I used to teach Biology in an earlier life. All life forms depend on some other life form loosing its life for it's own survival. There is no getting around that. I could go to the store and get my meat but hunting with a bow makes if more real, personal and honest. When my wife kills an animal she almost always cries afterward. She is a nurturer by nature so killing is alien to her but she recognizes and accepts the hypocrisy of those who eat meat and look down on hunters. The feelings we all feel are part of being human, the urge to kill and the sorrow of having taken a life that often follows. We can choose to kill our own meat or we can have someone do it for us. There is no getting around the fact that we are all part of the circle of life and in order for us/me to survive something else must die for our/my own survival.
The other side of the coin is remembering how an animal will die if it dies a "natural" death. Hit by a car, starving to death in a harsh winter, being killed by another predator, becoming sick and being unable to fend for itself, getting old, loosing one's teeth and not being able to forage, feed or whatever. Nature's way of killing is not always kind and not always swift. Death by any well placed arrow is extremely less cruel than what nature has in store for them and even much more humane than what the meat industry has in store for the poor animal's remains we see in the market.
MY point is that the way we have to survive was set up that way by our Creator.....life comes from death.....or, conversely ...from death comes life. In our society and culture we have a choice as to whether we want to be directly involved in our own survival by farming, gardening or hunting ourselves, or by letting someone else do the "dirty work" of the killing, butchering, etc., for us.
This Thanksgiving, Laura and I will celebrate and give thanks that day by cooking and eating the first wild turkey I have killled with my bow. The meal will have much more personal sentiments involved than if we went out to eat or if we bought a Butterball. We know the meat will be organic, we know how hard it was to killl (took more years than I care to think about) and the bird actually performed its ultimate role as a prey species and mine as a predator.
There are always mixed feelings when we take an animal, but gratitude trumps them all.
Topic: Some are harder on the soul (Read 1287 times)
