Recently, a hunter from Kalispell killed a large bison in the Yellowstone area. A picture of the bison and the hunter was featured in The Daily Inter Lake. “Wow, good!... Great!... Fantastic!” That was my initial reaction. But as I read the article, the hunter felt it necessary to make a half step apology about the accomplishment for public consumption.

“I don’t find a thrill in killing animals. To me, it is a harvest.”

OK, so now picture this: North America 3,000 years ago. Hundreds of bison are stampeding towards a cliff. They turn, but it’s too late and a large part of the herd plunges over the edge. They impact the earth with enough force to actually shake the ground. Injured bison are dispatched with spears and clubs. The dried meat will be enough to keep the tribe through winter. Since starvation is not an acceptable alternative to survival, hunting by all means necessary was about acquiring enough food and clothing to ensure survival. Even so, a deep a realization of dependency on theses animals balanced the symbiotic needs of both hunter and the hunted to keep the prairies burned and the bison herds healthy.

So was this a bison “harvest,” or a slaughter? Since I tend to believe Native Americans would not be silly enough to sit around the fire telling bison “harvest” stories — it’s safe to say it was a slaughter; a necessary slaughter. And yeah, they were thrilled about having thousands of pounds of dried meat prepared for winter.

Fast forward now to a “Biggie Burger” restaurant in 2014. They have fast food chain stores all over the globe, employ thousands of workers and slaughter millions of cows annually to keep up with demand. A guilt-ridden American man sheepishly pulls up to the drive-through window to order lunch like he is ordering adult entertainment. He is indicative of thousands of other guilt-ridden Americans just like him. He is hungry, but because he has been incrementally conditioned by a culture disconnected from reality, he is also feeling conflicted about modern meat consumption.

“Hi, welcome to Biggie Burger, may I take your order?”

“Ah yeah, thanks... ah... Is it OK to ah... um, HARVEST a Biggie Cheese Burger?... and Oh! I’d like to HARVEST some bacon on that, too, please, if that’s all right.”

So OK, nobody does that in America today and nobody thinks that way... at least not yet. But then why do hunters go out of their way to say they “harvested” a deer, an elk or a turkey? As a hunter, I am really tired of hunters using the word “harvest” to describe what we supposedly all do. Humans have been killing animals for food for tens of thousands of years. If I kill a deer while hunting, I celebrate the kill. I make no apologies. I killed a deer. I didn’t harvest anything. There is no guilt or shame. I am not conflicted in my soul. I hunt because life is short, liberty is under attack and the pursuit of happiness isn’t getting any easier.

I was an organic vegetable farmer for five years and never harvested a thing that I didn’t plant. Wild game is not planted like squash, therefore it cannot be “harvested.” You can’t reap what you don’t sow. Even livestock farmers don’t talk about “harvesting” the cows, pigs or chickens they raise. They slaughter them. So why do hunters tip-toe around words when a domesticated cow is raised to slaughter, but an elk is something for us to, um... “harvest”? If you eat meat, it makes no difference. The animal is dead before you cook it.

If you lived in war-torn Syria right now, you would actually be thrilled about killing your neighbor’s cat because it means you won’t be starving. Tomorrow you will need to kill another cat for dinner, if you can find one. (Oh, sorry! Did I say kill a cat? I meant to say harvest a cat, because they are hunted). But God forbid you should harvest a cat anywhere in North America for ANY reason at all, because you will probably serve more time behind bars if caught than a convicted rapist.

Got Mickey? I don’t know about you, but if I set a trap for a mouse, I am totally thrilled to find the little bugger dead in the trap come morning. Wooo-hooo!!! I might even do a little dance in the kitchen called the “dead mouse stomp.” Being thrilled over a kill is both natural and normal for a hunter, or for an angry mouse trapper with a hole in their breakfast cereal. The animal died and you get to live. It’s that simple. There’s nothing evil or sadistic about it. Well, OK. Doing the dead mouse stomp is kind of questionable and probably not ethical either if you have small children. Ask your therapist if doing the dead mouse stomp is right for you. Side effect can include dizziness, euphoria or sudden delirium.

So why do we place different values on different animals by using different words to talk about death when we kill an animal for legitimate reasons? The modern notion of “harvesting” game is a sappy worn-out apologetic to placate anthropomorphic public opinion, as if we hunters are somehow simultaneously tricking ourselves and the public at the same time into believing that killing a wild animal is just an inocuous bloodless event by using the H-word. Killing is anything but that. Hunters need to stop catering to non-hunters who do not share our traditions or heritage. Hunters, why mince words when you kill an animal for meat with a weapon if you don’t mince words about “harvesting” a cow or a pig with a pocket full of dollars? You didn’t plant that!

Hunting is an intrinsically spiritual activity. It requires killing to stay alive. Making a killing wasn’t always as easy as a modern bison hunt. Sometimes it was the hunter who got killed or injured. As hunters, we understand that our divine place in the system is often tenuous at best, a system that we have ALWAYS been part of.

But there is hope for confused hunters living in harvest land. Yes, it is possible for you to mature as a hunter! And yes, you can change and even (gasp!) evolve from a “harvester” into a real hunter. Start today by repeating this simple pledge: “I am a hunter, not a harvester. I kill animals and eat them. I am a hunter not a farmer. I do not plant animals in the spring to harvest them later in the fall.”

If you repeat this pledge at least once every day after brushing, I promise that you won’t feel even half as bad about yourself as you do now about killing an elk or deer by the time hunting season rolls around.

Heck, you’ll feel so good about yourself, you can probably even fire your therapist!

Seymour is a resident of Kalispell.