“Murderer! You’re a murderer!”
That is what my French mother shouts down the phone line – right after I tell her I had grouse for dinner.
“Grouse?” she gasps.
“Yes,” I say, using my nonchalant voice. “We went hunting and shot two of them. Plump ones. I braised them in a mushroom broth and served them with stewed apples and potato mash.”
She shrieks.
“I can’t believe you killed an animal!”
“Mom! Didn’t you just make lamb tagine?”
Pause.
“Yes, I cooked a Moroccan tagine with raisins, green olives and a lot of cinnamon,” she replies defensively. “I made it with lamb I bought at the farmers’ market. What’s your point?”
“My point is,” I say, “where do you think that lamb came from? Did it magically appear on your plate?”
It was not a conversation I was going to win, not even with a French woman living in the land of duck foie gras, cured pork sausage and snails – all of which was killed far less humanely than the grouse on my plate.
That is what I was trying to tell Mom: hunting may be morally complex, but it is a far more honest and sustainable way to consume meat than the factory-farmed products most people eat.
I am not arguing for everyone to go out and hunt their dinner – that would be absurd. But the reflexive disdain for hunters on much of the left feels misplaced.
Let me explain.
If I truly am a murderer, I am not a very vicious one.
I killed my first mule deer on public land in northern Montana at the tail end of a five-hour hunt in frigid temperatures on Thanksgiving. My partner and I had been tracking signs all day – hiking up and down ridges, glassing hillsides with binoculars – until I could not feel my toes.
We were ready to give up when the curious eyes of two does landed on us. With their oversized ears and mile-long eyelashes, they looked dainty and otherworldly, as if they had stepped out of a Grimm fairy tale.
The one in front, maybe 80 yards (73 metres) away, studied me. She had one leg slightly raised, the others rooted in snow, frozen in that split-second decision: flee or stay?
Mule deer are naturally more curious and less skittish than their white-tailed cousins, which gave me a crucial edge. I had one extra heartbeat to steady my breath, nestle the rifle into my shoulder, and count to three while exhaling.
I pulled the trigger. The shot echoed across the ridge. The doe’s knees buckled and she collapsed.
My chest seized – I wanted to give the doe a quick death. I reloaded and fired again, trying to stay steady as adrenaline coursed through my body.
I walked to her, stroked her soft ears and burst into tears.
Looking back, I am not embarrassed by my reaction; it seemed fitting to the gravity of the experience. In that instant – and there is really no other way to describe it – I felt an immense surge of love for that animal.
It reminds me of what the British philosopher Julian Baggini has wondered about modern food gathering: is disgust at meat eating really a sign of a more civilized society, or simply a mark of one that has become detached from the realities of life and death?
My ascent to the world of hunting was not linear.
I moved to the United States 10 years ago, carrying with me the wide-eyed fascination so many French people have for America. I had a slightly embarrassing love for its excess, its swagger, the bigness of it all.
But more than that, it was the land – from the Redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, as the song goes – that felt like freedom for me.
During my first year in New York City, I befriended Caty and Ryan, two journalists recently transplanted from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Everything about their lives struck me as exotic. Their hallway was cluttered with skis, climbing gear and camping equipment that suggested a life lived outdoors. Mountaineering magazines were strewn on the dining table, and a print of Ansel Adams’s celebrated photograph of the high desert hung on their kitchen wall, austere and magnetic.
Soon, Ryan taught me how to fly fish in the rivers of upstate New York – a hobby so quintessentially American I thought it came with its own Yankee passport. Standing in the Beaverkill river, casting in cold thigh-high waters, I was enthralled. When I caught my first rainbow trout, I held its iridescent body underwater and gasped at its beauty. I removed the hook from its mouth and let it go.
That winter, Ryan prepared a meal that shifted everything I thought I knew about hunting. Over candlelight, he brought out quails he had shot that fall in his native North Dakota. They had been braised for five hours in apple cider and sage.
