Good Cazadora post, then a bit on Leopold

NorCal Cazadora has a great post about some books that have influenced her as a hunter. The reason I post this here is because these almost invariably include thoughts on the ethics of hunting. The comments section includes some other good works, so click on those, too.

I'd like to point out her first book, a Sand County Almanac, at a time just prior to the split between the environmental and conservation movements. Mr. Leopold was one of those great thinkers, a man who marvelled in the intricacies and connectedness of ideas. To environmentalism he elucidated a number of important concepts, including the First Rule of Intelligent Tinkering, and he moved forward the notion of ecology as a legitimate school of thought at a time when science was focused laser-like on breaking everything into its component parts. And this same man who waxed poetic about the loss of life and diversity, who founded the Wilderness Society, was also the man who waxed poetic about building your own bow and arrows to hunt, about hunting great blue herons with peregrine falcons. Leopold understood that humanity's relationship to the land and ecosystems was amazingly intricate, profound, and that our future depended on a true understanding of our place in the land.

It is often the influences of current society to take apart historical figures, to look down on them with condescention at their simpler, simplistic ways, and, in the supposed light of our greater wisdom, to separate out those attributes which we dislike from those which we admire. In so doing, we show ourselves as the simpletons, forgetting the constant winds of time and thought, forgetting that we can almost never know the intricacies of eras past, and losing the subtle nuances when we are lucky enough to catch a glimpse. We lose the ability to truly learn from those past experiences, and, like much of science in Leopold's time, we lose the ability to see the true connections that make for a rich, often profound existence, regardless of era.

Of the most influential ideas in my life, Aldo Leopold brought me to a conscious understanding of a land ethic and its need. If you get some time, please click over to that link and read his own words on the subject.