The Rational Hunter

View from the North

A little behind on this, but I want to welcome two new members to the blog, Mark Richards and Dave Lyon. Mark and Dave are co-chairs of the Alaskan chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and both are heavily involved in conservation efforts in that state. (You can read a bit more about them if you click on their names in the side bar.) Despite its image as the last American frontier, Alaska is beginning to feel the pressures of overexploitation and development that has more or less depleted the wildlife in the lower 48 states. Consequently, this is an important time in the history of conservation and there are a lot of open questions about whether or not we have learned our lessons. (Though, as this National Geographic article makes clear, this is doubtful.)

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Some Changes

Owing to the difficulty of writing enough to keep the Rational Hunter in new material, I am going to develop it as a group blog with some other like-minded folks.

Toward that end, I would like to welcome two new authors.

First, my friend and colleague, Jeff Lockwood. Jeff is an entemologist by training, but a philosopher by disposition. His book Grasshopper Dreaming, is a fascinating mediation on the complex issues surrounding human-nature interaction as seen through the lens of his experience as a field entemologist. Other books of note include: Locust  and Prairie Soul. Although Jeff is not a hunter himself, he noted over lunch today that there is more than a passing resemblance between pest control and hunting as both involve the taking of lives for the sake of food procurement (a point also made to good effect by Ted Kerasote in his excellent book Bloodties).

I would also like to welcome Mark Kingwell. Mark is a philosopher by training, but a flyfisher by disposition. Along with a host of scholarly work in philosophy, Mark has penned a fine work on fishing, Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life. The book, by Mark's own reckoning, is not about fishing--but I have personally gleaned some fishing insights from it nonetheless.

Welcome aboard, guys!