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[serene instrumental music playing]

[weatherman on radio] Today, south winds, 15 knots increasing to 25 knots.

Sea is nine feet.

Rain, tonight, south wind, 20 knots.

Sea is nine feet.

East winds, 25 knots. Sea is eight feet.

[Steve] I became a hunter for the same reason that most hunters do.

Because my father was a hunter.

It tends to move along like that, along a line of patrilineal descent.

My father hunted, and his father hunted.

My maternal grandfather hunted.

It was what we did. It's who we were.

And it's important to mention here that I was introduced to it

as an act of love for the natural world.

I know now that that sounds suspicious to some people.

This idea of hunting as a manifestation

of love for the land and its animals.

It might reasonably be asked, "Wouldn't it be the opposite?

Wouldn't it be an act of aggression?"

I'm open to discussing this with anyone who cares enough to share their thoughts.

Though I have no illusions.

There always be a rift between hunters and non-hunters.

[moderator] Questions?

Steven, don't you think these animals you've killed

want to live as much as you or I do?

In fact, isn't this just a rationalization for murdering innocent creatures,

to shoot innocent animals, animals that have beating hearts,

that run from you simply because they want to live?

They're not armed with copper bullets or lead bullets.

I hear... not really asking a question, you're making a point.

But I'm going to answer it like a question.

[Steve] I would say that if you look at the grand spectrum

of species on this planet,

you'll not find many that...

that don't prey on other kinds.

People say generally, behaviorally, and anatomically, modern humans

have been around for maybe 75,000 years.

On this continent alone, people hunted for 15,000 years,

notwithstanding the last couple hundred years.

So, to not hunt is a fairly new experiment, in a human sense.

To ask a wolf not to hunt anymore...

is an impossible question.

So, if someone comes to me and says that they don't want human hunting,

"We don't want to hunt." I'm kind of like, "Coming from what perspective?"

That life is sacred.

Yeah, I... I know that life is sacred.

I admire the deer.

But I admire the idea of deer more than the individual deer.

And I can assure you that I know more about deer, than you ever will.

And I've learned that through hunting for them,

and I probably care about them in a way that's deeper

than something you were going to experience

from having a removed perspective on it.

[Steve] The rift between hunters and non-hunters,

it's been around since biblical times.

My hope for the future would be that people who don't hunt...

would come to recognize hunting as a positive force.

What tricks people up, in recognizing that,

is the contradiction that I return to all the time.

You love animals, and you kill them.

[Steve] The South African writer, Laurens van der Post,

wrote that the San hunters of the Kalahari believed

that the stars were great hunters.

And when the stars twinkled, they were sharing hunting stories.

Whether he was correct

in his interpretation of their beliefs is not clear.

But reading that forced me to consider this idea

that there are as many hunting stories out there

as there are stars in the sky.

Mine, being just one of them,

that happened to begin when I was very young.

Sometimes I do wonder about having been introduced to hunting

much later in life and under different circumstances...

just to see if I would think of it differently.

Because I do admit that I inherited much of my perspective.

I reassess it constantly,

but the core beliefs were right there, waiting for me at birth.

My dad hunted deer from up in the trees with his bow.

And my two brothers and I spent a lot of time with him,

perched up on these portable platforms that we call "tree stands."

Watching anxiously for a deer to come and pass beneath us.

It was like we were some family of cougars,

waiting in ambush.

When you turn 12, you were sent off to sit in your own tree.

And I remember vividly the fear of the dark

when it fell on the woods.

And then, the relief of seeing my brother's flashlight

coming through the trees to find me.

Hunting was a glue that held our family together.

And I grew up into a guy who writes about hunting,

and talks about hunting as an occupation.

My brothers became professional biologists and ecologists.

Inspired by hunting to better understand the mechanisms,

the interconnected cogs and wheels of the natural world.

There's just not much thought in it, early on.

It was just kind of a foregone conclusion that,

that was the sort of thing you would do with Dad,

uh, when you had free time.

We grew up hunting and...

It was just, part of our lifestyle and we always ate off the land and...

[Danny] If I was in a position where I had to defend myself to an anti-hunter,

the first thing that I would do is make it clear that this is about food.

That I, when I go on a hunting trip, I'm going out there to bring home

every usable scrap of meat on that animal,

cut it up and get it in my freezer, and spend the next year eating it.

And, you know, I... I think that's one commonly held misconception,

is that, uh, hunters are out there

to satisfy some bloodlust that has nothing to do with food.

The modern American hunter is a lot of different things.

I don't think you can make a composite

and say this is the average or the...

the, uh... The norm.

