I shot a duck. Here’s how it went down. Yesterday was the most astonishingly beautiful January day Cape Cod has ever seen. Temperatures rose into the high 50s, and there was a light breeze out of the southwest. We outfitted our oyster boat, a 17-foot Carolina Skiff, for duck hunting, by which I mean we [...]
Let’s talk about hunting philosophy. Let’s use, as a jumping-off point, a piece on yesterday’s New York Times op-ed page by a man named Seamus McGraw. You can read it for yourself, but if you’re not inclined, I can pass along the important bits. The piece is a justification both of deer hunting, and of [...]
Hang out with hunters and you’ll hear it, probably sooner than later: If you need to kill in order to have a successful hunt, you’re not a hunter, you’re a killer. Being in the woods, the reasoning goes, is an end in itself. You learn the animal’s habits and habitat. You learn how to make [...]
The raccoons continue their attempt to gnaw their way into the chicken coop, and I’ve had about enough of it. The idea that a passel of varmints, fattened up on turkey feed, could one night breach our defenses and snack on our flock just as they’ve started laying is too much for me. So I have [...]
We should all age as well as firearms. The basic operation of firearms hasn’t changed in the eight hundred years or so we’ve had them, and the principle is beautifully simple. The pressure created by burning propellant pushes a projectile through a tube. That’s it. Over those eight hundred years, the propellant has changed (although [...]
Ah, spring! The weather warms, the robins return, the crocuses poke their little heads up through the soil. The cycle of life begins anew and all thoughts turn to … hunting ethics. I blame Tovar. He started it, in a post at A Mindful Carnivore about wounding animals. Every hunter I know believes it is [...]
The essence of hunting, I’m beginning to think, is figuring out how animals know you’re trying to kill them. Leave the house without a gun, and the creatures of the earth ignore you. They go about their creature business without regard for your proximity, noise, or smell. Go out with a firearm and murderous intent, [...]
There are just about two weeks left in duck season and, after that, hunting opportunities are limited to things like crows and squirrels. Over the weekend, I did some serious groveling, trying to get an experienced duck hunter to take me along. While my groveling may pay off before the season’s out, I just couldn’t [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
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