Abstract

AN ARDENT ENVIRONMENTALIST AND HUNTER SEEKS OUR PROPER RELATIONSHIP TO THE ANIMAL WORLD For all readers who are perplexed over humanity's proper relationship to animals, Ted Kerasote's provocative exploration of the ancient human urge to hunt will dramatize the issues that fuel this controversial debate. In his opening section, "Food" the author travels to the frozen shores of coastal Greenland, living and hunting with Inuit villagers-true hunter-gatherers-who are utterly dependent for sustenance on the seals, polar bears, and narwhal that they can wrest from their punishing environment. In "Trophies," Kerasote accompanies the first Western sportsmen permitted into a remote stretch of Siberian wilderness, one of whom uses unethical stratagems to bag the worlds most coveted hunting trophy. In "Webs," we meet a hunter caught between these two extremes-the writer himself. Stalking elk near his home in Wyoming, seeking a winter's worth of meat, Kerasote encounters the pall of himself that yearns to make the kill and take the wild creature's life force into his own body. Nearing the end of his odyssey, the author attends meetings of the Fund for Animals with the organization's director, a vehement opponent of hunting. Kerasote also examines the ecological consequences of eating food produced by our agri-business system and transported in fossil fuel-consuming refrigerator trucks; next he considers the environmental impact of the death of the prey that has given its life to the hunter. Scrupulously balanced, Bloodties is a memorable book for all lovers of the outdoors-both hunters and nonhunters-and a landmark in the evolving discussion of our proper relationship to the animal world.