Christina:

I know exactly how you feel. To quote the estimable Horace Kephart, "Butchering is the most distasteful part of a hunter's work--a job to be sublet when you can; but sometimes you can't."

I personally believe that hunting is a very valuable skill to have, for reasons which go way beyond simply learning a good long-term survival skill.

The main problem with hunting is that it's, well, messy. Very messy. First of all, you have to actually *kill* something. This is not a action which should be taken lightly. Is it any wonder that primitive societies so often ascribed spiritual qualities to animals?

Second, you have to butcher what you kill (if you can't get somebody else to do it for you), and even if you're very skilled at butchering, it's still *very* messy work. Third, you have to clean up the mess, unless you want to attract unnecessary attention to yourself. Then, after all that hard and dirty work, you can prepare your meal and eat it--and then clean up again.

I, too, have thought that if I *had* to kill and butcher my own food rather than picking it up in nice little neat plastic-wrapped bundles of organic free-range goodness at my local gourmet/health food store, that I might have to go veggie...but the fact is, I just like meat way too much. Geez, the first time I caught a fish when I was a kid, I just couldn't bear to gut it...unfortunately, my mother didn't make me do it. I was glad to get out of doing it at the time, but I think I would have been better off if she had.

I think it's odd that in our society, we tend to assign butchery to a category somewhat worse than killing. After all, couldn't depriving another being of life possibly be worse than cutting it up, cooking it, and eating it? Perhaps it's that we tend to anthropomorphize too much, and as a result, treat our pets like our family, and other animals like our pets.

The thing about hunting is, it's difficult to do without gaining a large amount of respect for nature and our proper place in it. See, when you're killing and butchering your own meat or fish, you're very much more appreciative of what you've done than if you've just taken a ticket and waited in line at the deli counter. Also, you actions tend to have much less impact on the environment than commercial farming practices (or at least much less cruelty to the animals in question). These are important things to learn, and I think they're important things to teach, as well.

Now, if you *really* want to get hard-core about it, try it without a firearm.

Anyway, remember, if you ever find yourself *needing* to hunt, it's probably a little too late to start learning how to do so. So get out there, thank the spirit of the animals you take, and don't waste anything...