Hunting

Authors

Elizabeth Knight

Abstract

"I married a hunter" are the opening words of this personal essay about the author's relationship with her husband and his relationship with nature. He is a wildlife biologist who also hunts. But "Lad is a hunter, not a killer, a distinction important to him in the face of the gun-crazed, shoot-anything, 'D'ja gitcha a buck?' culture that surrounds the sport." Woven skillfully into accounts of two separate hunting trips are observations on family, friends, death (and her aversion to it), and her own cancer scare. At the end of the second trip, Lad's uncle does kill an elk, and the author explains what elk ivory meant to various Native American tribes, observing reflectively, "Good hunters were extremely valuable, and a woman's status in the tribe was more tied to her husband's abilities than to her own."

Recommended Citation

Knight, Elizabeth (2014) "Hunting," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 53: Iss. 3, Article 7.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol53/iss3/7