Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 27, 1994 TAG: 9403040006
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by PETE DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
\ In ``Bloodties,'' Ted Kerasote is probably kicking off a new wave in the outdoor writing genre.
His timely effort is a subjective (Kerasote hunts) but sensitive probe of the modern hunting ethic. In the1990s, only a fraction of humanity hunts either for subsistence or recreation, and the ``minority'' who do so are increasingly called upon to justify their pursuit to the rest of the world.
The question so often posed by the nonhunting world, Kerasote now aims squarely at the hunter who hunts for his own pleasure: What possesses human beings to hunt and kill other creatures not so unlike themselves, especially in a time when subsistence is nearly a made-for-TV notion?
Kerasote journeys to Greenland and hunts alongside the native Inuit people for seal, walrus and polar bear. He then follows members of the exclusive and globetrotting Safari Club International as they search for ever-rarer and more exotic game, which they convert into wallhanging trophies.
Enduring the salvos of professional animal-rightists, he gives their logic fair play while lending hipper-than-thou fossil fuel vegetarians food for thought with a minimum of argumentation. A deeply personal narrative of a successful fall hunt for elk in Kerasote's native Wyoming concludes the volume.
``Bloodties'' could not and does not justify hunting to anyone.
The questions attendant to the sport are weighty, unanswerable and there is little here to chill the battle lines between those who hunt and those who dislike it. Kerasote makes no apology, however, except to the game he kills. His highly descriptive writing is visceral, graphic and bloody, taking hunter and ``non-'' alike into the hunters' world, warts and all. Nonhunters may gain some vicarious understanding of the oldest of human pursuits here, but that's hard to say.
Perhaps the greatest value of the work is that it primes the conscience of any evolved hunter to fully measure the weight inherent in the decision to take a life.
The ancient Abnaki invocation is presented: ``I have killed you because I need your skin for my coat and your flesh for my food. I have nothing else to live on.'' How many Blue Ridge deerslayers can say the same?
\ Pete Davis is a columnist for the Lexington News-Gazette.
by CNB