Uh, I think you're just doomed to failure.

I was born in Buffalo, New York, but my dad is from Chicago.

He was an affirmed city boy.

As I matured as a hunter,

I was also maturing professionally as a chef.

I served all my time in the US military in the Navy SEAL teams.

I work for a software development company.

I currently serve in the United States Senate, uh...

on behalf of the residents of New Mexico.

I was born and raised predominantly in Adairville, Kentucky,

uh, next to the Cumberland River.

I guess it's not the meat, really.

I mean, if cabbages had legs and walked around,

I'd probably hunt them too.

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be,

you know, the guy who'd wander around in the woods,

you know, hunting and fishing and trapping.

I had my father up until age seven.

He passed away.

I then was raised by my uncles.

A lot of my uncles were hunters, so, they taught me quite a bit about it.

Everybody has their own thing,

you like to do crochet and paint your house every day,

I like to go hunting.

The average American walking the street

does not think highly of hunters and the way that they're characterized.

This kind of macho image of glorifying violence.

Hunters in general have a PR problem.

A Tampa area man has some explaining to do

after he says he mistook his girlfriend for a wild hog and shot her.

[man 1] Got him. [chuckles]

[men laughing]

[news announcer] In Zimbabwe, Cecil The Lion was as famous as Simba.

That is until this Minnesota dentist came along

like some modern-day Ernest Hemingway.

Dr. Walter Palmer paid $55,000 for a license

to hunt in Zimbabwe, killing Cecil and skinned for a trophy.

Some rich asshole who wants to go to Africa

and shoot a prized lion that's got a GPS collar on it,

that was right next door to a national refuge.

Holy shit. It's the worst example of what hunting is.

Yeah, I would say the most egregious method of hunting

would be a kind of trophy hunting.

[Doug] I do a certain amount of trophy hunting.

Sure.

We have a 400-acre farm.

It's been in my family for 115 years.

I spend a few days every year hunting on the farm.

Part of the motivation for hunting is...

...what some folks are going to call a trophy.

Mounts on the wall.

There isn't a set of antlers

hanging on our wall that I can't tell you the story of.

This would have been an acorn when my great-grandfather bought the place.

What kind of tree is this one, Steve?

[Steve] Hickory.

[Doug] What kind of hickory?

[Steve] Shagbark.

[Doug] What kind of tree is this one?

-[Steve] It's a maple. -[Doug] What kind of maple?

-[Steve] Sugar? -[Doug] Red maple.

[Doug] As I was growing up,

you saw something with an antler on it, you shot it.

A three-and-a-half or four-year-old buck,

larger antlers... bigger deer just didn't exist.

And what did exist was a whole bunch of does.

Twenty or thirty to one.

My brother Matthew was the first one who started talking about

some of the principles of deer management.

Matt was... much younger than the rest of us.

Matt, of all of us, was the...

one who was most interested in hunting.

He got real interested in the idea of,

"Let the small bucks go so that they can get bigger."

Eventually it became the idea of management

to mimic what we would expect in nature

more of a one-to-one balance, doe to buck.

There's a lot of good reasons for doing that.

It was good for the deer. It was good for the freezer.

It was good for the trophy management.

And as we found out over time, it was also good for our forests,

and for our crops, to try to control that herd a little bit more.

The last year that Matthew hunted, he and I had a real successful hunt.

Biggest buck I'd seen up to that point jumped up,

in a field across the road from the buildings,

I was able to shoot the deer.

Biggest buck I'd shot up to that time.

And my dad says, "Boy, that's a really good buck, Doug, congratulations."

And Matt says, "Yeah, but that had been a nice buck next year."

[Doug] Matthew was a man of few words, unlike the rest of the family.

And when he said that, it stuck in my head.

And, when he died a couple months later,

it took on even more meaning.

Got a phone call from my father,

telling me that Matt had been in a terrible accident,

and... didn't expect him to live.

We as a family,

decided we were going to figure out a management strategy for the farm,

to honor his legacy

and our family's legacy.

And in those years we just, through our NBNY,

"Nice Buck Next Year" idea,

we kept getting bigger and bigger deer.

That's the tree that we came to see.

It has since died, seven years ago,

from Dutch Elm Disease, that they all eventually succumb to.

Ten years ago, the biggest deer that's ever been shot on this farm

and really the biggest deer that's ever been seen on this farm

was shot from here.

We named that deer after I killed it.

Uh, we called it The Standard By Which All Others Will Be Judged.

When I saw this deer,

it was about 12 years after Matthew died.

I'm in the stand for ten, twelve minutes.

