Every culture has them, those values that just don’t make
sense to outsiders. If you go to Green
Bay you will find that being a Packers fan is more of a way of life, than a
decision on which team to root for. In
Hawaii and Southern California you’ll find people skipping work, school, church
and family obligations to surf on the days when the waves are really big. In Montana, one cultural value we hold high
is hunting and in some cases it is culturally acceptable to skip all other
obligations for this most sacred pursuit.
Two years ago, when I shot an elk with my bow, my boss willingly filled
in for me so I could get the meat out of the mountains. When I wounded an elk in college, I missed 4
classes and one test the next day to look for him.
We live in a world where the economic differences between
work and hobbies are clearly lined out.
Hobbies are supposed to be fun and we don’t expect to receive economic
benefits from them. We don’t expect work
to be fun but do expect economic benefits for our work. Many Montanans hold hunting as a sacred way
of life and at times our cultural value for hunting can clash with those who don’t
have this value. They are unable to categorize
hunting as a hobby or an economically beneficial activity and this can cause
serious tension in the work place, in families and with friends.
In an effort to appeal to the general public, many of us try
to defend hunting from an economic perspective which is ridiculous. Meat is a tangible benefit to hunting and
some of us mistakenly think that the reason we hunt is for this economic
side-benefit. We say things like “I only
shoot cows and does cause I’m only in it for the meat”. Whether we say we hunt for the meat, the
horns or the exercise, if we are really honest we hunt for the experience of
doing the process ourselves. It isn’t
viable economically.
Think about the costs involved in hunting: weapon (bow, gun,
etc.), ammo (arrows or bullets), specialized clothing, knives and all kill
related products, tags and gas to and from the hunting area. Then there’s the cost of processing your
meat, which you can do yourself, but that requires equipment, materials and
time! Hunting costs a lot of time. If you got a job delivering pizzas and spent
the same amount of time working at this new job as you normally do in all
hunting related activities, you could probably buy organic bison meat for the
year and still be ahead on money.
On the flip side it isn’t really a hobby either, at least
for many Montanans. How many people
would call cutting up meat a hobby? How
many people would add “carrying out meat” as one of their interests on
facebook? These are both part of the
experience. If hunting were a hobby, we would
be able to cut out the parts we don’t enjoy without shame. If it were a hobby I wouldn’t feel obligated
to process my own meat and I wouldn’t feel a slight sense of pride for carrying
my meat out on my back rather than a horse or a 4-wheeler.
For Montanans, the idea of hunting for meat is sacred. We like the idea that we participated in
every part of the process of getting that animal out of the mountains into an
edible chunk of meat on our table. The
problem is that we sometimes forget that hunting is just a preference for a way
of living and it is not morally superior to any other lifestyle choice. We have to work out the consequences of that
choice with other priorities and people in our lives. We must keep their perspective in mind if we
want to avoid serious problems.
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