Why Do It?
The Fair Chase: The Epic Story of Hunting in America by Philip Dray. Basic Books, 2018, $32.00 cloth.
ONE OF the more indelible images of my boyhood: a group of us, young, teenagers in name only, sitting around a cabin probably not as rustic and remote as in my memory. Someone flips up a worn recliner’s footrest. The sound draws absent-minded attention. A beat passes. Then, an excited shout: “Hey, look, cool!” We’re up in a split second, crowding around the front of the chair. Staring back out at us from under the recliner is a giant wolf spider. Quickly we begin plotting how to rustle it to the trees beyond the tall grass outside.
Before we could, however, one of the adults calls us outside and our attention shifts instantly again. In front of the haphazard line we’ve formed by jostling for the best view is a folding table on which rests a rifle with a scope and three cartons of three different types of ammunition. Farther out, three gallon-sized milk jugs sit on posts, full of water. From the first box, our instructor removes a bullet, names it, explains how it is different from the others, and loads the rifle. He aims at the first milk jug and fires. It jumps. Jets of water shoot out in several several directions. He then repeats the demonstration with one bullet from each of the other two boxes, before retrieving the mangled milk jugs for us to inspect and contemplate what
