Cyd Zeigler spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Maine, where deer hunting was on the tongues of all the locals. After a conversation with a hunting gay friend in Manhattan a week before, Cyd was left wondering why do so few gay people hunt; It’s got to be more than just the hideous orange jackets hunters wear so they don’t shoot each other.
on Dec 2nd, 2008 at 12:21 am
I am surprised and pleased w/this Cyd. I took you to be such a life long urbanite. I should pay more attention. I guess there are ‘mos out there that hunt and fish [ I see a few online
] but I grew up in Central NY and have lived in the Pac.NW 20 years and most all my buds are straight ’cause they hunt and fish steelhead and salmon like I do. None of them could ever cook worth a damn either LOL
I am not a red neck or neanderthal. I am a wildlife biologist/forest ecologist, work for Dept. of Interior (near as I know I am the only ‘mo) and myself and most of my close colleges and peers (straight) hunt and have Ph.D.s (from pretty f’in good schools too). Most folks that hunt grew up rural, maybe on farms like I did, and death is a way of life and business on a farm. Animals are a commodity. Matter of fact most farmers (dairy) dont have time to hunt and don’t get “it”. I also hunt upland birds and waterfowl. I have never met another ‘mo who still gets up to go out to hunt (birds) who wouldn’t rather spend time out partying on the weekend LOL. Don’t get me wrong I like to party. Or, they lost their taste for hunting and it doesnt appeal to them which is just fine. But, when I have a party and my freezers full of elk/game, all my ‘mo buddies show up for grilled salmon fillets, elk steaks , smoked goose breast and home brewed beer. We all have good taste for chow I guess. Cheers guys.
on Dec 2nd, 2008 at 12:33 am
Oh, shoot, I forgot. Cudos for the photo safari aspect. Many of my peers/colleagues and buds shoot wildlife photography primarily. Some hunt and many did and dont anymore (proximity and family obligations). In my generation (1962) in the environ. profession all us guys/gals were mostly farm kids and hunter/fisherman. Now the kids coming up are back country skiers, rock and ice dudes/gals.
on Dec 2nd, 2008 at 7:53 am
I am pleased to hear that there are other gays out there who enjoy hunting as much as I do. I grew up in Alabama around hunting communities and now live in Virginia after retiring from the Air Force. The hunting is good in Virginia, though the deer are much smaller due to much of their habitat and food sources being depleted by over-growth and over-building on our part in Virginia.
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Well some of those guys in the Cabela’s webstore and catalog are pretty handsome. You should check them out.
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I despise hunting as a sport. It seems sadistic to kill for the fun of it, when it isn’t born out of need for food.
I suppose I’m more at peace if what’s hunted gets actually eaten; but even then, why kill other animals if you have food readily available at the supermarket? It seems barbaric.
Oh, and concerning the comments about education and professions: It was only a few years ago that the scientific and academic communities still harbored rabid homophobia and sexism (and many sectors still do). Having a degree does not legitimize behavior.
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I totally agree. Hunting is not a kind sport. I grew up in Northern Maine, the son of a lumberjack, and I remember my father hunting and I still remember a scene, when I was about 3, of seven dead does hanging outside, on some sort of gallows. I never went hunting. As a boy, i lied to my friends saying I had killed some rabbits with my bow and arrow. I never liked guns, but I was an excellent marksman, and won a trophy for being the best at an NRA summer camp. I had more of a love of bows and arrows. I did use to think about hunting with them, but I never did. I am a Buddhist and I don’t hunt, or go fishing, or eat lobster or mussels. I wish I had more compassion in me and that I could stop eating meat all together, but I eat meat, I just cannot kill it myself—or ask others to do it for me. I don’t know about being gay or not, has anything to do with it, but as a boy I went fishing every day. It’s just a matter of being sensitized to being kind to animals. That is what has to be developed. And not just deer, moose, etc., but to flies, insects, butterflies. I guess as a boy I also believed in Buddhism and I thought that killing animals was really barbaric. If you need to do it to eat, well, that’s one reason for doing. Just going out for sport, well, it is not for me.
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Oh, I saw the YouTube feature. That guy is silly, using innuendo to make negative comments about his gay siblings, even though he admits being gay himself. I don’t know what that makes him—maybe just a gay-spirited hunter?
