Outdoors: Some recent reading

Since my summer has been a flurry of inactivity because of the ankle replacement, I’ve been doing even more reading than usual. I’m a big consumer of magazines, especially hunting, gun, and outdoors activities-oriented ones, but I have been known to read a book or two on occasion.

One book I started reading back before the ankle surgery is titled, “In Defense of Hunting,” by James A. Swan, Ph.D. Dr. Swan is “a noted environmental psychologist” whose book is “a powerful and challenging exploration of our primal impulse to hunt and its value in modern society.”

Dr. Swan grew up in a hunting family and understands what hunting entails. He hunts with both archery equipment, for big game, and firearms, for waterfowl and other small game. He has introduced his children to hunting as well.

Throughout the book, he relates stories from his youth about various hunting experiences as well as stories from his adult hunting adventures. He uses his own stories and those of others to illustrate various points he’s trying to make about the nature of hunting and how hunting fits into modern society and our human nature.

Before we get into some of what he says, I’ll comment that I don’t remember from whom I got the book. The Hunter Education folks with ADF&G have given instructors a few books over the years which they thought would benefit furthering the instructors’ understanding of hunting. This may have come from them.

I also must admit that a lot of the psychological intricacies Dr. Swan uses to make his points tended to sail right over my head! When he tells a “plain-English” story, I get that. When he goes off explaining Sigmund Freud’s explanation of some technical point, my eyes tended to glaze over.

Having said that, I want to emphasize that the book is well worth reading, even if some of it was “Greek to me!” I’ll list the introduction and chapter titles and that should give you some sense of what the book covers. The introduction is titled: The Hunter: A Fallen Hero? Chapter One is: The Sacred Animal; Chapter Two is: The “Good Old Days.” Chapter Three is: Animal Rights and Wrongs; Chapter Four is: The Heart of Hunting. Chapter Five is: The Guides of The Hunt; and Chapter Six is: Tools, Talismans, and Weapons. Chapter Seven is: The Feminine Side of Hunting; and the last chapter, Chapter Eight is: Hunting in the Future: Will There Be Any “Good New Days?

Dr. Swan concludes the book with an Appendix where he offers suggestions for saving hunting. I’ll list them as well. First, hunters should join groups and form coalitions to offset the animal rights folks. Second, hunters shouldn’t engage in revenge tactics against antihunters. Third, hunters should develop a new image for themselves. Hunters should create a legal task force to protect hunting, organize prohunting community activities, and promote community services.

Dr. Swan also suggests that hunters support the men’s movement and women hunters, stating that either or both may help save hunting. Hunters need to create more opportunities for hunting that don’t require large cash outlays and should consider dropping the word “sport” when referring to hunting.

Hunters should increase opportunities for people to hunt and should safeguard hunting itself by aggressively pursuing a war on poachers. If ethical hunters decline to get involved, poaching will only increase. To many non-hunters, poachers are considered hunters rather than the criminals they truly are.

On a lighter note, some magazines I would recommend to readers who enjoy shooting and firearms, are published by the Wolfe Publishing Company in Arizona. I subscribe to both magazines and consider them to be the best technical layman’s magazines on their respective topics. One is called Handloader magazine and the second is Rifle magazine. The respective topics are apparent from the titles. The contributing writers for these magazines are the experts in their respective fields and there is a lot of useful information in each magazine issue.

The magazines alternate every month so that a subscriber will receive six issues of each magazine in a twelve-month year. I make a point of saving each issue for future reference about reloading information, unbiased evaluation of various firearm models, and historical information on such topics as bison cartridges and rifles of the buffalo hunting era and firearms of World War II.

Our winter season is on the horizon. On the days when I can, I’ll be out enjoying the season’s activities. On the other days, I’ll be reading!