The events of last night—Sunday night—have left me disturbed. I watched a killer take innocent lives and let him walk away. Then I killed with no intention of eating. It was an exercise in ethics. But I am still unsettled.

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Yesterday, as I was finishing the last chores at last light, I heard the coyote. He was howling and must have been less than one hundred yards from my donkey and less than two hundred yards from my goats. Then a second coyote howled. And then a third. They were close.

I ran inside, throwing my work clothes off in a trail through the house, and I went upstairs to grab some dark hunting garb. On my way out, I grabbed a rifle, four predator calls, and some cover scent (forgetting a flashlight), and I dashed (or at least hurried) through the door. I headed into the woods in the hopes of seeing a coyote… and killing it.

Thirty minutes into my hunt the only animal I had seen in the dark through my low-end night vision scope was a young rabbit which had been dining on the oat patch that I had planted in a wide, well-kept trail. Eventually, she hopped into the woods. In ten minutes, I turned back to the patch to see a bobcat sitting thirty yards from me. Suddenly it rose, stretched out in point, and then leaped into the brush. The rabbit burst out of the cover and I admit that I gave a mental sigh of relief. Then I heard the screams of the baby rabbits. In a moment, the bobcat emerged with two of the young. It let one crawl several yards away, watching it with one eye, while it played with the other. Eventually, the wild cat began to tear at the small rabbit and devour it. Having consumed the one, the cat turned to the other baby which had ceased crawling; the feline ate it. The cat showed no remorse. It showed no mercy. Occasionally it glanced up at me as if to see if I was going to interrupt.

All the while, the mother rabbit sat less than fifteen yards away. Watching.

Having looked up at me yet again, the cat returned to the thicket. Within five minutes I heard the screams of another baby rabbit as it tried to escape—its screams moving through the woods. Then there was silence. When the young one had begun to scream, the mother rabbit appeared to reflexively react, running down the trail towards the nest. Then it stopped on the edge. After a moment, it ran back several yards and the cat reappeared and sauntered across the oats into the other side of the cut.

All the while the mother sat watching. It remained there until I left my perch.

The entire event had taken close to twenty-five minutes and I had my crosshairs on the cat for at least fifteen of those moments as it slowly killed and dined. I had come to kill coyotes which in the past had attacked one of my dogs, leaving the rear of her body lacerated with holes from their teeth and sending us speeding thirty-five miles to the nearest vet as I cradled her bloody body in the back seat. Coyotes kill fawns and livestock. I came to kill coyotes not bobcats. If it had appeared, I also would have killed one of the rare big boars that eat our corn and deer feed and root around in our fields and trails. Yet, I had decided and declared to my wife last fall that I did not intend to kill bobcats this year. I committed to letting the predators thrive.

I have watched bobcats for years and I think that they are beautiful and fascinating. I have taken pictures and videos of them at scratching posts and cleaning themselves, one leg straight up in the air just like the cats in my home. I have also hunted them and shot them, one year wiping out the resident population. It took three years before I began to see cats again. But I think rabbits are beautiful. I like to hunt rabbits and I like to eat them in stew and gumbo. I don’t eat bobcats. The bobcat was killing the animals that I valued and it was killing the helpless. I had to strangle the desire to kill it. It is hard to explain how much I wanted to pull the trigger. If I had fired, I might have saved one of the babies—or even dozens of baby rabbits. It would have been so easy and so legal and so …

Within the next hour, obese raccoons arrived at one of the feeders that we maintain year-round for the songbirds, doves, and deer. Nightly, the raccoons climb our feeders, spinning the plates with remarkable dexterity to dispense corn and feed to their fellows below. Sometimes they dismantle the feeder units. Many nights you can hear them screaming as they fight each other in the woods. You can find their scat everywhere. While fascinating to watch with their human-like behavior, they can be a nuisance. Raccoons do eat bird eggs, baby birds, and crayfish. Yet, I have never seen a raccoon dine on baby rabbits. We have poured years of energy, labor, and money into rigorously managing our ‘ranchette’ so as to encourage the propagation of the small herd of whitetail deer that are hunted by the locals and to provide excellent habitat for waterfowl, mourning doves, and—yes—rabbits.