Maybe the real reason gay men don’t go hunting is because they don’t feel they have to prove themselves like other men. One of the nicest times I ever had was playing with the heterosexual symbols of “male” identity, like cigars and cowboy hats, military uniforms and posturing. But they are just toys, I don’t take them seriously—no more so than I did with the toy trucks and fire wagons I played with as a boy. The fact is that most gay men just don’t feel they have to prove that they possess both male and female energies: “they are comfortable,” as the French say, “in their skins.”
My dad, whose idea of having a good time meant going into town and picking a fight with the police department in my home town, had to prove that he was a man in a fight. I guess hunting might have had the same effect of building confidence in him.
Maybe that is what hunting is: a confidence builder for men and women who lack it are lacking in self-confidence. That would explain why they shoot at defenseless animals.
on Dec 4th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Rangdrol, this stereotypical, presumptuous analysis of people you haven’t even met won’t help your case.
Some people do it out of routine, not because they feel a need to prove something. They just enjoy the sense of tradition and communion that the ritual affords them.
I think the better explanation is that depending on what view of animals is instilled in a person, they will be likely/unlikely to hunt. I believe my early exposure to animals in the house– and my mother being an animal lover, picking up stray animals– influenced my take. Different experiences produce different outlooks.
on Dec 5th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I’ve known a number of gay hunters — enough to know that they tend to keep a low profile in the “community.” They’re very aware that hunting is not politically correct with a lot of our people. For example, I used to know a group of Midwest deer hunters who went down to east Tennessee every fall, to camp on Lee Lawrence’s farm for a week or so and hunt in the area. (And if you knew the gay scene in east Tennessee, you knew who Lee Lawrence was.)
Don’t take my comments as “a defense of hunting.” They’re not meant to be. I despise people who kill animals for fun….they do exist, though they’re in the minority among hunters. These are people who might kill people for fun as well.
But I don’t object to the traditional type of sport hunting as long as it’s done legally and skillfully, and the animals are killed humanely. With deer overpopulating in some parts of the country, and the natural predators destroyed by us, the human hunter actually does the job of the wolf and the mountain lion, in terms of keeping deer numbers trimmed down so they don’t destroy forests. The laws of nature say that the animal’s population has to be kept in balance with its food supply.
The real issue here is much bigger than just being “pro hunting” or “anti hunting.” There’s a wide gap between the general sensibilities of GLBT hunters and GLBT anti-hunters. People who hunt, gay or straight, usually have rural roots of some sort. Often they grew up in families or communities where most people are comfortable with firearms. They may even grow up on farms, where people are used to the idea of killing animals for food.
That’s how I grew up…on a ranch, with a .22 rifle in my hand for target plinking. I never hunted, but my dad sometimes did. So my family not only got an elk for the table every fall, we routinely killed steers and chickens and turkeys for the table. I’ve whopped the heads off my share of chickens. So I know the mentality.
Gay and lesbian hunters tend to be country boys and girls, whereas the LGBT people who hate hunting tend to be city people. The gap reflects the enormous preponderance of urban attitude and urban experience that has formed the “gay community” — the fact that we tend to leave those outlying communities and collect in city and suburban enclaves everywhere.
Americans who grow up in urbia or suburbia have a very hard time establishing any sort of mental connection to rural life, nature, wild animals, farm animals, guns and any legitimate attraction to hunting. They’re so disconnected that they can eat a bucket of Kentucky Fried chicken without thinking that several chickens had to die in order for them to enjoy that meal. It’s all very foreign, even frightening, to them. That’s not their fault…it’s just the way they were raised.
Indeed, the gap is so wide that gay hunters — and the lesbian hunter or two that I’ve known — pretty much find that they’re wasting their time trying to explain themselves to the other side. So they keep it to themselves. That’s why they’re not very visible on the GLBT social landscape.
on Dec 5th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Great comments and insight, Patrica - thank you!!
on Dec 10th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Our community can be rather inflexible when the time comes to apply “diversity”.
on Dec 10th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
The thing that impressed me the most about the audio was the humanity of the speaker. I thought it was really impressive.
on Jan 11th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I think Patricia’s comments are right on. I am a gay guy who hunts, but I was raised in a hunting household in a rural area.
Gay men (and women) tend to move to the cities or large suburbs to meet one another. Its harder to meet in small town America.
City and suburban folk tend to view hunting as a parriah activity (even ‘tho their hamburgers and chicken mcnuggets were raised and killed in a far less humane manner). I don’t bring it up in my conversation insofar as I live and work in a highly-populated suburb where few seem to appreciate hunting. I guess I am part of the problem of making the activity seem taboo.
Anyhow, I am glad Cyd brought up the issue (and you do look good in orange Cyd).