And I hear this... [grunts] Down in the, on the edge of the swamp.

Biggest deer I ever saw. That was the deer.

I knew instantly when I saw it that that was the deer.

He walks up within about 25 or 30 yards of that stand

and I put the crosshairs on his chest and pulled the trigger.

It was instantly dead, it absorbed all the energy of that bullet.

After I shot it, it was just this moment of...

thinking about my brother, his ideas about, "Let's manage."

I was overwhelmed by it, quite honestly.

That's the story of The Standard.

You want to call it a trophy, I call it remembrance of a hunt.

[wind howling]

[Steve] In the earliest years of the 20th century,

the Arctic explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson,

was still out making initial contacts with groups of Inuit hunters

in the Canadian high Arctic.

And he describes these hunters' practice of bringing home

the heads of bears, in order to place their head in their home or lodge

so that the bear would be able to observe the hunter and his family.

The thinking being that the bear would, in some mystical afterlife,

explain to other bears, that if you're going to get killed by someone,

this guy is a good choice.

Because he's an honorable man.

Now, I decorate my home with all kinds of hides and skulls

from the animals that I've hunted and eaten.

And it does occur to me at times to ask,

"If they are looking out on me, what do they see?"

At the end of the 19th century, there is a pretty influential historian

by the name of Frederick Jackson Turner.

Um, and he famously decrees that, "The frontier is closed."

In essence, what he meant was that white settlement

had expanded across the continent.

And he was concerned about what this might hold,

as were many others, for the future of the country.

Many Americans at the turn of the century believed that America's unique character

stemmed from the process of frontiering,

stemmed from engagement with wilderness

and fighting against indigenous peoples,

and sort of, the conquest of the continent.

Among a certain subset,

particularly urban men,

hunting embodied a certain rugged individualism

that they associate with the national character.

There have also always been subsistence hunters,

who hunted for utilitarian reasons, out of necessity.

But the emergence of the sport hunter

as an iconic American figure is something new.

[male reporter] The victory flash electrified Times Square,

keyed to the bursting point

as the magic word of complete surrender came through.

[Randall] The end of World War II

is a hugely significant moment in the history of hunting.

As millions of American men are returning home from tours of duty,

sport hunting experiences a surge in popularity.

They take to the field in record numbers,

many of them for the first time in their lives.

As the editor of Outdoor Life put it,

"You can't expose millions of young men to the joys of living outdoors

and using firearms, and not make hunters out of them."

The number of hunters skyrockets in the 1940s

from about eight million to 13 million.

And that means that roughly one in four American men...

were hunters.

[Steve] One of many things I love about hunting

is that it pushes me to go to places I would otherwise have no business going.

It melds wanderlust and pragmatism.

I respect a mountaineer who goes up a mountain

and comes down with nothing tangible,

but I'm drawn to the kind of climbing

that has you coming back down with a load of meat on your shoulders.

In anthropology, there is an idea that I was both of those things equally.

A curiosity about what's over the next hill,

and a desire to eat it...

that accounts for our species' stunningly rapid colonization of the world.

The first Americans to pass through Beringia and enter the Western Hemisphere

started hunting on this continent some 20,000 years ago.

Euro-Americans have been hunting it for 500 years.

I think of those earliest hunters often.

Would they be surprised that the subject of ethics has become so intertwined

with all of our conversations around hunting.

How could such an ancient, ancestral practice be governed

by such contemporary notions about morality and behavior?

It's not a small thing to take an animal's life.

It's very intense. It's very emotional.

We're hunting sentient beings,

who suffer and who are highly complex,

who have moral status.

There's something that we have to consider now that we're more enlightened,

the burden of morality, the burden of being ethical.

[Ron] And when I first see

the deer that I'm going to shoot,

my concentration is on getting

to where I'm going to have a steady, clear, concise shot,

so that that animal does not suffer.

And that's all that's going through my mind.

[Joe] It might not work out,

you might not see the animal, you might not get close enough,

you might get winded. You might even miss.

But, did you do your best to make sure that none of those things happened?

And if you don't, you feel terrible.

[Jones] The fact that hunters themselves acknowledge

that there should be a sportsmanlike way

to dispatch, say a deer,

that speaks to the fact that they believe

that there is a moral and ethical aspect dimension to that act.

Animal ethics, in a nutshell, is to have more people recognize

that you're dealing with moral beings, not just objects.

Human beings were always thought to be...

superior, not only intellectually

and physiologically in certain ways, but morally.

This is a view known as "human exceptionalism."

And that claim starts to be challenged.

The question in animal ethics, it's, what makes all human beings

morally superior to every animal on the planet?

