The Center for Humans & Nature has posed a timeless question: does hunting make us human? Even asking this question in the present time is interesting with our protein needs so readily available at grocery stores and a society all about convenience and choice. Hunting truly has fallen by the wayside and most humans aren’t hunting. So can hunting make us human?
It’s hard not to agree with professor Mary Zeiss Stange of Skidmore College that this question is personal so we put it on you, our readers, does hunting make us human?
Yes, I think it does. It allows us to re-connect with the natural world, take our place, once again in the chain of life. As predators we served an ancient purpose and to reassume it puts us back in sync with the cycle of life. As modern human beings we thing ourselves above all this, providing our own food (from the grocery store!) and thereby denying how connected we are, albeit distantly. To think that way denies reality. I want to live in the real world, that’s why I hunt and fish.