A Hunting Dialectic with Everett Headley — WildFed Podcast #118

Daniel set out to interview today’s guest — Everett Headley — on the topic of falconry… cooperative hunting with a bird of prey. He’s a Montana resident that, amongst other things, hunted with a red tail hawk and is now training a peregrine falcon. All very interesting stuff that we've wanted to learn more about for years. But from the moment we started speaking, it was obvious that the natural flow of their conversation was going in a different direction. Both Everett and Daniel take a very philosophical approach to hunting and to understanding their relationship to the outdoors and the wild things that live there, and this, being their initial conversation, quickly took a turn towards the big picture.

What they landed on was a conversation about the journey a hunter takes over the course of their lifetime and how they think we can best preserve our hunting heritage in perpetuity. It’s an important topic, because, despite the renewed cultural interest we’re seeing in hunting right now, there are many forces still aligned against it. And while, in recent years, many new hunters are embracing the lifestyle, we have a long way to go to win over the non-hunting public.

Everett is a really thoughtful person, and it comes through in how he communicates about the lifestyle he passionately lives. He really takes his time in exploring these ideas and has a deep grasp on the topic of hunting. Not just the how-to, but the why, and when. And by "when" we mean where we are, currently, in the timeline of modern hunting and its relationship to conservation.

We love conversations like this, true dialectics, where many questions are asked, but neither of us has an answer to the questions we’re posing. Instead we explore them with a sincere desire to arrive at sound conclusions.

Whether you agree or not with the conclusions we are reaching is less important than that these ideas get explored. Because, as we're always wanting to point out, hunting isn’t just some other hobby, like building model cars or playing racket ball. It’s the natural, fundamental human food acquisition strategy and it’s formative to how we came to be in relationship to the rest of the ecosystem and the other-than-human beings that inhabit them alongside us. Therefore, while many fads will come and go, some in the course of our lifetime, hunting must — in my opinion — remain. It’s too important to who we are to see it lost or forgotten, or tread beneath the wheels of the engine of so-called progress.

So, it’s in that spirit that Everett and Daniel have this conversation. It’s a desire to see something fundamentally human, preserved.

And we promise to bring him back to talk about falconry soon. We're as interested to learn about that as you are. In the meantime, get to know Everett a bit, and take some time to consider these questions yourself. We need all hands on deck!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/118