Why is it this way, and should it be that way?

And that's a tough question to answer.

[Doug] The actual killing of an animal,

the finality of it is... hard to describe.

But you've done something that you can't undo.

[Steve] What does go on between a hunter and his prey?

[imitating deer call]

The biologist E. O. Wilson popularized the term "biophilia."

The idea that humans have an innate desire to connect with nature

and other forms of life.

Hunting can bring about an extreme form of that,

let's say "bio obsession,"

where the continued study and pursuit of animals brings about in the hunter

feelings of deep admiration,

a desire to emulate,

and, yeah, something akin to love for the animals that they hunt.

When else do you sit down with your...

pair of binoculars glued to your face and just look

at the landscape, and look at animals for hours at a time?

It kind of forces you to learn so much. I've never learned so much

about a single species of animal as I did when I started hunting white-tail.

Judging bears, you know what to look for,

the size of their head, you know, the size of their ears compared to their body.

Sources of food that I've seen the squirrels eat,

uh, of course, we've got the hickory nuts in our areas,

uh, all the acorns.

If you're going to become a successful hunter,

you have to learn everything about that animal.

Let's call it the psychology of a... a deer.

Beech trees, you know, they love hitting those things.

Watching animals interact with each other,

watching animals interact with the landscape.

Dogwood berries. They like eating those.

You understand them, then you understand where they're gonna be at certain times.

I've never seen anything eat a gumball.

This deer call here...

used to be my favorite one.

And it would call in bucks...

uh, at a pretty good rate.

I mean, they'll come charging in,

usually with a full erection.

And, uh, they're there for one thing.

[deer call whistling]

[imitating deer scream]

[imitating deer grunts]

[deer call whistling]

Nope, it's not there.

[imitating deer grunt]

[high-pitched deer call]

[dog barks]

That one does it, but that there is a little bit too high-pitched one.

[Rorke Denver] That interplay between loving the game

you're pursuing, and killing the game you're pursuing

and taking that life, I feel lucky to wrestle with those issues.

I mean, I think, uh, there isn't a single animal

I'm gonna go after that I don't have tremendous respect and love for

and really enjoy looking at as much as I want to go hunt.

It's, uh... I think it is a connection to the natural world

that very few people get.

I mean, I actually think being a hunter falls much more in line

with the way we developed,

you know, genetically, culturally,

than not being a hunter.

I mean, if our forefathers weren't probably, you know, whacking a critter

with a rock and a stone and figured out a way to cook it and eat it,

we're probably not sitting here.

So I... I think there's a very primal part of hunting that seems 100% natural to me.

[Jones] Some people would say, "Well, if it's natural,

that's a justification enough that we should do it."

So the "should" just comes from the fact that it's natural.

Look, I'm a vegan, but I can't say that there aren't times

when I think bacon smells really good,

and I smell it, I'm like, "Damn, I could go for some of that bacon."

Now, I'm denying myself. You could say, "You're not doing what's natural."

But I could say, I know I'm not doing what's "natural,"

but that's because I'm a moral being, and that's what moral beings do.

We don't always follow through on our instincts.

That's what makes you moral.

[Steve] Could it be true that our canine teeth

and our forward-facing predator eyes are really just relics?

Just vestigial traits?

Like our wisdom teeth and tail bones.

If so, the transition feels incomplete.

At least inside of me, and inside of many others.

There's a psychological piece to being in the woods, pursuing my food.

Civilization does us the favor of removing us

from so many unpleasant and unsightly processes.

All of the tasks of life.

It allows us to lead cleaner, more sterile,

more sedentary lives of our choosing.

But we do carry the physical specialized tools of hunters.

We're built for it.

That might make you uncomfortable to think about,

but it warrants being reckoned with.

[Matt] Hunting colors everything I am.

I wouldn't live in the middle of nowhere

with a corgi and pack lamas if I...

If I didn't hunt.

[bleats]

I started getting some sciatic nerve pain in my left leg.

When I found out that the sciatic nerve pain was an extension of back problems,

I knew immediately that it was from carrying heavy packs of meat.

So I just knew then that,

if I was gonna keep doing the thing

that I loved for decades to come,

I was going to have to do something differently.

So I started getting pack llamas.

So I could keep hunting, and they would carry my stuff.

Trying to desensitize her head... His head a little bit.

Both these guys' heads a little bit.

Good boy. Good boy.

So with this training, desensitization is a big part of it.

The way you're trying to get them to do what you want

is every time they do what you want...

Like he's standing still right now, he's not running away,

which, the first few times I did this, that would make him run away.

