Reclaiming my hunting heritage
Originally Published on Dare to Detour
Running my fingers through her hair, I thanked her and expressed my gratitude that she gave her life for my family and our sustenance. Her body would be meat in our freezer and would last for months to come. Her hair was soft, her body thick, her legs strong, and what was moments ago a vibrant and active soul, was now a lifeless body on the frozen ground, her hair in my hands. This doe was the first deer I’d ever harvested. I’d witnessed practices of gratitude and how sacred it is to take a life, and now I was living out what I’d learned, creating my own harvest ritual.
My partner in life and in hunting taught me how to butcher her and I made what was perhaps an odd request. I wanted to see and hold her heart. In an effort for greater connection perhaps, or to feel the full weight of taking a life, today, I’m still not sure, but I held her heart in my hands. It was warm and bright red. I don’t remember how long I sat holding her heart, but the curious part of my brain came alive, at the same time that my heart felt heavy with owning the action I had chosen to take.
Moments after I’ve fired a shot, confident that my aim was true, and seeing the animal down, are some of the hardest and heaviest moments I’ve known in this human life. They never get easier. Taking the life of another living being, and the act of choosing to take another living life is many things all at once. The multitude of emotions of each decision is not lost on me.
I remember hearing a gunshot when I was indoors one humid sun-filled summer day in the home I grew up in on the east coast in Pennsylvania. I’d been warned my father would go outside and intentionally shoot the groundhog that had been wreaking havoc in our yard. My eyes gushed tears and I hated the idea of this creature being taken for no good reason. I had a hatred for firearms. I didn’t understand their purpose and because of such instances, I grew up disliking hunting.
Throughout my childhood, my father would leave for a week at a time in the fall to hunt black bears in the Carolinas. He’d share stories about how his father was a hunter and taught him how to hunt. My grandfather was a state trooper. My father grew up hunting with my grandfather and one of his brothers. He’d tell tales of their younger years spent growing up near the creek behind their house, the same creek that I too was growing up near. My father grew up in the house right down the hill from where I then sat, but I only knew my grandmother. I had no real memories of my grandfather, only pictures, as he died from a stroke when I was only a few years old. My grandparents ran a small business on their property to raise mink so they could sell their fur. The act of hunting felt more humane compared with seeing the old metal cages from their business, left in the woods and covered in weeds in between our land and theirs.
A black bear rug hung over the balcony in my childhood home. Another was neatly folded and kept in storage. Both were from harvested black bears my father shot. Fishing rods were set up, ready to go, and stored in our garage along with our tackle boxes. Firearms were hidden throughout our house in case of intruders. My grandmother down the hill from us placed a handmade cautionary sign on her door that read, “Shotguns & Booby Traps.”
On the weekends, my father would take my sister and me fishing which always meant a trip to 7-11 for hot dogs and slurpees afterwards. I went for the experience of fishing, and my sister went for the hot dogs and Slurpees. These early outdoor adventures stuck with me. I know now that these early fishing adventures catching sunfish on bobbers shaped who I am in ways I didn’t know or fully understand back then.
Growing up on the East Coast, I now feel fortunate to have had the outdoors at my fingertips. My mother would let us explore down the trail and throughout the woods behind our house. The trail led to the Neshaminy Creek. Sometimes my sister, neighbors, and childhood friends would spend hours in the water together, living out storylines we created from our vivid imaginations, and catching fish and frogs with our hands. When I think of what freedom looks like, I think of summers spent back the creek and how my independent and adventurous spirit was fostered by my parents letting us explore our own backyard.
When I was 10 years old, my grandparents took the two eldest cousins on an Oregon Trail trip to discover the West. We drove and worked our way through the Dakotas, seeing vast prairie that seemed to be endless and falling in love with seeing rain fall in sheets miles away. We experienced high winds during a scary thunderstorm and the lamp posts in the parking lot of our hotel swayed back and forth. I called my mother for comfort that evening because one of my greatest fears is tornadoes. We visited Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, and we even rode in a covered wagon like the original settlers and homesteaders. That trip formed a seed of hope in me that one day I’d move west. I know now the idea was romanticized and naive but the adventure stuck with me and I told anyone that would listen to my plans for the future.
