania, preparations are already being made for the big hunt on the first day of buck season. Many camps welcome their members on Friday or Saturday with a ceremonial dinner—and a hardy dinner it is, typically consisting of fat venison or beef steaks and oversized baked potatoes, washed down with generous amounts of beer. A highlight of the evening is joining in narratives of hunting exploits and comical misadventures of the past year, as well as those from previous seasons that are repeated year after year. Much as the men in these camps celebrate this continuity from one generation to the next, there is a growing awareness of change. Even though hunting remains a popular activity in Pennsylvania involving more than a million participants, the belief is pervasive that fewer young people are involved in hunting now than were a generation ago.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission reports that the number of junior license buyers (ages twelve to fifteen) dramatically declined 40 percent from 1976 through 1999 (Kittrell 2003, A1; Fegely 1999, 164). As a result of the introduction of a combination license for young hunters and organized efforts to promote hunting among youth, the number of licenses rose by 5.5 percent from the 1999–2000 to the 2002–2003 season, but the total of 103,606 was still well below the levels of the mid-1970s. Field and Stream conducted a national hunting survey in 2003 and found that 19 percent of hunters have children aged eighteen or younger who do not hunt, and a whopping 58 percent do not have children in that age range; only 22 percent reported having children who go hunting. These figures suggest a decline in the vertical transmission of hunting to the younger generation or an aging hunter population (Field and Stream 2004). My main point, from the perspective of folk belief, is that hunters have the perception that fewer young people are interested in hunting and that commercial culture is to blame. The front-page headline of central Pennsylvania’s major daily on the opening day of antlered deer season indicates this attitude: “Combo Permit Seems to Limit Lure of Malls, Video Games” (Kittrell 2003).¹

The perception by senior hunters that youths—enervated by mass culture and its affinity for animal rights sensitivity—are not engaged with hunting has significance beyond the future vitality of hunting. For most of these men, hunting is associated with a coming-of-age experience and the patrilineal transmission of tradition. Indeed, most hunters report learning how to hunt from their fathers; others learned from friends in their own age group (Jackson and Norton 1987, 42). The Fish and Wildlife Service reports that 42 percent of all hunters, representing the largest figure in the survey, began hunting when they were twelve to fifteen years old, and another 28 percent started between six and eleven (U.S. Department 1993, 95; see also Herman 2001a).² At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the average age of hunters obtaining licenses was forty-two, compared with thirty-five in 1970 (Kittrell 2003).

The disruption of its transmission to youth is not the only perceived threat to hunting’s future popularity. Often reported as the primary concern is the shrinking wildlife habitat, often blamed on urban sprawl and commercial development (Field and Stream 2004). Hunters are also acutely aware of threats to their practice from the growing animal rights movement, which would like to ban hunting altogether (Muth and Jamison 2000). They additionally feel pressure from antigun lobbies that want to limit firearms circulating in society, especially for recreation (Field and Stream 2004). When hunters were asked by Field and Stream magazine whether they had been confronted with antihunting sentiments directly, 56 percent replied that they had. Even if these anti-hunting movements did not exist, older hunters would still voice the folk belief that youth today are “soft” or “spoiled,” unwilling to face the often harsh, manliness-testing conditions of hunting, and distracted from the family tradition of hunting by mass media or institutional, especially school-related, activities. It is common to hear that hunting demands an intensive commitment that many contemporary adolescents are not willing to make. Although the role of hunter is not a primary identity for most of these men, during the time spent in camp, that identity is centralized by the total immersion in the hunting life.

I vividly recall one conversation after Friday night dinner at the appropriately named Camp Hunter in central Pennsylvania.³ It began with one of the members asking another, “Where’s your son?” He replied, “Watching TV” and then added under his breath, “that lazy ass.” “Too rough out here for him?” someone followed. “Oh, he likes his comfort,” the father of the boy remarked, and another hunter teased him that his son would rather be with his girlfriend than with his father. Much as hunting is categorized as sport or recreation, the implication was that doing it right involves sacrifice. Socially, maybe teen boys do not appreciate family ties or the company of men, they sighed. The men were convinced they knew why young people do not hunt: they are not up to it. And they conveyed a sense of wonder that youth even have a choice. In their raising, going to camp was an obligation, a calling repeated after every Thanksgiving, sure as the turkey on the table. I interjected a question they hear more often now than in their younger days: “So why do you hunt?” A cascade of stock answers flowed: connecting with nature and the wild, the thrill of the hunt, getting away from everyday routine (and their wives). They knew it was not about providing food anymore, and one of the more vocal members got to the “heart of the matter”: “When we were younger, we looked forward to the kill, the big shot, but I tell you now it’s about the rituals and the traditions of camp; it’s about being with these guys. And lately, we’ve been more into our rituals and traditions because they’ve been more important to us.” Pointing to a board behind him displaying cut shirttails from the 1950s to the present, framed by a buck’s head on top and photographs of the group gathered at deer camp, he said, “This is why we hunt,” and the other men nodded their assent.

What did that mean, exactly? What was the role of camp in all this? Why were rituals and traditions more important to them now? What was the significance of the cut shirttails displayed on the wall? What were the rituals and traditions that encapsulated the experience for them—as men, as sportsmen, as fathers, as Pennsylvanians? And as fathers, did they feel that they had to compete with their sons’ girlfriends for their sons’ affections, or did they feel that the competition was between them and their sons coming into manhood? Overarching these questions is the interpretation of the cultural experience of hunting. It is significant matter, I contend, because of the perspective it gives on all-male groups and the way human-animal relations, particularly in ritual combat, provide symbolic expressions of social and psychological processes, including the reaffirmation of manliness. In the pro- and anti-hunting debates, the redefinition of manliness for modern life is often at issue, with hunters striving to show they are not the brutish demons that popular culture and animal rights organizations have portrayed. They want to appear sensitive to the natural environment, family men spending quality time with their sons, proud of America’s heritage steeped in hunting pioneers. Yet the consistency of these images with rituals bordering on hazing that mark camp often have to be explained to a public influenced by images of hunting as a barbaric behavior promoted by animal rights organizations—and Hollywood movies. For many Americans, the hunter cannot live down the stigma of stalking innocent Bambi, even if in days of yore he was Little Red Riding Hood’s rescuer.

When hunters depart for camp, they initiate a move out of the domestic environment into the wild. Along with this border crossing comes a behavioral expectation, social integration, and cultural scene set apart from everyday modern life. The move therefore should draw out a discussion of its function as an escape from and reflection of modern society. One notable distinction is the “high-context” communication of deer camp, where participants develop close connections over many years and many aspects of cultural behavior are unstated because members know what to do (...