They do not like to have their feet handled.

So then, you reward them by walking away.

You take the pressure off of them.

Like this, this is just from a few training sessions that I can do this.

They're very protective of their feet.

[chuckles] Go on, buddy. Give him a kick on the butt.

God, these are nothing like your old ones.

Oh, this guy's way better than the old ones.

-[Steve] Oh, is he? -Not Haigee,

but he's way better than Timee.

It's just what... Steve, you wouldn't believe this guy on the trail.

He's fantastic, it's just around the barnyard.

I... I have a very deep love

for the places that I hunt,

and... it sometimes gets mixed up with fear.

I mean, some of these places are way back in there,

and they're kind of spooky!

I spend a lot of my bow-hunting time alone,

which is often not fun.

It can be boring and grueling.

But it requires a level of dedication.

For me, personally, when I get an elk with my bow,

that's a major accomplishment,

and I'm going to probably not remember

the squirrels I shot two years from now,

but I'll remember every single elk I've ever gotten with my bow.

There's been many hunts where I've been on,

where I've fought the desire...

to go home every hour,

every day, for days,

and then... filled my tag.

In a way, I feel like...

I'm stuck being a hunter. I don't have any choice.

I can't... I can't help it.

I have to, uh, hunt,

that's just what I do. That's what my...

That's what preoccupies my thoughts,

that's what I-- How I spend my spare time.

I'd be powerless to try to make it go away.

If somebody took issue with me hunting,

my first question to them would be,

"Do you eat meat?"

Um...

Now, let's say that this is, a person that

doesn't like the fact that I hunt, but they're vegetarian or vegan.

I don't know what to say to them. I mean... they might have a point.

I do not think that vegans, including myself,

are outside the web of killing and suffering.

I do not think that I'm morally superior because I'm a vegan.

If I eat, you know, a carrot,

there's probably some sentient field animal

that died in the tilling of the soil, so...

I have no illusions about vegans or vegetarians

being morally pure or morally superior.

That's not my brand of veganism. I want that clear.

What I am saying is that, um,

there seems to be plenty of ways to deeply, and spiritually,

if you will, commune with nature that don't involve...

the killing of a complex sentient being.

[Steve] When I was young, I first started hearing the word, like "environmentalist."

I was kind of intimidated by it,

'cause I just thought it automatically meant somehow

that you were against the things that I liked, which is to hunt, fish, and trap.

Then later I learned that, in the hunting world

or in the hunting community, we have our own word for it,

we just call it "conservationism."

Like, a conservationist is, is an environmentalist with a gun.

The conservation ethic came to me out of a very selfish desire...

to not lose the things that mattered a lot to me.

So I'm like, "So what would I need to do,

what is the best step to protect this landscape where I like to hunt,

to protect my hunting grounds,

so that I can continue to enjoy it?"

That was the first step for me.

The second step was to all of a sudden be like, "Okay, I like this spot,

and I might not ever go to that one over there,

but I'm just going to extend my desire

to protect this place, and go like,

'Okay, I like that one in the distance too,' you know.

And maybe I like something in South America as well."

And I think I just very gradually, sort of,

began to have a conservation ethic

that stands outside of selfishness.

But it took me a long, long time to shed that idea,

that you can just take and take with no regard to what's down the road.

[Robert Abernathy] If it's a perfect morning, it is completely dead calm.

And you get to your listening spot.

[birds twittering]

Generally, the first thing you hear is a cardinal,

and then the tufted titmice are gonna start calling.

And then all the other birds join in.

And when the first crow calls,

and if all goes according to plan, it'd be answered by a gobbler.

[gobbling]

And if a turkey sees movement, and he'll look at it,

and he'll see movement a second time and he's gone.

As soon as it came out of that egg, every movement that it experienced,

it... it interpreted it as something trying to kill it and eat it.

If you're good enough to kill a bird every three or four or five hunts,

you're a pretty good turkey hunter.

We can't forget that we're not turkeys.

We are mammals, so when we're looking at a turkey,

we're looking at him with mammal eyes.

When a turkey is looking at a turkey or a turkey is looking at a decoy,

a turkey is looking with bird eyes, with avian eyes.

My son came up with the idea, "Well, you know, why don't you

just glue each feather on individually?"

"Well, that'll take too long, that's crazy."

Well, then he did it.

And it doesn't... It's like everything, it doesn't work every time.

But it... it works enough.

I did not grow up hunting turkeys.

We had no turkeys anywhere around and I remember the first turkey I saw,

which I was in high school.

And it was... It was crazy, I mean, I couldn't believe it.