Silence fell on the table as we ate. Each bite came with the appreciation of what it took for it to reach our plates: a punishing cross-country road trip followed by freezing mornings traipsing through fields with Magnolia, his trusty hunting Labrador, by his side.
This food carried a story that was a far cry from the plastic-wrapped slabs of meat stacked in supermarket coolers, and far more interesting.
Hunting has always had a terrible reputation in France, especially in affluent cities. In the court of public opinion – especially on the political left, where my heart is firmly anchored – hunters are viewed with suspicion, if not outright contempt.
It is not without reason. Hunting has long been associated with a retrograde political party formerly called Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Tradition, a right-leaning group that seemed to be populated by portly men who sported mustaches and red cheeks, and had an inclination to drink wine before noon. Now, hunting still only makes headlines when accidents happen.
So perhaps it is no surprise the sport is in decline: perception matters. In France, about 58% of hunting permit holders are aged 55 or older, and only 3% are women. In the UK, where I lived for eight years, hunting is mostly seen as an upper-class pursuit, and the lingering stain of fox hunting makes it hard to separate the sport in the public eye from cruelty.
But in the US, hunting is more widely practiced across groups – even across party lines. Kamala Harris’s former running mate, Tim Walz, for example, is a dedicated wild turkey hunter in Minnesota.
In Missoula, where I live – a blue dot in a red state – my hunting community includes conservationists, outdoor enthusiasts, university lecturers and, more prosaically, people simply looking to fill the freezer. There are plenty of Maga types too, I am sure – they are just not in my social circles. Native tribes across the state, who overwhelmingly skew Democrat, hold hunting rights for both big and small game on their lands; their ancestral foodways are considered sacred. More women than ever before are joining the ranks.
I am one of them. So is my friend DeAnna Bublitz, who wanted to be more intentional with her meat consumption. “I figured that if I couldn’t pull the trigger myself, I should probably stop eating meat,” she says. But entering the hunting world dominated by older men felt intimidating. “I was lucky to have a female friend who is a top-notch hunter and willing to loan me gear and mentor me. That made all the difference,” she says. “There are a lot of barriers for folks who didn’t grow up hunting – cost and mentorship are two of the biggest in my mind.”
The experience transformed her. Her mentor not only taught her practical skills but also helped her process the complicated emotions that come with killing an animal. Eventually, DeAnna started Deer Camp, a free gear library for hunters, and now mentors new hunters herself – including me.
“The folks I see expressing interest want to eat healthier, more ethical meat and they’re a more diverse crowd – often younger, with a lot of women and people from the LGBTQIA+ community. But those same groups may not feel safe going into the woods alone or with a stranger. How we depict hunting in media, and who we choose to represent it, can go a long way in either making people feel welcome or shutting them out. The experiences you can have out there are incredible, though – fostering new friendships alongside a sense of stewardship for the land.”
In other words, if you are concerned with the health of our ecosystems, maybe – just maybe – I could change your mind.
Perhaps this is where I should address the elephant in the room: firearms.
In the US, thanks to the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act, taxes on firearms and ammunition are funneled directly into wildlife conservation and habitat restoration. Over the decades, it has generated more than $15bn.
Hunters are required to take a gun safety course, which means we start out more educated about risks than the broader gun-owning population. While I would love to call myself an archer, which arguably demands more skills, most of us use rifles: they are accurate and they tend to make for a quicker death.
Still, I feel deep ambivalence about firearms. Gun culture unsettles me, and the proliferation of semi-automatic weapons in particular terrifies me. I cannot imagine a world where assault-style rifles belong in civilian hands – let alone with 18-year-olds.
I often think of Australia, a country with plenty of big-game hunters, where a single mass shooting in 1996 prompted sweeping reform led by a conservative government. That policy shift ended mass shootings (and firearm suicides dropped, too). It is the kind of success story I wish we could claim here.
What makes it harder to stomach is how far the NRA has drifted. Once an organization rooted in hunting and safety, it has become a cynical lobby that trades in fear and division.
