In a few short weeks, rifle season will fire up much of Wisconsin. I’m not an avid enough hunter to speak with any real authority about the activity, but when I hunt, I try really hard to be respectful. I’ve met hunters who are far more serious than I am, people who see hunting as some sort of spiritually invigorating practice that connects them to “the world.” That’s not me. I’ve also met really disrespectful guys who treat animals like playthings, and that’s not me either.

I cringe when I hear the phrase “Da Turty Pointer.” I don’t like most of the stereotypes associated with hunters, and maybe that’s because I don’t fit in with any of them. This is not for lack of trying. I like being a hunter. If for no other reason, it’s fun to tell a table full of English and Philosophy majors that you go out in the woods and kill large animals.

But growing up in a Midwestern college town the size of Eau Claire, you get a lot of mixed signals about hunting – everything from anti-meat animal rights activism to billboards of bikini clad women wearing blaze orange hunting caps, hefting guns, standing next to stuffed deer heads.

Nowadays, I often find myself shifting from an urge to keep my hunting a secret to an urge to boast about it – depending on my company. Do any of you people hunt? How do you feel about it?