After college and one term of service with AmeriCorps, I was still unsure of who I wanted to be and what career path I wanted to follow. One day, a relative of a close family friend was visiting and showed me photos from Montana. I remember seeing tons of green, beautiful water, folks in green and yellow wearing Carhartt pants and carrying tools, and I thought - this is it, this is my ticket to the West.
The friend of the family friends had served with the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC) for an 11-month stint and learned how to maintain trails, drive crusty old Suburbans on dirt roads into the backcountry, live outdoors in a tent in all seasons, and overall, shared how incredible and life-changing the experience had been. The following day, I applied to the program. Long story short, MCC hired me and since I already had a year of national service with AmeriCorps under my belt, I was promoted to the position of crew leader.
At the time, I thought the decision was madness because I’d never used a chainsaw nor had I maintained hiking trails. I’d never cut new treads for trails or used hand tools such as cross-cut saws or pulaskis. I’d never managed people in a supervisor capacity, and I wasn’t very familiar with camping, other than being a Girl Scout many moons ago. But, MCC saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. Not only did I learn how to do all of the above and more, but I taught other young adults the same skills I was learning. There’s much I could say here, but the facts are, that I grew immensely and I learned skill sets I otherwise would not have if I hadn’t taken this leap and made the detour across the nation to move to Montana for a second AmeriCorps year.
In my 30s, after living abroad in a mud, grass thatch hut with no water or electricity in Zambia and having served for 27 months with the United States Peace Corps, and after studying peacebuilding for 18 months in Australia, I broke off my engagement in the parking lot of a grocery store in Columbia Falls, Montana. I’d spent 4 years with my fiance in a long-distance relationship from Montana to Australia (yes, more detours – detours upon detours). I moved back to Montana because Montana was and still is the place where I felt the most at home and the greatest sense of belonging, both to people and the natural world.
I’m not certain when the shift occurred and I can’t pinpoint the moment, but I’d been working with farmers, ranchers, and tribal communities, and because of my experiences abroad working with Indigenous Peoples and learning across contexts, I had arrived back in Montana a different person. I could no longer walk into a grocery store without remembering that I’d held a chicken and watched as another Peace Corps volunteer killed it so we could eat meat that evening. I was overwhelmed by the many aisles of food available to me in grocery stores and such places gave me overwhelming anxiety. Life in the United States is abundant, and I recognize the privilege in that statement. People I’d grown to love and know were still in Zambia experiencing an annual hunger season and living in a changing climate with less rain during the rainy season yielding fewer and fewer crops to feed their families. I had learned about connection to place and the very real topic and dangers of people having too much and not enough power. I paid attention to who had it, how much, and how some people used their power to influence others and create change that wasn’t inclusive nor just.
I became curious about what it would mean for me to have a more direct relationship to my food.
Meat wrapped in plastic made me feel icky, lost, and disconnected. I felt excited when I could purchase locally-raised beef and eggs from local people. I felt glimmers of connection when I walked downtown to visit the farmer’s market when my feet were immersed in a cool stream with a fly rod in hand when I went on visits to ranches to learn about regenerative agriculture, fire mitigation practices, and how people in the surrounding community were living out the idea that land is kin.
The path to wanting to learn and becoming a hunter presented itself more clearly when I met my partner. In the sporting space in Montana, I’m what’s known as an adult-onset hunter, which is someone who didn’t grow up hunting but instead, learned as an adult. A common indicator of an adult-onset hunter is that they started out in the sporting space typically by fishing and from there, moved into hunting.