Take Ryan Busse, a longtime gun executive and keen hunter. He quit his role after watching the gun lobby embrace far-right politics to make a buck – then ran for governor of Montana last year (he lost). Writing in the Guardian, he argued that “it’s up to responsible gun owners and others who care about our country to speak out against [the gun lobby’s] egregiously irresponsible behavior and in favor of commonsense laws like universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders”.
Stories like his underline what often gets lost: for many hunters, firearms are a means to an end, not an identity.
I often think of this: hunters and vegetarians – both judged by others, both right – are more alike than either would admit.
It is a complex comparison, but consider this: both think deeply about what they eat. They spend a lot of time pondering food ethics: good quality sustenance, preferably sourced locally. Both care about ecosystems and how to preserve them for future generations. Both worry about animal welfare.
And yet in western society, veganism holds the moral high ground. Never mind that many plant-based products come shrink-wrapped in plastic and shipped across oceans. The ingredients in vegan snacks – soy, palm oil, cacao, quinoa, coconut, bananas – are rarely local; they rely on extractive systems, exploitative labor and long-distance freight. Large-scale monocropping for soy, corn and wheat depletes soil and accelerates biodiversity loss.
This is not a purity test. All I am saying is that eating ethically today is nearly impossible – vegan or not.
But most wild game meat? It is sustainable, when conservation practices are observed. And I would argue that it is the most ethical meat one can consume.
“Hunters are removing animals, that’s true,” Rebecca Mowry, a wildlife biologist with Montana fish, wildlife and parks, told me. “But they also tend to be extremely passionate about those animals, and deeply invested in making sure they’re still here for future generations.”
Each year, state biologists like her set hunting quotas to address overpopulation. Hunters then pay for licenses – or enter lotteries for tags – and those fees directly support wildlife management programs.
This system exists for a reason: unchecked animal populations can cause real damage. Deer and hogs, for example, can overgraze and destroy entire ecosystems.
In France, the National Forestry Office warns that more than 50% of state-owned forests are ecologically out of balance due to exploding populations of deer, roe deer and wild boar. In Texas, feral hogs are so invasive they are costing millions in the agriculture industry – this very newspaper called it “an aporkalypse”.
Mowry says hunting “is a very valuable tool to help manage ecosystems, for multiple reasons”. Without enough predators or healthy migration corridors, she explained, big game populations can balloon beyond what the land can support. “We’re not living in untouched wilderness anymore,” she says. “With all the development on winter range, we’ve altered the balance – and hunting helps restore it.”
In his book How the World Eats, Baggini, the British philosopher, describes the Hadza, Tanzania’s last hunter-gatherer society. “They move with the seasons,” he writes, “taking from the natural environment only what they need to survive, leaving it able to replenish itself – so that any extraction of resources can go on indefinitely.”
That, Baggini observes, is the very definition of sustainability.
Thosh Collins, an Indigenous health educator, author and experienced hunter, echoed this when he told me: “When we harvest, process and cook our food, we’re literally taking the land into our bodies.” His family also seasonally forages on their land in the Arizona desert and grows traditional foods such as corn, bean and squash.
For Collins, meat carries spirit – not just calories. “From the Indigenous perspective, a hunter possesses the ability to transform death into nourishment,” he says. “One of the most fascinating paradoxes of our lives is that life feeds off of death. Life energy crosses from one form to another. No one person is exempt from this. If you’re living, you’re taking up space from other sentient life forms trying to thrive.”
His O’odham ancestors never separated sustenance from reverence, and neither does he. After a kill, he performs a giving-of-thanks ritual to help send the animal’s spirit on. Nothing about the act is casual; everything is deliberate.
Part of what makes a hunter successful is the ability to know the habitat they are in: you have to learn to read the land, understand how changing seasons affect species, and how fires, droughts and climate shifts shape entire ecosystems.
Which is why I do not know any group – aside from Native tribes and biologists – more attuned to the health of elk herds, the decline of pronghorns, or the migration patterns of Canada geese than hunters.