I could not believe I had seen a turkey.

By the time I was born, in the mid-'50s,

North Carolina only had turkeys in the most remote parts.

The turkey population started crashing in the 1800s

as soon as the settlements started. I mean,

these were a large bird that were good to eat,

and people killed them and ate 'em,

and they killed them and sold 'em to the market.

And they disappeared from most of the United States.

But it's not that way anymore.

Historically in the '20s, and '30s, and '40s,

we believed that you could take a wild turkey, um, hen,

and take the eggs, raise them up into young turkeys

and go out and turn them to the woods.

And that, well, that went on for decades.

It was a... It was a massive failure and just did not work.

And the restoration really didn't get started

until we figured out how to trap them and how to move them.

We started using rocket nets to capture the birds.

And it was hunters that funded the whole thing.

It was an army of biologists

and technicians, and hunters all over this country

that contributed the money and trapped the birds,

and did that habitat management that allowed the birds to come back.

Now wild turkeys are found in all 49 states...

they're not in Alaska,

and throughout southern Canada and down into Mexico.

You know, the question is, did I do the restoration

in order to be able to hunt turkeys all over the country?

And maybe a part of me did.

But we get that question a lot,

uh, "Well, you only wanted to turn those turkeys loose so you can shoot them."

And it's like, that doesn't even come close

to the experiences and the people I've met,

and the guys that might raise money

and work for years

to try to get a... a wild turkey,

or elk, or white-tail deer, or mule deer, or a pronghorn...

restored to a habitat.

I just don't see that level of commitment

with any other wide group of people,

um, other than hunters.

[birds chirping]

[Jim] These wild animals have a social and cultural value

because of what they represent.

They represent a social, cultural commitment to their existence,

and the fact that we have worked so that they can coexist

with a civilized society...

and still remain wild. And that has given them a value.

The European method of wildlife management

attached wildlife to privilege or property.

You could get hung for killing the King's deer.

One particular code in England

was that, uh, if you should take so much as a hair,

you shall have your eyes torn out.

By virtue of the Declaration of Independence,

where the people became the sovereign,

those rights and privileges that belong to the... the royalty,

passed to the people, and they would be held in trust

for the people, by the States.

The irony is that before and after our decision about who owned the wildlife

of this country, we were systematically eliminating it.

Louis and Clark came up here in 1805 and 1806,

they described that wildlife resource, as a resource

that exceeded anything the eye of man had ever looked upon.

Just a sheer abundance of wildlife that was out on the Great Plains at that time.

Eight decades later, it had fallen to zero.

We had become the wildlife boneyard of a continent.

Throughout history, there have been people

who have hunted for utilitarian reasons,

or for, uh, commercial purposes.

So, the United States had market hunters.

Market hunters were individuals in the 19th century

who would go out and kill wild animals...

to sell their meat or hides to markets in the east.

[Jim] In 1876, Fort Benton shipped 80,000 buffalo hides

down the Missouri River.

And that's kind of a centennial milepost,

at least out in the west where we were,

a sort of, uh, at maximum killing capacity,

not only of the buffalo, but of all wildlife.

Theodore Roosevelt, he has an intense interest in nature

and this passion to go hunting,

and he comes to the west to get to a bison before they were gone.

He hires a guy named Joe Ferris,

they hunt for seven days...

and he shoots a lone wandering bull.

And he is so excited

that he does a war dance around the fallen bull,

and then he gives his guide a hundred dollars.

In '85, he had published Hunting Trips of a Ranchman & The Wilderness Hunter,

and he left a passage in there of a rancher

that he had talked to, who had made a journey

of a thousand miles in northern Montana.

To use the ranchman's own words,

"I was never out of sight of a dead buffalo,

and never in sight of a live one."

Roosevelt shoots a second buffalo,

and his reaction to it is no longer the dance.

His commentary about killing that buffalo is a reflection

on this nearly gone and vanished species.

This noble beast.

And he has a conservation epiphany.

And that was a pretty important event.

Theodore Roosevelt gets shunted into the Vice Presidency in 1900

as a candidate on the McKinley ticket,

and then McKinley gets shot.

And all of a sudden, Theodore Roosevelt is the president.

The National Republican Party boss said,

"I told William McKinley it was a mistake

to nominate that wild man.

Now look, that damn cowboy is President of the United States."

His first message to Congress was on conservation.

He adds 140 million acres into the national forest system,

and in that process, western district congressmen

from six western states panic.

They put a rider on an Ag Appropriations Bill

to prohibit him from setting aside any more national forests.

He has seven days to sign or veto that bill.