My partner taught me how to carry a rifle, how to shoot, and what fair chase means. He taught me how to use an app to better understand the rules and regulations of hunting, OnXMaps, and how to start to understand land management practices. He taught me how hunting is a tool for wildlife and land management and that it’s one of many tools. He taught me how to walk quietly through tall grass and stalk pronghorn, and how to run after missing an opportunity to take a shot at elk and actually catch up to them because elk are large creatures, often disappearing like farts in the wind. My partner gave me a foundation that he’d spent years cultivating to learn and teach himself. He hesitated when I shared that I wanted to apply for the Master Hunter Program through One Montana, a statewide nonprofit organization that works to connect hunters and landowners through programming and focuses on supporting and bridging the divide between urban and rural communities and peoples.
Montana has a long and important history with the tradition and heritage of hunting. I’ll admit that sometimes when I hear the words “tradition” and “heritage”, the words immediately make me want to burn whatever the topic is to the ground. In this instance, I’ve embraced my own ancestry and lineage when it comes to hunting. My father was a hunter, and his father before him was a hunter, and I can only hope that my soon-to-be son will be a hunter, and if I’m lucky, that our future daughter and other sons will be hunters too. I believe there is something beautiful about being directly connected to my food. When I pull meat from our freezer and read the date on the package, I know where it came from because I was there.
My partner thought I wasn’t ready to become a Master Hunter and truth be told, I probably wasn’t. I didn’t have the confidence that other seasoned hunters had nor the years under their belt, skills, and practice. But, I was stubborn, and determined, and I wanted to become a better hunter with greater knowledge and improved skill sets. So, I applied, and I was accepted. After the program, I set goals for myself. I wanted to hunt solo and to harvest my first elk in a specific location I’d come to know on private land that allowed public access. I wanted to advocate for the spaces with public access that I hold dear and to commit to continuing to grow in the sporting space that I’d come to love. I wanted to support changing the sporting space to be more welcoming and inclusive so that all people would feel welcome in the space I’d fought to be a part of.
I was one of only two women in the Master Hunter class of more than 20 students. Every other student was a white man. Working in the sporting space, this was the norm for me and I was used to taking up space in a space where I wasn’t always welcome, wanted or respected. I often felt that I wasn’t good enough, that I was questioned because I am a woman, and that my experiences weren’t held in high regard or respected like male hunters were. I immersed myself in the Master Hunter Program’s content.
I learned tracking and trailing skills and how to look for blood in challenging terrain. I expanded my knowledge about how to navigate on the app, OnxMaps, and how to use a compass. I learned greater proficiency with shooting my gun and the importance of being confident in my shooting skills. I grew my knowledge of proper ethics regarding the practice of fair chase of wildlife and the North American Model of Conservation. The more I dug into the topic of hunting, and because of my prior education and life experiences, I started to try to mesh the long-held and respected North American Model of Conservation with Indigenous traditional knowledge and practices to help me make sense of the act of hunting, the sacredness of the harvest, and how the harvest is never the ultimate goal because the experience and lessons of the hunt are what matter most.
I passed every test required for the Master Hunter Program. The most important test was being able to shoot 3 consecutive shots and hit a target at 250 yards. Many places in Montana consist of wide open country, whereas other parts of the nation allow for closer shooting opportunities. Because of the landscape in Montana, a higher degree of proficiency is paramount. Many shots taken in Montana are at least 200 yards because the landscape lends itself to longer shots. An animal may be at close range but run after an initial hit, being able to place a subsequent ethical shot to prevent suffering is essential. The importance of “legs and lungs” cannot be understated, and understanding your firearm is critical. Legs and lungs are a way of explaining how fitness is critical because hunting is a marathon over vast open spaces and tough terrain more than a sprint.
Last hunting season, my partner, his brother, and I went hunting on a piece of private land that I’ve come to know and love. The landowner enrolled the property in the Block Management access program through Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks. Block Management is a program through the state agency that allows public access and recreation, including hunting, with management support from the agency. Payment to landowners supports costs associated with the usage of their property, not access itself. I wasn’t feeling well and was pretty sure I was running a fever, but I decided to push through anyway and go out with the guys. We were wheels up and in the truck by 6 am. In our household, if you’re not in the truck when it’s time for wheels up, it’s said you’ll be left behind. Thankfully, no one has ever been left behind but the threat exists to hold all involved accountable.
