Thursday January 8, 2026 Hunting: A Biographical Story

Responding to an on-line opinion page invitation about the hypocrisy that hunters sometimes face, I decided to outline my own progression of the controversial activity beginning in my Iowa boyhood.  

 

When I was about eleven years old, I hunted Norway rats that frequented the railroad tracks by the thousands near my east Des Moines neighborhood. In the shadow of towering grain elevators, my Fox terrier, ‘Bridget,’ and I valiantly tried to reduce their population every Saturday morning whenever possible. I routed them out from under giant sheets of wire-reinforced cardboard boxcar liners lying about in the grass, as one after another, Bridget snapped their backs and shook them until they didn’t move. Despite their apparent suffering, no one criticized us for doing that, strangely.

  
Around age twelve or thirteen, I progressed to shooting pigeons on my sister’s farm in Dallas County, Iowa with my Daisy pump action BB gun. Although they all didn’t go to waste, (think: roasted squab) shooting them saddened my sister; whereas wringing the necks of dozens of chickens just had to be done. 

In my early teens, upon instruction by an older cousin, I graduated to hunting small game such as squirrels, rabbits, and pheasants using a 22-cal rifle, and a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun. He taught me how to fish in Iowa rivers, ponds, and lakes to my mother’s delight, because she was raised on fish and wild game in Roseau County, Minnesota in the early 1900s. Although I never knew if she hunted deer specifically, I know she trapped fur bearers, like skunks, coyotes, and fox for spending money.

Contrary to the tradition of men typically being the hunters in the family, my mother was the one who encouraged me to hunt and fish, saying “You kill it. I’ll cook it.” My father’s family had been farmers for several decades before my folks were married in 1929. Hunting to supplement their food stores wasn’t as necessary for their needs as it had been for my mother’s family, so Dad hadn’t learned to hunt. Although hunting wasn’t something he did, he didn’t disapprove of it.

 

My family’s summers were often spent in far northwestern Minnesota visiting my mother’s family. Being as my mother was the eldest in her family; her next oldest brother was a gunsmith; her three younger brothers were hunters and fishermen; and her sister an avid hunter & trapper in her own right who fished summer and winter; hunted deer, waterfowl, and upland birds. I thought their enjoyment of the outdoors and its hunting and fishing seasons, as it was for my mother, was more-or-less typical. Was I wrong!

 

So it was when I got around to dating girls, I quickly discovered that some people were against hunting altogether. They found killing animals for food, horrible; they couldn’t imagine why I’d do such a cruel thing. Alternately, I came to realize that their negativism, didn't extend to killing them by fishing, as stringers of fish are the highlight of many a summer vacation here in Minnesota. I could’ve replied, “So what you're saying is, the asphyxiation of fish is more humane, right?”  

 

Although my proclivity toward all-out hunting and fishing waned intermittently for a few years as I wrestled with this social acceptance dilemma for which I was ill prepared at the time, I did manage to find time to marry a woman who didn't mind me hunting the hinterlands, or fishing rivers and lakes. She accepted my hunting interests, having been nurtured on wild game herself as a child. Whereas, she didn't enjoy eating deer meat as much as she liked eating fish, she did endure the unappealing cooking odor of venison and fish as an occasional necessity.

 

My second wife, a Minnesota woman, wasn’t a hunter either; but knew how to cook animals including beaver and caribou through life experiences apart from our own. Our daughter didn’t hunt either, but knew where venison comes from. Even while knowing that grisly side of it, she enjoyed eating it fresh right out of the skillet. One time, many years ago now, she made a name for herself when she cooked a whole venison hindquarter one winter, for her classmates at Iowa State.

 

My third wife, also a Minnesota woman, has hunting stories that rival mine to an extent, some involving moose, and deer, and getting lost on a deer drive with one of her children in the big woods, without a gun or light, after sundown. Good thing she was a professional singer for 40 years, otherwise she may be out there yet. 

  

Since then, I’ve become among the very eldest in the ever-widening family hunting circle of men, women, and children who enjoy the year-around activities of deer camp and deer hunting.