Bad advice: “Homework is for kids who don’t hunt”

Kathleen Stachowski  Other Nations

“Homework is for kids who don’t hunt.” This proclamation, delivered on a Realtree brand boys’ T-shirt, appeared recently in a Shopko sales flier. I looked twice to make sure I read it correctly, so shocking was the message to this former teacher. Flashback to rural New Mexico and a boy in my 9th grade English class. He was a nice kid–congenial, polite–if not a committed student. His greatest enthusiasm during the school year manifested itself immediately before his week-long absence every autumn to go hunting. Attend class? Do homework? Make up missed assignments? Pff. That shirt would have fit him to a ‘T’.  

You have to wonder about Realtree’s motive. Are they gunning for a legion of uneducated hunters loyal to the brand? Pandering to boys (and their money) who want to get their braggadocio on by dissing education and the sissies who prefer cracking books to killing? What responsible adult condones that alarming message–especially during these divisive times when a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism shot through with animosity is gripping our country? Chances are good that the masked dudes in the viral wolf slaughter photo didn’t rush home from middle school to study.

Girls aren’t forgotten in the not-so-subtle messaging that aims to connect hunting and identity. “Ribbons & bows & camo clothes – that’s what little girls are made of.” This bright pink t-shirt features a whitetail buck, a bow made of ribbon, and a bow and arrows. The takeaway here is that you can kill animals and still be a girlie girl. Here’s another: “Some girls play with dolls…REAL girls go hunting!” (A fishing version is also available.) This has something in common with the homework slogan–a kind of pride-building psychology that says Dolls? Loser. Killing animals? Winner. Let’s not forget Sarah Palin’s “Real women hunt moose” bag, an indication, perhaps, that some people never outgrow their need for the ego-massaging reassurance that they’re the real deal. The rest of us? Pathetic posers.

Perhaps the most appalling shirt of all was the one I saw while rushing through a big-box department store a few weeks ago: “Don’t mess with me–my daddy’s a HUNTER” (find it here). Seriously, is that a threat…of gun violence? Exactly how desperate is the hunting industry to win over the hearts and minds of kids?

It’s no secret that state agencies and national groups are engaged in a serious push to recruit new youth hunters as adult numbers decline. In Vermont: Youth Weekends for spring turkey, waterfowl, and deer. In Oregon: The Mentored Youth Hunt program, a “try before you buy” opportunity for unlicensed hunting without passing hunter education. In Florida: The Youth Hunting Program, whose first stated goal is to preserve Florida’s hunting heritage. In Montana, kids are handed their first license at no cost.

A Montana state legislator who’s also an outfitter sponsored a bill in 2013 to lower the hunting age to nine (it’s currently 12), allowing mentored hunting for three years before taking hunter education. Testified a 40-year hunter ed instructor: “You need to kill this bill before some third grader kills herself or some hunter” (source). The bill died, but not without support from all the major national hunting organizations.

The hunter identity T-shirts are likely an outgrowth of this concerted national effort to recruit ever more and younger hunters. Girls–and women–are obviously a major focus; I’ve recently seen more news features on women hunters than ever before. In articles sometimes heavy on both glamor and bravado, women are killing stocked pheasant on private ranches; others are beauty queen bow hunters out to fill a deer tag. (“With a bow, you have to be stealthy. It makes me feel like a bad ass.”) This particular bad ass goes on to reveal that the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks has  “hired me for the year to attend events and teach girl scouts (sic) how to shoot. … Through my example, I hope to get girls interested in the outdoors.” Perhaps a future version of the Bow Hunter Ann action figure will come with a Girl Scout sit-upon for use in her tree stand.

Then there’s the proposed “youth hunting ambassadors,” the result of a 2012 study on how peer influence affects hunting participation. Commissioned by the Hunting Heritage Trust, the idea here is that it’s kids themselves who’ll chat up their friends about the awesomeness of hunting. Check out page xix of the study’s Executive Summary for an “overview of opportunities” designed to win over the 51% who questioned the acceptability of hunting, and the 46% who held a negative opinion of it (of the latter, 16% simply oppose hunting; 65% are turned off by killing animals).

Yes, the killing does give one pause. This year’s obligatory youth hunting story in our local paper featured a photo of a 12-year-old girl at the check-in station clutching the side of dad’s pickup truck while considering the deer she’d killed, the doe’s slit-open abdomen gaping at the camera. The pre-teen, sporting bright blue nail polish and numerous rings, told the reporter, “It was good, but it was sad too. This was my first deer and it’s hard to kill something, but I’m pretty happy about it too.” Her words echo the very same conflicted emotions of a boy on his first-ever hunt in last year’s iteration (see “Empathy override begins early with gigging and plinking“).

Hunting promoters will say that fewer kids hunt because they have too many other options. Never mentioned is the fact that we know more about animal sentience than at any previous time–and that lots of kids are repelled by hurting and killing other thinking, feeling beings. This explains attempts to lower hunting ages: as children grow, so do their empathy and moral concern for animals.

Hunting won’t disappear next week or next year, but self-serving T-shirt slogans can be countered with appeals to empathy, justice, and the benefits of a compassionate diet. Words are the mightiest of weapons, so let’s keep reminding kids, their parents, and anyone who’ll listen that sentient animals–all of us–just want to live their lives and pursue their interests. Like us, animals are individuals, and while it might be hard (in the words of our pre-teen hunter) to kill something, it’s even harder to kill someone.