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You should never name an animal when you are just about to kill it. Particularly if it’s beautiful. Or pregnant. Or doe eyed. That’s a lesson that I was taught when I was still in my teens and seconds away from shooting my first stag.
This memory came back to me this week, what with February the 15th being the end of the hind stalking season and the media being full of stories about the new poor of our nation being so hungry they could happily eat a horse, but would just rather not be told it was beef.
I admired those who made this confession on the radio interviews. Truly most of us who are lucky enough not to be hungry in most of our days are shameful when we fail to confront the reality of what we are endorsing when we buy meat to eat that has been produced commercially in many of the cancerous middens that pass as farms in so many parts of Europe.
And we who stalk deer are even more despicable when we don’t confront the reality that we kill because we enjoy it and not for the ridiculous reasons we so often hide behind.
I remember once forgetting that instruction about not naming the animal you are about to kill. It was on Knoydart and I was high on a hill just about to kill a stag I called Ruari as I crept in past his wives. Don’t name him, my stalking instructor had told me 30 years earlier. Don’t look into its eyes and wonder if he has had his lunch, or that happy looking hind, just shoot the beast and shoot well. His heart will be the size of any orange. Split it for consumption, its the best favour you can do him. The deer have to be killed to keep numbers in line with food stocks. Just do it as humanely as you can.
Of course this essay won’t make me popular with SR readers. It’s not fashionable to really think about what we are doing when we eat meat. We would rather our sheep meat came on a polystyrene plate with some nice polythene covering it and not think about it having its throat ripped open after 16 hours in a dusty lorry.
We would rather not confront the reality that the battery hen we buy for four pounds has lived in a space the size of an A4 pad and has never been able to stretch her wings or that such a large proportion of our beef is now reared in sheds and using so much energy that we are eating our way into even more climate change. Truly we in the west have disgusting table manners.
And as for the business of people paying money to shoot deer, well that is far too disgusting to ever confront. So let’s confront it. I remember how excited I was when I was about to shoot Ruari. You could never say that I hadn’t worked hard to get my pleasure. I had been up at dawn practicing on the target, zeroing the rifle so that I could almost have taken a single slice out of that orange. It wasn’t some silly family heirloom I was using but a plastic mounted killing stick. Nowadays they can produce rifles so precise that they can hit a bottle at 400 yards every time. Or a man at half a mile.
I’ve shot dozens of animals in my time, and never wounded one. They have all been dead before they hit the heather, and the first day I injure an animal will be the day I give up stalking. By eight I was in the woods, climbing almost vertically and wondering if I was going to be sick in the heather so fast was my companion taking the pace. If you had asked me then I would have said that I hated stalking and would rather let Ruari live.
It’s bizarre the feelings you often have as you climb to kill. One of Scotland’s greatest stalkers, a man called Iain Thornber, once confessed that he had dreamed that he had gone to heaven and all the deer he had ever shot had lined up to greet him and had asked him in Chorus ‘Well?’. Well indeed. Is it morally justifiable to shoot a deer, and more painful to confront, is it morally justifiable to gain pleasure from the experience?
When he first heard Ruari roar, my companion threw his head back and roared, and at the noise I felt something ghastly within me respond. And so did Ruari. It took us an hour to get near him. An hour of tasting the wind, and wriggling through burns, and pressing our bellies into soft svagnum.
Finally one of us roared. I’m not proud of the way I felt in those final seconds as Ruari charged towards me. I was being held by the feet, almost dangling off a rock, longing, oh just longing, for him to keep going so that his tender heart could fill my scope and I could rip it apart with a sliver of Birmingham alloy. I wouldn’t claim I was being noble or athletic or even in any way commendable. Nor would I claim that I was doing it to keep the deer numbers in line with food stocks. I was doing it because I needed to.
We humans are made to hunt. There will always be wars. There will always be hunters. It’s repulsive, but it’s true. There will be those of you who will be appalled at this essay. I can so very easily understand your feelings. Most of the year I share them. But sometimes on an October day, well, things change. Is it morally justifiable to gain pleasure from hunting? Probably not. But I tell you something strange. I am never more serene in my soul than after a day’s stalking.
Heaven knows what that’s all about. Something awful probably, and I’m not in any way proud of it. But it’s a rat I need to feed and whilst there are deer that morally need shooting, I won’t feel too bad at feeding that rat.
We are not rational beings, we are human beings.
Pity about Ruari though. Pity about me.
Maxwell MacLeod is an author and journalist