Last night I killed three raccoons. I let the killer go free. I did it all intentionally. Before I scrambled out the door, I had drawn a line. I did not kill the little lion. I held the line. I did it all legally. I did it intentionally. I hope that I did it ethically.

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From my personal experience, the greatest challenge to the discussion of hunting ethics is that hunters don’t want to discuss hunting ethics. Sport hunters by their very nature of being liminal characters resist limitations on their freedom, a perspective that may be compounded by the gender expectations of masculinity (especially in North America). The position of hunters and their willingness to engage in candid debates are further complicated by the real attacks (not just perceived) on hunting and hunters by popular media as well as well-meaning (or just disgruntled) critics. That is not to say that hunters are not active in propagating cultural ethics through traditions or cultural shaming—they just don’t like to have ethics and rules shoved on them or to impose them on others.

I have found that sport hunters are most willing to evaluate hunting ethics and related policy when they feel that the first element [i.e., passion for a satisfying or rewarding experience (or bundle of experiences) that might be repeated] is threatened. The increasing number of states that have followed Pennsylvania’s controversial antler restrictions hints at the acceptance by resident sport hunters (not just state managers) of the limitation on their freedoms and the amendment of their definition of satisfaction for that which is now deemed a greater good—more older deer and increased population of bucks with larger racks. Yet, I imagine that antler restrictions in most states have not yielded more deer to be killed legally. To date, I have not found evidence that antler restrictions have encouraged the growth of the number of hunters. On contrary, some groups contend, “Antler point restrictions dramatically reduce hunter participation, harvest success, and total harvest,” redefine ‘success,’ and make both legal deer and success elusive for veterans and initiates alike. The question, of course, remains as to the actual number of hunters who follow the policy/law when enforcement is occasional and almost exclusively self-imposed. (How many ducks are killed over the limit on those rare days when they seem to rain down on the decoys? More than the limit?) How are hunting ethics expressed in cultural groups which are responsible for shaping the ethos for generations when the sport’s appeal to subsequent generations decreases because of regulation? If you will, how do those cultural groups define and enforce the limitations of ethical behavior in the pursuit of perpetuating positive experiences for themselves and potential recruits (two goods) while expressing their valuation of nature and of society (two other perceived goods)? For example, how many male deer in the state of Texas are killed (especially by new hunters) with racks that have an interior spread less than thirteen inches when check-ins are not required?

The answer to this particular question is unknown but there are hints. In the early 1940s, Aldo Leopold argued that “[v]oluntary adherence to an ethical code elevates the self-respect of the sportsman, but it should not be forgotten that voluntary disregard of the code degenerates and depraves him.” He then went on to maintain that at that time “Wisconsin deer-hunters, in their pursuit of a legal buck, kill and abandon in the woods at least one doe, fawn, or spike buck for every two legal bucks taken out” (“Wildlife in American Culture,” A Sand County Almanac, OUP, 178-179). Yet, in a recent interview Kyle Melton, a wildlife biologist for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, maintained that the modern restrictions in Texas are “achieving what we want to achieve,” namely older bucks, not necessarily bucks with larger racks. The data collected by biologists across the Lone Star State have reinforced the conclusion that there is a “higher proportion of the population [of hunters] that are self-governed and live by the regulations” than there are those who are behaving outside the lines—even though they might not be caught or punished. This conclusion is important especially as hunting media and retailers have increasing pushed for processing game meat at home as a responsible part of the taking of animal life and as an enriching exercise in providing food for the table. Media juggernauts like Steve Rinella’s MeatEater not only issue their own cookbooks but employ full-time writers to publish regular online recipes and speak to crowds across the United States, and books espousing home processing and cooking of wild game like Tovar Cerulli’s The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian’s Hunt for Sustenance (2013) and Jesse Griffiths’ Afield: A Chef’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish (2012) continue to sell. Based on the increase in older deer being observed, Melton contended, “The hiding of undersized deer is not as bad as fear-mongers might believe.” So, it appears that many Texas hunters are—in general—behaving both legally and ethically according to a public standard.