In those seven days, he adds 16 million acres to the forest system,

creates 21 new national forests,

signs the executive orders creating those public states,

and then he signs the bill forbidding him from ever doing it again.

That's leadership.

One generation later,

we have the great economic depression,

the drought, and the Dust Bowl.

In the depth of that despair,

we have Franklin Roosevelt, now President,

and he calls the very first North American wildlife conference.

This is what he told the hunters and the fishermen.

He says, "Look, people, if you want these resources,

you're gonna have to do it."

And the wildlife conservation ethic...

begins to take root.

They put through Congress

the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act.

And it's been fueling wildlife restoration

for 80 years.

The hunters that rose up

in the wake of the market shooters,

rose up with a conservation ethic because it was essential.

We wouldn't have hunting if that hadn't happened.

[Martin] I mean, I think it's worth considering

that many of the animals that we see all the time

used to be really rare.

You know, if you go to places

where those species don't have that cultural or economic value,

um, over time, they get crowded out.

They're not there anymore.

Uh, it... it happens all over the world.

And it's not that way in the United States.

We have, not only public wildlife through the North American model,

but public lands.

Hunters pay for that conservation.

The picture of hunting revenue in the US is on a both state and federal level.

On the state side, you've got the sale hunting licenses tags

and stamps as the primary source of revenue for fish in wildlife commissions,

and that's to the tune of about a billion dollars annually across the country.

That is only paid for by people who are hunting.

On the federal side, you've got stemming from the Pittman-Robertson Act,

uh, a federal excise tax on hunting equipment.

So it only hits people who are buying hunting equipment,

and that money gets put in the federal fund.

And that fund is then distributed to the States,

but only if they meet certain requirements, right?

And the first requirement is that all the money that the state's generated

via the sales of hunting licenses, tags and stamps,

has to be spent by that actual Fish and Wildlife Commission.

It can't get diluted across the budget, it has to stay for fish and wildlife.

And this is a cool part too, is if that money is, for whatever reason,

not spent within two years,

it gets reallocated to the Migratory Bird Conservation Act.

In a holistic sense, it's a really, really tight structure.

It's an example of pretty effective regulation

and it's cool to see the mechanics of how it all works.

[birds cooing]

[Steve] I hunt many things in many places,

but I feel best and most fulfilled hunting in places

where it's physically difficult and a bit hazardous.

I enjoy moving through nasty country.

I like the climb. I don't mind suffering the cold.

I like being in places where I have to struggle against obstacles.

I could get a deer other places and in easier ways,

but intentionally handicapping our endeavors

is one of those peculiar hallmarks of our species.

In hunting, we refer to this system of handicapping as "fair chase."

Now, it's a slippery concept in that it's hard to define

in a way that everyone is going to agree on.

But it has to do with evening the playing field

between predator and prey.

Diminishing, sometimes greatly, the certainty of the hunter's success.

Many of these handicaps are codified by law.

Weapons that can and cannot be used,

hours of the day that are allowable for hunting.

Restriction on age classes and gender of animals

that can be harvested.

But many hunters go it one better,

and add layers of personal prohibitions.

Weapons they could use, but don't.

Age classes of animals they could kill, but won't.

Much of it is subjective. It's deeply personal.

Hunting plays out in your head as much as it does out on the land.

Your version of it needs to leave you feeling right.

It needs to leave you feeling good about what you've done.

All hunters need to find that line for themselves.

[gunshot]

[gun clicks]

The first time I killed a deer, I was 13.

I got one with a rifle in Michigan where I grew up.

It was so close, I was like I couldn't miss.

I was held right where I could see on it. Bam.

I got it and I ran over there,

and I was kind of surprised to see the deer hadn't died yet, you know.

And... and now looking back on it, you just, very quickly shoot it again,

but I was young and inexperienced.

And I didn't know, and I... And I...

jumped in there and I killed the deer with a knife.

And, like, looking at it, I mean, like, yeah, it was kind of like, a violent act.

And... and I recognize that there is a violence to hunting.

It is different than a human-on-human violence,

but there is a violence to it.

But, I think that it's a funny little exercise

to act as though you can be alive today...

and be a breathing, living, eating person

who's dining in restaurants and going to the grocery store,

and to somehow feel as though you've escaped the cycle of violence

that drives all existence, and that drives nature.

[Ron] Whenever I kill a deer,

I always have that, um...

degree of sorrow for the animal.

For the kill.

I don't feel guilty about it,

but you feel sorry for the animal

in taking him out of life... for your benefit.

And I don't think I'll ever get over that.

I think it's what every hunter should have.