You’re ready at 6 am or you're taking your own rig, friends.
The world was still dark at that early hour, all except for a few other rigs that I imagine, were out doing the same thing as us, driving to their own hunting spot. I was feeling tired and run down. We stopped at the one fuel station off the highway and fueled ourselves with coffee (they have real creamer, which always feels like a treat!), and continued on our way to our hunting spot. First signs of light were beginning to slowly peak above the horizon line when we arrived, there was already another hunter parked at the gate. Ironically, I knew him from the Master Hunter Program. We’d been in the same class together. It’s a small world, as they say, and Montana is even smaller. It was refreshing to know we’d be accessing the same property together and that his hunting ethics and skill sets were similar to our own.
I’ve experienced some of the most epic and incredible sunrises and sunsets during hunting season and this particular morning was no different. Witnessing the first light of a Montana morning is magical and some mornings, that’s the main reason I drag myself out of bed, for the chance to be a small part of that magic.
We got out of the truck, as quietly as we could be. We checked our rifles, making sure they were loaded but without a round in the chamber, and also making sure the safety was on. We put on our packs, adjusted our waist belts, signed into the Block Management wooden box on the fence with our names and identification numbers as hunters, opened and closed the gate, and began slowly walking into the property. We checked the wind and which way it was blowing. We stopped to look through our binoculars, called glassing and paid attention to notice any movement on the nearby hillsides. We walked towards the back of the property, which is a few miles away, and then we stopped so we could take turns glassing, napping, and eating snacks surrounded by a few trees seemingly hidden from the world. The day was sunny and warm despite a stiff wind, quite typical in our corner of the world. This is all part of the hunting experience, taking in the landscape and witnessing the slow changes that occur.
Much of hunting requires patience, moving slowly, and glassing the land with binoculars. It’s important to have awareness of what the natural world and wildlife are doing, and if wildlife are up and moving about. We watched a gorgeous mule deer buck chasing a small group of does and we heard birds calling as they flew through the sky. We watched the hills come alive with life and then watched as life settled back into its own natural rhythm. As the light changed from mid to late afternoon, we started moving further into the property. We approached a coulee we had been scoping out from afar and sure enough, our suspicions that deer were bedded in the shade was correct. We decided to pass on the mule deer we saw and we slowly backed away, the small group none the wiser, unmolested elk we knew to be in the area did what elk do best, be invisible.
The next day, we returned to the same spot to try again. When we arrived, we took the same trail into the property as we had the day before. My partner’s brother spotted a mule deer buck and prepared himself to take a shot. The buck was large but by no means was a trophy animal, as meat in the freezer was the primary goal. He had to leave to return home to his family by midday. As he readied himself to take a shot, he spotted a single bull elk walking along the side of the hill we were walking up in the early morning light. We regrouped and quickly lowered ourselves to the ground. We devised a plan to approach the elk from both his back and front and made our way slowly up the incline of the hillside.
My partner and his brother have been hunting together for most of their lives, so when the bull appeared in a place we weren’t expecting, my partner’s brother signaled to my partner from where he was positioned and my partner signaled to me to drop to the ground and prepare to shoot. We were about 300 yards away.
The year before, I passed up two bull elk one morning when I was hunting by myself on this very property because I didn’t feel comfortable shooting at the distance from where I was positioned. Instead, I watched them in the morning haze until they faded from view and disappeared into the landscape. I’d had experiences where my partner put me on a group of elk that seemed to come out of nowhere and I took too long to prepare myself to shoot. Another time, I’d forgotten to rack the cartridge into the chamber and when I pulled the trigger, my firearm responded with only a ‘click.’ Every time I made a mistake, I learned.
