The Shepherd-Hunter: Why I Hunt (Though It Breaks My Heart)
ARTICLES/ESSAYS
The Shepherd-Hunter: Why I Hunt (Though It Breaks My Heart)
I hate cruelty. I’ve wept over a fallen deer — after a clean, instant kill. That grief matters. It means I haven’t gone numb.
So Why Do I Hunt?
Because I refuse the lie of outsourced violence. If I will eat meat, I won’t pretend innocence while hidden cruelty happens out of sight. I choose a harder classroom: skill, restraint, and gratitude — power calibrated by mercy.
Ancient Greece gave me the language. Andreia (courage), sōphrosynē (self-mastery), technē (craft). Ethical hunting lives at that intersection. It is not thrill-seeking; it is accountability. If I take life, I must do it lawfully, expertly, and with a heart that still breaks.
My moral compass has one bright eye. In Detroit, I adopted a two-pound rescue cat with one eye gouged out. I named her Athena — not for war but for wisdom. She tucks her head beneath my chin and purrs like a furnace. Athena reminds me what strength is for: to shield the small from the storm. The same ache I feel when she looks at me — when I look at a child in a famine photo — sits with me in the woods. If that sorrow ever fades, I’ll hang up the rifle.
We still live in a world of wolves and sheep. The answer isn’t to become a wolf. The answer is the shepherd — the protector who can do hard things without hardening his heart. That’s what ethical hunting trains when it’s done right. The hand that can take life must be the first to comfort, the first to give thanks, the first to lift.
I carry a simple code:
Purpose over pride — food, conservation, stewardship.
Law and season — licenses, tags, transparency.
Shot discipline — only high-probability shots; pass when the angle is wrong.
Humane outcome — train for instant drops; track relentlessly if not.
Zero waste — use the meat; share it freely.
Quiet gratitude — reverence without spectacle.
Net-positive stewardship — fund habitat, remove trash, mentor away from bravado.
Soft-heart check — if my sorrow fades, I stop.
Family consent — my spouse owes me nothing here.
Critics often say hunting is primitive. Primitive isn’t the insult; cruelty is. It’s easy to denounce the visible hunter while ignoring invisible assembly lines. Easy to mock “barbaric masculinity” and outsource our appetite to people paid to never meet our eyes. I won’t shame anyone’s choices; there are many paths to an honest life. But I want my hands clean in the only way that matters: by taking responsibility, not by hiding from it.
When the deer falls, I hold two truths at once. The conservative truth: tradition, duty, and the hard disciplines that keep chaos from swallowing the weak. The humane truth: compassion, limits, and the conviction that every use of power must be paid for with gratitude and care. These truths aren’t enemies; they are halves of the same moral heart.
After every hunt, I test myself: Did my power lift anything today? Did I feed a family, respect a creature, help a forest? Did I come home gentler? If not, I failed — even with a full freezer.
I hunt because I believe the oldest civic lesson is still true: we learn through suffering, and we must use our power to shield the small. When it’s time to stand in the breach, I want hands trained to be steady and a heart trained to be soft.
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” — Aeschylus (as quoted by Robert F. Kennedy)
“True manliness is humane… Its work is to protect those who cannot defend themselves; to stand between the tyrant and the slave.” — James Freeman Clarke
“Four things a man must learn to do… To think without confusion clearly; to love his fellow-man sincerely; to act from honest motives purely; to trust in God and Heaven securely.” — Henry van Dyke1
