The Hunt

I've been exploring internet dating services in the last year (look at me, a blogger and an internet dater). I haven't had much luck meeting anyone, but I am getting to know myself through the process, my likes and dislikes, what I can tolerate, what is a road to disaster. Yesterday I received a return "smile" from a woman who described one of her hobbies as hunting. Well, I only have one female friend who enjoys hunting. What do I think about that?

I am not a hunter, although I did have to kill and butcher one of my 4-H projects when I was a kid growing up in rural Pennsylvania. Snoopy and Red Baron were two white ducks that I raised from chickdom. They spent most of their days floating on our family pond when we weren't swimming in it. Somehow the butchering part of the 4-H project was underplayed. When we raised bees, we didn't bother about the dead bees surrounding the dripping honey. Dead-heading marigolds in my first garden didn't phase me. No creatures died in the process of sewing my first apron or baking my first apple pie. The rocks and minerals 4-H project, well I wasn't faced with ending a life in the collection of Fool's Gold either. And the bunny rabbit project wasn't on the books until the following year.

Living in the country, I wasn't a stranger to animal death. The "pet" squirrel in the shoe box didn't last a day. Blue robin eggs in the incubator never made it past the first few beak pecks through the shell, and there was always a Black Angus calf each year that didn't survive. I'm sure by the time Snoopy and Red Baron came on the scene I had lost at least one cat to a hysterectomy operation, several goldfish to the porcelain burial grounds, and my pet black mouse, Andy Williams, who died of a concussion from hitting his head too many times on the Time/Life Big Books I had covering his aquarium (in lieu of wire meshing, which for some reason we couldn't afford, at least that is how I remember it).

An animal becomes a pet when you name and care for it. I named and cared for Snoopy and Red Baron (sort-of, although I suspect my father did most of the work because I didn't like to get dirty). Perhaps that was my first mistake. Colonel MacFarland, the local farmer/rancher never named his Black Angus cows, despite their soft brown eyes and long lashes. They were raised to be beef for the table, like Snoopy and Red Baron were ultimately raised to be Thanksgiving dinner that year. Nobody raises a pet to be butchered, do they? There was obviously some miscommunication.

The process for preparing S&RB for Thanksgiving didn't initially involve a gun. My brother Rod and I (we were partners in this project) were supposed to capture the ducks and hold their heads on the cutting block and do the deed. Well, my parents realized Rod and I were not going to be able to accomplish this dirty deed, so they brought over a neighboring farmer with his gun. We were expected to watch though ~ life on the farm and all. He started with my duck, Snoopy, bringing the hatchet down clear and clean along the duck's neck. What shocked both Rod and me was that ducks don't need their heads to keep waddling about the yard and tripping into the stream that led to their swimming hole. I won't present the details, we've all read those children's farm stories, but suffice it to say, my horror stunned me motionless and sent my brother racing and screaming into the woods unable to witness the same cruel end to his pet duck. The neighbor farmer finally brought the inertia of my duck to an end with one shot from his rifle and I hated guns ever since.

So could I date a woman who hunts? I emailed her back and said I hate guns and can't imagine killing anything with skin (although I do eat meat, I won't buy a whole chicken or turkey or duck...somebody else has to prepare the meat). She emailed back that she hunts with a bow. So now what? Is that okay?

Growing up in rural PA, the first day of hunting season was a day off school. We couldn't play in the woods that first day and throughout the season we had to wear a lot of orange. Nobody in my family hunted and my mother was renowned among hunters who wandered mistakenly on to our property and were startled by her screeching angrily, hanging out the fourth floor farmhouse window. "Private property. Children playing here. Get out." She eventually had quite a reputation, "Stay away from the woman at Twin Spruce Hollow on North Buck Road." I think she was secretly proud of the eccentric rep. she'd built around the countryside.

We four kids had one close encounter with a gun when we were caught building hay bale forts in Col. MacFarland's barn. He actually threatened to shoot us, innocent (albeit smart mouthed) children who hadn't done anything but rearrange his hay.

I don't like guns, I am a pacifist, I won't even protest AGAINST war because the word 'against' holds an element of conflict. I march for peace instead. But bow and arrows? I took archery in PE class. I know the skill it takes, there's something elegant and more egalitarian about hunting with a bow. If this woman hunts only for her own food and not for the testosterone-filled pleasure of killing, then I could admire her for her self-sufficiency. Maybe she has an entire set of ethics surrounding the hunt that I could actually understand.

I emailed her back. I don't want to generalize or stereotype, and besides, I started the hunt by sending her the first "smile."