Should Kids Hunt?

Parents debate whether the sport connects children to nature or makes them cruel

First day of gun season: sky lowering gray, trees like dark iron. Pickups tucked in the bushes along dirt roads. Men, bulky with layers under hunter's fluorescent orange, have slipped into the forest and up the ridge. Now and then from the interior, a dull, concussive pop!

The leaves are down and wet enough to muffle bootsteps. Color gone from everything, except from larches and pines and, if it counts as color, the chipped-porcelain white of birches, ghosty in November dusk. It is just cold enough and bleak enough to call up a tribal recollection: an imminence of winter death in...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!