Yes, hunters kill animals. But Mowry, the Montana biologist, also points out hunters “are largely responsible for some of the most successful wildlife restorations in the country”.
How? They fight for public land access – and helped win a political battle earlier this year. They campaign for clean water, wildlife corridors and the removal of barbed-wire fences that kill mule deer and antelope. They report poachers. They fill out wildlife surveys that provide essential data to state officials. Some groups lobby against encroaching development; others build education programs. Many donate meat to food banks. They mentor newcomers, volunteer their time and skills, and open their tables to others.
In other words, hunters do not just understand interconnectedness – they live it.
Can we all say the same?
After seven years in New York, I moved out west to Montana with my partner Ben, an enthusiastic outdoorsman. The move to the Rockies was a culture shock: I left skyscrapers for snow-capped mountains, $23 cocktails in Manhattan for sticky floors in boisterous dive bars.
It was also the perfect terrain to learn how to hunt my own meat.
The learning curve was steep. For months, Ben patiently fielded my endless questions: how do you follow a game trail? When do bucks rut – and why do their lymph nodes swell? What’s an elk herd’s migration pattern? Should I worry about chronic wasting disease?
I had to learn how to move in the woods: slowly, methodically, discerning broken branches, bedding areas or fresh droppings. I practiced reading wind direction using a neat little indicator powder, studied how to scan hillsides using binoculars, and mastered the art of opening snacks without making any noise.
Still, I was afraid I would not be able to carry the responsibility of taking an animal’s life. I had to remind myself that by my standards eating a burger at McDonald’s or chicken strips at my local bar was a worse choice.
I studied and passed the hunter safety course. I joined Venery, a women’s hunting group, and spent time with them at the shooting range, familiarizing myself with a tool that until then had been foreign and terrifying to me: a .308 Winchester rifle. Learning with other women gave me the confidence I needed to later go in the field, where I had both amazing and dispiriting experiences. Hunting, after all, is never a promise — it’s unpredictable, and often hard.
To kill is to bear witness to the cycle of life. No longer can you outsource the unpleasantness – not to Whole Foods, not to Lidl, not even to your local farmer. Digging your fingers through the entrails, you take ultimate responsibility for your own sustenance.
I hesitate to say this, but it is an elating feeling: with it comes a sense of self-reliance long forgotten, especially when everything you would ever want can be delivered to you overnight by underpaid delivery workers.
Hunting is the opposite of that: it is patient, demanding, gnarly. It comes with smells, textures and colors rarely seen by anyone eating commercial meat.
It is also new language: as you spend days climbing hills and crossing marshes for a chance to complete the task, you live in the present.
Collins, the O’odham hunter, told me that his sister is a former vegan. Now, she “will only eat the meat my dad and I hunt because she knows we did it with a good heart and mind and that a ceremony was performed for the buck to send his spirit to rejoin his relatives”.
For Collins, hunting is part of a broader circle of sustenance passed down from his ancestors. It’s not just about the meat, but about gratitude, ceremony and a sense of duty.
“Foodways is about doing things on the land with people you love, for people you love,” he said.
These days, I eat far less store-bought meat – though I will admit a weakness for poultry, a whole ethical mess of its own. Instead, we often have elk backstraps, ground venison and summer sausage – all processed at home, wrapped in butcher paper adorned with handwritten details and the processing date on it, stacked deep in my freezer chest.
Last fall, I killed a young whitetail buck. Ben and I butchered it in two hours, under the sun filtering through the ponderosa pines. We took with us tenderloins, backstraps, shanks, legs, with leftovers going to scavengers – nothing going to waste.
Back home, I marinated the deer’s heart – a perfectly tender piece of meat – in a mixture of soy, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, thyme and vinegar. I grilled it alongside a pile of red peppers, zucchinis and onions, and served it with buttered sourdough bread. My golden retriever, Billie, happy to act as my sous chef, ate the scraps.
Forest to plate, in under 48 hours.
