Recently, I went on an out-of-state hunt with an outfitter, and I killed a nice tom. When it was time for the hunters in camp to leave, a guide told us that it was difficult to bring the whole bird on the plane and he would bone out the meat for us. I asked for the breast, drumsticks, and thighs. Everyone else just wanted the breast meat. Like the others, I took the beard and spurs home but left the tail and wings.

As we picked up our meat, I looked behind the cooler and saw a large pile of dead turkeys, most of them missing only their breasts, being loaded into the trash. It made me sick to my stomach.

I wanted to say something to the other hunters for wasting so much meat, but I didn’t think it was my place. After all, I wasn’t taking home the whole carcass either. I also began to question myself for leaving the wings and tail simply because I didn’t want to carry them on the plane.

So how much is enough when it comes to making use of game? Is it ever acceptable for a hunter to discard edible or usable parts of an animal he’s killed?

ANSWER:

There was a time when fish and game were so abundant—or we all thought so, anyway—that hunters and anglers would pose for pictures in front of what they had killed or caught, then leave the carcasses to rot. Back then, a lot of animals and fish were used merely for compost. None of us, we hope, would do this today. We have all learned one of the hard lessons of conservation: If you plunder the resource today, then you will likely return to barren streams and fields next season. (This is not to say that overharvesting is the sole—or even the primary—cause of low wildlife populations. Habitat loss is almost always the chief reason there.)

Anglers have, of course, learned to practice catch-and-release fishing even where it is not the law. The results of this change in thinking can be easily seen on what were once put-and-take streams that now hold stable and healthy populations of wild fish. Fishing tournaments, which once encouraged anglers to bring dead fish to the dock, are now conducted on a catch-and-release basis. Guides in places like the Florida Keys encourage anglers not to bring in their actual catch for mounting but to take measurements, instead, so a mount can be constructed to the actual dimensions of the fish.

Hunters, obviously, do not have this option.

The hunt, as we all know, is not strictly an unemotional “harvesting�?of animals. Hunters are not farmers, and we do not, in Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset’s famous formulation, hunt solely to kill. We kill in order to have hunted. And at the end of a successful hunt, we are left with something dead and the question of what to do with it. The ancient reason for the hunt, embedded deep in our genetic memory, was to eat. (And sometimes to prevail over something that was preying on us.) When you eat what you have killed, a circle is closed. You can get metaphysical about this, if you want, or you can simply say, “This is the way it has always been and the way it ought to be.�?Either way, most sportsmen recognize that they owe more to the traditions and rituals of the hunt than to simply shoot and shovel. Ernest Hemingway, who was a noted hunter, once said that when you have done the moral thing, you feel good afterward. Most hunters don’t feel good about killing something and then letting the meat rot. Furthermore, virtually all states have “wanton waste�?laws on the books that prescribe, for example, just how much meat off that trophy elk you must pack out of the backcountry.

So…what about those turkeys? Assuming you did not shoot more than your limit, leaving those partially butchered carcasses is not going to affect the health of the flock. But it did, obviously, leave you feeling qualms. It might have been better if you’d known that the outfitter made the meat available to people who could make use of it. Deer hunters across the country donate venison to organizations that make use of it by, for instance, feeding the homeless. The Virginia branch of Hunters for the Hungry provided almost 20 tons of meat for this purpose during the 2001�?002 season. The whitetail deer population has reached levels where killing that might have once seemed excessive, even wanton, is no threat to the herd. Still, hunters, through this program, acknowledge that something more is at stake here.

For ethical sportsmen, then, the principle should come down to this: Make the effort. Even when it is not a question of conservation or the law, it is still a matter of respect. Hunting is not bowling. It is not just a matter of numbers. If it were, none of us would care so much.

SPECIAL THANKS TO FIELD AND STREAM MAGAZINE