On the Wild Edge: Hunting for a Natural Life

I sometimes feel like an anti-hunter who hunts.

I recently felt that way when I watched a popular celebrity hunter claim that “we hunters” brought wildlife back from the brink of extinction, and therefore it’s ours, and nonhunters have no right ruining everything with actions such as “bringing wolves back.” Another so-called hunting hero claims to hunt for meat while traveling the world and paying guides to help him kill more animals per-year than Disney's Gaston himself could consume. Both hunting "reality-show" hosts are spokesman, of sorts, for one of the better hunting-conservation organizations, which claims to be “the sportsmen’s voice” for hunters.

They don’t speak for me.

Neither do the more popular groups who claim wolves are annihilating elk herds; hunters are being “shut out” of our public lands because we can’t ride ATVs everywhere; we need to kill grizzlies, and there’s “anti-hunters” hiding behind every tree, out to stop our “God-given American heritage and way of life.” They tend to focus more on and defend hunting opportunity rather than conservation.

Despite bragging about a successful “North American Model of Wildlife Management,” with tenants against the commercialization of wildlife and in support of “sound, scientific” management, hunting has become tremendously commercialized and many hunters only support “scientific management” when the science supports their preconceived notions (such as slaughtering wolves to maintain artificially high populations of elk for hunters to kill).  Even the most conservation-minded hunting groups go with the flow to appease the masses – or, what the famed hunter-conservationist Aldo Leopold called “the lowest common denominator.”

Among the so-called “conservation organizations” that a giant sporting-goods chain boasts about giving money to is the National Rifle Association – apparently because they “conserve” our “right” to hunt with weapons designed for war, capable of killing, say, 20 kids and seven adults at an elementary school kids in less than five minutes; 49 people at a nightclub, or 58 at a concert?  

Although I’ve pursued, killed and eaten numerous elk and deer from the backcountry of Montana over the past 30-plus years, I belong on the Island of Misfit Hunters; I just don’t fit in.  

Aldo Leopold addressed such issues more than 50 years ago. One of his conclusions: “The sportsman has no leaders to tell him what is wrong. The sporting press no longer represents sport; it has turned billboard for the gadgeteer. Wildlife administrators are too busy producing something to shoot at to worry much about the cultural value of the shooting.

There are, however, leaders. They just don’t appeal to the corrupted culture of hunting – they don’t bring in the money like the hunting equipment and entertainment industry does.

When people new to hunting ask me for good learning material, I don’t send them to the Outdoor Channel or Outdoor Life. I suggest they read “A Sand Country Almanac” by Aldo Leopold; “Beyond Fair Chase: The Ethics and Traditions of Hunting,” by Jim Posewitz, and “A Hunter’s Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport,” by David Petersen – an anthology of writers who are leaders regarding the moral and ethical challenges of hunting.

After watching a film produced by Christopher Daley, called “On The Wild Edge: Hunting For a Natural Life,” I now also recommend it not only to new hunters, but all hunters; a “must watch” if ever there was one. I never thought I could enjoy a hunting video. I was wrong. Then again, calling “On the Wild Edge” a hunting video is like calling “A River Runs Through It” a fishing story. It may be true, but doesn’t quite to it justice, perhaps could even come across as an insult.

The film focuses on writer, philosopher and hunter David Petersen, “taking us along on the most difficult hunt of his life, revealing the intimate connection to the wild place and wild experiences that define him as a person and informs his strict code of ethics.” He, too, is a hunter critical of hunting. “I want the good part to prosper,” he says. “But I hate what our culture has done to that.” With people seeking easier, faster, more high-tech ways to find and kill animals, we lose the kind of hunting that “bonds us to this world,” he says.

During the 67-minute video, we see a lot more than David Petersen hunting. We hear elk bugling, yes, but we also see and hear ravens, jays, bears and watch a chipmunk attempt to rob him from his hunting pack – all seemingly unaware of his presence. In other words: We see and hear (and can almost smell) what hunters often see, hear and smell -- the wilds.  But we also get to hear Petersen's informed thoughts and philosophies on hunting. He says his “Zen-like” approach allows him to spy on the "intimate, relaxed side" to wildlife. “Hunting often has nothing to do with killing, and everything to do with an honest engagement with life.”

We also meet his friend Thomas, who he calls “Mr. T.” and Thomas’ father and grandfather, three generations of hunters, “who value meat and dignity over macho, and deeply respect elk and elk country.”

What we don't see or hear is just as telling: We don't watch an elk get shot and die, and we don't see or hear promotions for hunting gadgets, products and profit. This film is NOT sponsored by the NRA or the Sportsman Channel. It's a real hunting video.

Petersen is an articulate, thoughtful hunter whose carefully-chosen words reflect knowledge and wisdom that comes from living a life so close to the land. “Ethically-hunted wild game offers huge, moral and health-advantages over chemically-polluted, production-line meat products,” he says. “Wild meat is organic, local and, done right, cruelty-free -- a gift from nature that sustains a bond of reciprocity between thoughtful hunters, our food and the wild landscapes that nurture us all, predator and prey alike."

Petersen talks as passionately about his love for his wife, Carolyn, as he does for the land, which he makes clear is all interconnected. With cancer soon to take her away, he talks about how it “increasingly reminds me of life’s bittersweet fate -- Carolyn, the elk and me.” He hopes his ashes will someday be mixed with hers among the aspen groves he so loves, and the bones of elk he has killed, nurturing the lives that nurtured him. 

“It’s deeply personal,” he concludes. “Every aspect of this isn’t pretty. But it’s real, it’s natural, it’s the way life works. In the end, all thing pass. That’s the song of life.”  

Filmmaker Christopher Daley says his hope for the film is that it captures David and Carolyn Petersens’ “exemplary commitment to living honest, uncluttered lives not merely ‘close to nature,’ but as active players in and courageous defenders of wild nature.” 

To watch the documentary, click here: ON THE WILD EDGE.