The place I now sat couldn’t have been more than 100 yards from where I’d made the decision to pass up the elk the previous year. Someone once told me that sometimes the hardest shot is the shot you don’t take. From having great patience to knowing the physical conditions of your body and capability, to the current weather and temperature, there are many factors to consider when it comes to hunting ethically.
I’d gone from being mentored by and learning from my partner, which included making many mistakes from not being ready to shoot and not being fully confident in my shooting, to coordinating workshops for women to learn butchering skills, learning how to process deer, harvesting a pronghorn, a mule deer, and a whitetail deer, and becoming a Master Hunter, to this instant where I felt like for one moment in time, there was alignment that yielded a harvest and that harvest was my first elk.
My body reacted in an instinctual way, and I dropped to the ground, positioning myself with my legs in a V shape splayed out in front of me. I took off my pack and placed it in front of me, putting my rifle on the top of the pack, ready to aim, dial my scope, and shoot. I dialed in my scope for the distance we were positioned and told my partner I was ready to shoot. This series of movements happened in under a minute. Later on, my partner would share with me that he was very proud and impressed at how much I’d grown and how I quickly got down, prepared myself to shoot, and was confident in taking the shot at my first elk.
I took a few deep breaths and then my pointer finger pulled the trigger, slowly and surely. I watched the bullet hit the bull. He faltered and fell down. Then I watched him get back up again. I’d shot him cleanly through both lungs, an ideal shot, a responsible shot. Sometimes animals immediately have a spike in adrenaline and it fuels them to not stay down. I shot him again. In an effort to eliminate suffering and pain, you shoot till the animal is down and unmoving.
Walking up to his body felt surreal. I’d set goals for this moment and thought about what it would be like many times over. Elk are very large creatures. They’re fast, wickedly stealthy, and can move through incredibly rough terrain with ease, making little to no noise because they’ve adapted to diverse habitats and they’re incredibly intelligent. The thought of butchering and breaking down the usable portions of meat seemed daunting and overwhelming. Packing out his body on our backs is still an action I associate with as being a deliberate act of insanity, to voluntarily butcher and pack out a creature as large as an elk.
Pack-outs can take days and multiple trips, with many people, unaided by vehicles, roadways, and sometimes even established trails. Weather and time are considerable factors because time isn’t always on your side for packing out a large animal. High temperatures can spoil a harvest and positive ethics require that a hunter understands these factors and limitations. Most people think pulling the trigger is the end of a hunt and harvest, and in reality, it’s only just the beginning. It’s often said when an animal is down, “Now it’s time to get those knives out,” and “Now’s when the real work begins,” and dang, they were right.
I’m a part of that club now. The club of folks who know and understand the sheer misery and simultaneous joy of packing an elk out on your back which is the reward of a hard-won harvest.
Thank the stars for trekking poles, because they helped me get down the hillside and I hope, will probably inevitably help me from knee injuries later on in my life. I cried when giving thanks to the elk, and I cried the entire hike out as I was spent both emotionally and physically. Turns out, I would test positive for Covid when we arrived home in the evening. I harvested my first elk while being sick and pushed through because I owed the action to myself and to the elk.
I’m proud of every detour that led me to that singular moment of harvesting my first elk, and first bull elk. Sitting beside him, putting my hands on his nose and caressing his face, running my hands over his long ears, feeling the hair on his back and on his belly, and thanking him for providing us with meat in our freezer. I celebrate this hunt and his life every time I pull a package of meat from our freezer and every time I walk down our stairs, seeing his skull hanging on our hallway wall.
I once thought that hunting was only an act of death. Now my thoughts about hunting look very different. Hunting is really, at its roots, about life. It’s about regeneration and the cycle of life. I think, as a collective, that humans have moved too far away from this cycle. All things eventually die and new life springs from what once was. Whether it’s an elk or a human being, a plant or a grasshopper, a fish or a tiny ant. Once we’re gone, our bodies go back to the earth and they’re what can give other living beings continued life.