Those emotions should be listened to

because they... they... They represent the better parts of our nature.

The feelings of empathy and sympathy,

the feelings of having ended an animal's life.

And I think the question then to ask is,

"Was it necessary what I just did? Did I have to do that? Is that...

What is... What is...

What is my heart telling me about what just transpired?"

[Danny] We're human beings and we're of this earth,

and we've been hunting animals for thousands of years

and to think that, that no longer applies

just because we have technology that allows us to not necessarily hunt anymore,

um, seems kind of ridiculous to me.

[Steve] Why do some people respect

every predator but themselves?

Think of an owl perched up in a tree...

watching for a rabbit

that it's going to pounce on and kill.

It does not occur to the owl to ask, "Do I belong here?

Do I have the right to eat this rabbit and live?"

It just is one with the natural world.

It's impossible to untangle it, as a creature,

from its impending actions.

And I admire that owl.

How good, to be so unapologetic

about what sharp talons.

[cutting skin]

[bone cracking]

Legally and morally, the animal, the instant it dies,

it's my property, and I have an obligation to the animal

to, um, get it skinned, get it cooled down, keep it clean...

and start the long arduous task of getting all that meat home.

I'm going to take an animal, I'm going to utilize everything.

Everything.

We don't let anything go to waste.

Whatever we can utilize, we utilize.

I don't buy meat, I just eat game meat,

so, uh, that is something that I value very highly.

If you're going to take an animal's life,

if you're going to consume meat as part of your diet,

you have a responsibility to use

every last bit of that animal that you can.

[Jones] If someone chooses to be a hunter,

and that person decides to say,

"Honor or respect the prey...

by using all the parts of it and doing it in this kind of honorific manner,"

does that make a difference,

uh, morally or ethically?

It doesn't make a difference to the animal.

The animal is dead.

The animal is not gonna say, "Hey, thanks for shooting me

and really caring and respecting me.

That's better than you doing it maliciously and not caring."

The animal's dead.

[Steve] Most of the hunters that I've known in my life,

and I have known a great many,

struggle in some way with the violence.

But we're the rare few, really,

who are willing to reckon face-to-face with the fact

that our lives cause death.

As a hunter, you do strive for humane slaughter.

Which might not happen every time, but the intention is there.

And the animal lives in the purity of the natural world.

Uncorrupted by domestication and confinement,

until it passes into the phase

of becoming food for me and my family.

Who eats more purely than that?

This is just purely personal opinion.

I can't back this up with anything.

But I think that a lot of people...

feel in their heart, right...

They want to be a hunter.

They feel that need to be a hunter.

But, they've been told that they can't be,

or they've been told that it's wrong.

And what they're looking for when they hear about food

and this idea of like, humane slaughter,

sustainable resources, organic.

I think that what they're doing is they're finding a way in.

So they know they want to go but they haven't been able to justify the leap.

And they're trying to find emotionally a way to put a foot into that place.

And they are just begging for a way in.

I don't know how many are gonna actually make the leap.

But I feel that right now, for some reason,

a lot of people are wondering

what's been taken from them.

And how they might get some semblance of it back.

The writer, Tom McGuane has an essay about hunting

in which he recounts a conversation

where someone takes a hunter to task by asking him,

"Why do you have to go and kill deer?

Why do deer have to die for you?

Would you die for deer?"

The hunter replies, "If it came to that."

The conversation illustrates that central paradox.

You love animals, but then you kill some of them.

When wrestling with it, I believe it's important to remember

that many of our most influential conservationists

had a love of hunting

that inspired in them a desire to save the land and restore wildlife.

My hope is that hunting will continue to do this,

to inspire in people a sense of active ownership,

active stewardship for the land

many generations into the future.

[Jim] Those early hunters talked about the generations

within the womb of time.

To the extent that,

each generation has a responsibility to the future.

And I'm going to sneak in another personal story now.

Hearing about the national forest, I walk there from my house.

I see three hunters coming up that trail...

and it looks to be a father and two young sons.

And they're like poster children out of hunter education,

control of the gun, blaze orange, serious expressions.

And the father tiptoes up to me and whispers,

"We don't want to get ahead of you."

Deference to this old guy sitting by the trail.

And I said to the father, "I think I know...

what you're doing, and I want you ahead of me."

And so, I gave him the high sign and the kids' face lit up

in the pre-dawn darkness with a bright smile,

and I watched them go up the ridge.

And then I thought...

"Here was three generations of people meeting in the national forest,

enjoying the beauty of living, and the joy of life."

I put my head in my hands and I wept,

because of what that meant.

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