The oft-quoted (but rarely with a source citation) guidance from Aldo Leopold that appears in almost every discussion (or state’s wildlife management website) concerned with hunting ethics gives us some direction: “Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching—even when doing the wrong thing is legal.” For my part, I could not find this quote in a published text. Leopold did write, “A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.” (“Wildlife in American Culture,” A Sand County Almanac, OUP, 178)

Yet, most institutions do not acknowledge that breaking the law might be acceptable within one’s own ethical framework. Might not one desire to provide quality protein for one’s family (a good) and due to the limitations of time, resources, or resource access only have opportunity to take a buck that does not meet antler requirements? The ethical dilemma comes down to a kind of proportionality. If the requirements do not yield more quadruped protein (as young bucks mate as often as older bucks) but only more aesthetically desirous deer, then might not a person be compelled to follow the personally deemed higher need (humanely acquiring quality food with a permit and without wastefulness) and ignore the restrictions passed by an unelected committee or commission? Most state institutions, as does the Arizona Game and Fish Department, argue that there is no room for such an ethical conclusion: “Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing…’. This statement has proven over time to be descriptive of the vast majority of sportsmen-conservationists. It is absolutely descriptive of those who report themselves for inadvertently violating a wildlife law.” (It should be noted that Roosevelt was probably not the best source for a quotation about killing animals whose numbers were threatened. Roosevelt expressed his own ideas about the “best thing” and knowingly killed animals which he knew to be dwindling in number.) The Arizona department assures sportsmen that hunters who take wildlife by breaking the law are “poachers” and not really “hunters” at all (this is a logical fallacy unless a “hunter” is first defined by his legal status dependent upon his relationship to the ever-changing edicts from the state and not by his actions in regards to prey) and that those who break the law will be penalized for reporting their own infractions and that the penalty would be even worse for not doing so. This approach only reinforces the idea that ethics are not personally formed but ethics descend from the state. At best, this view of ethics limits them only to the grey areas of action which are not demarcated by the state.

At the core of the debate is an assumption about human nature. In short, while management institutions frequently praise sportsmen and sportswomen for their commitment to conservation and maintaining wildlife numbers and (in theory) wildlife welfare, the assumption is that freedom expressed by hunting or fishing citizens for good ends (acquisition of nutritious food or other rewarding good) must be constrained by the decisions of ‘specialists’ because personal ethics are not sufficient or ignorance is so great that there would be for the state an undesired result in regards to the animal property it manages (e.g., loss of animal populations, loss of revenue due to diminished animal populations, loss of an aesthetic object in the form of wildlife, loss of objects of cultural value.) The history of the conservation movement of the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century reinforces this conclusion. Historian Daniel J. Herman wrote, “In accepting the challenge of saving game, hunters made themselves stewards of the American environment. Stewardship, indeed, had been implicit in sport hunting from its Jacksonian inception. In identifying Americanness with wild animals and wilderness, hunters had made themselves American Natives, men with a special appreciation for the continent’s fauna, geography, and sublime scenery. Demanding government aid to protect wilderness and wildlife was a way to reaffirm this identity and to save hunting as a rite (and right) of the democratic many “(Herman, Hunting and the Imagination, 278) . In short, Herman argued that to save wildlife and wilderness from Americans, American sportsmen had to surrender their freedom to an institution with coercive powers. Humans weren’t to be trusted to be free and ethical.

So why do we even talk about ethics when regulations and promised punishments for infractions abound? Well, as I have contended, I believe that hunters rarely talk about ethics. We mostly talk about regulations and legal behavior. We want to identify the legal line. Such conversations are characteristic of our society, but I do not believe that they are characteristic of a fecund culture, one that is adaptive and assertive. Representatives of hunting cultures increasingly are asserting why they hunt and this is a first step. But why does not necessarily explain how. I do believe that if hunting cultures which primarily are going to exist at the level of friendship and family are to continue for generations, they must formulate clear identities, and rituals and ethics must be part of those identities. One may argue that following the edicts of commissions is an ethical approach, but it appears to be a malnourished one that does not shape the imaginations and hearts of subsequent generations. The failure to formulate and communicate internal ethics through the process of articulating, discussing, and modeling our limits while simultaneously celebrating our freedom to make rewarding choices in the moment will leave future hunting with a groundless focus and fail in formulating those cultural ties that will hold hunting together for another generation.

What are your limits?

“[T]he ethics of sportsmanship is not a fixed code, but must be formulated and practiced by the individual, with no referee but the Almighty.” — Aldo Leopold, “Goose Music,” Round River (OUP), 172.