The greatest gift I can give to this world, I think, besides giving of my time and energy, is an honorable end. For elk, they either die of starvation and loss or lack of habitat, die of disease, die from a conflict with a predator or a vehicle collision, or they’re harvested by a hunter.
There is no retirement plan for elk.
Just as there is no retirement plan for many species of wildlife. Taking a clean, true, and confident shot is a form of respect. I’ve learned to view the act as a gift. It’s giving an animal a good, swift death and this belief is why the act of hunting is a sacred, humbling practice of great responsibility for me.
I like to think about my dad and his dad before him, and the many ancestors who lived and walked before me, those who hunted to feed themselves and their families, that they would be proud of my first elk harvest. I set a goal last year to harvest a bull elk on that piece of private land I mentioned earlier, and I followed through, even when I was feeling at my worst. Last year, I set a goal to hunt solo and this past season, I went out multiple days and took long walks with my rifle. I like to believe such walks are a way of walking myself home to where we are meant to be.
I understand that hunting can be contentious. I can think of many examples of hunters whose ethics I may not agree with nor support, and yet we all call ourselves hunters. Those hunters exist. Unfortunately, poor ethics may always exist too, but I strongly believe that people and behaviors can change. Knowing this, I choose to hope that programs such as the Master Hunter Program in Montana, and folks who have positive hunting ethics will continue to hunt, continue to share their knowledge with new hunters, and that slowly, the dial towards positive ethics and fair chase hunting will turn through our shared relations.
One simple action new hunters must and should take is knowing how to positively identify a species and knowing the game you’re hunting, including their habitat, what they eat, what their tracks look like, and especially, aligning identification with the rules and regulations of the state you’re hunting in. There have been examples of hunters taking animals that are not the species they are supposed to be hunting without the proper licenses and permits. In my opinion, this is an embarrassment, is an irresponsible action, and such neglect reflects poorly on all hunters.
What I’ve landed on for my own personal hunting practice is what I know now and what I’ve learned throughout my hunting journey that I hold dear: I prioritize my ethics and try to hunt responsibly; I only take confident shots and trust that I am giving the animal a good death; I believe in hunting because it means I know where my food comes from and that we will eat the meat in our freezer and share it with others; and lastly that for me, hunting is a purposeful action of choosing to continue to witness the world in a state of awe. From wildlife to all kinds of weather, sunrises and sunsets, prairie landscapes and forests, and everything in between, hunting is an opportunity to belong to something greater than ourselves, perhaps if only in a small way, further connecting us with the natural world.
My story is not linear. It’s chock full of detours. If someone would have asked me in my 20s where I’d be in my 30s, I would have had a very different answer than the life I’m living out right now. Hopes and dreams change. People shift overtime but I believe our roots will always be our roots. I’ve changed immensely because of the experiences I leapt for and that I allowed such experiences and the people tied to those experiences to change me and shape me.
I'm a hunter.
Hunting has been a part of my story from long before I was ready to own it as mine. It has taken me a while to label myself in specific ways and put myself in figurative boxes because I think such black-and-white language creates divisions that don't allow for the dynamism of being human. I’m not a fan of putting people in boxes.
Some of the most grounded moments I've felt have been moments where I was outdoors and where I was paying attention to the sounds, the landscape, the animals, and the sky. I say all this to say, I wholeheartedly believe there are so many pieces to what makes us human. When we make assumptions, we do ourselves a great injustice because we separate ourselves instead of leading with curiosity and leaning into learning and growth.
I can only hope that I have many more years ahead of me to continue to deepen my skills and expand my passion for the heritage and tradition of hunting. I hope I have many more years to continue to advocate for responsible ethics and science-based practices to inform state agencies, hunters, and landowners alike.
As a final note, I’m more than willing and happy to communicate with you if you have any questions about hunting or if you’re looking for resources, mentorship, or support. If you want to take a long walk with your rifle and happen to be in Montana on a detour or otherwise, drop me a line.
See you out there,
Morgan Gemay Marks
Rambling and Rooted, Writing and Poetry
Instagram: @ramblingandrooted
