The answer is complex. I think about it and come up with reasons, but it isn't like they satisfy me or close the discussion. I suppose it is like the question of why do men marry women or why do women marry men.

I like to cook, and game meat is a very elegant and rich focus for a good dinner. How do you provide more than a rare venison roast or other game for the table? You go out and shoot it. This is one component of why I hunt.

My father hunted before me. When I hunt -- with rifles and shotguns which I have inherited from my father (I have bought two firearms for myself, two for my son, and inherited five firearms from my father) -- and when I am successful, I somehow feel that this is honoring his memory and pleasing him in the use of the firearms he loved. Two of these firearms are rifles which he custom made himself. My son took a pronghorn antelope this past October with the custom .25-06 may father made. My father never went out west to hunt. He shot some deer with shotgun slugs in Illinois. I definitely feel that the pronghorn hunt honored my father and the .25-06 that he built. I like to imagine my father and I talking about my hunts, though he is dead now. I like to imagine my father and I going on hunts together, such as a pronghorn hunt, though that is impossible. I did hunt pheasant with my father in Illinois. So hunting is a connection with my father.

Hunting provides a connection with a tradition and experience that goes way back in time, well into pre-history. While we have advanced technology -- high power rifles, advanced multicoated optics in our rifle scopes, binoculars, laser range finders -- some aspects of hunting are no different today than 10,000 years ago. My rifle is an advantage over a long bow, but the best advantage is scouting one's hunting ground, discovering the pathways of one's quarry, inferring that there is a bottleneck which funnels the movement of deer through a certain point, and setting up an ambush at this point. I took my deer last fall at about 20 yards range. I accidentally lucked into a funnel which pushed deer past me from two directions!!! I only recognized the "funnel" character of my ambush spot after the fact, but when you recognize such a feature in advance and employ it to get close and score on the quarry, you are sharing an experience with the hunters 7000 years ago. Very real connection to that ethos.

I like being out in nature. Being out and hearing the owls, seeing the stars. Watching the world come alive. I would be in my bed at that hour if it weren't for hunting. Having a reason to be out in the woods makes the experience different and richer than just taking a hike. I imagine fishing might provide some of this same benefit.

I like the feelings of self-reliance that come from being able to kill a deer, field dress it, skin it, quarter it, butcher it into meal sized packages, and then later cooking it. I like the feelings of self-reliance that come from being able to find my ambush point in the dark, to walk around the woods and not get lost.

All of these things contribute to my pleasure in hunting. I am beginning to take my son out hunting with me now, and this adds and extra dimension to my pleasure in hunting. I feel that I am passing on good values to my son -- self-control and discipline to develop the necessary marksmanship and to handle a firearm safely, self-reliance, knowledge of how the world works (we kill to live -- this fact is disguised when you only buy your meat in the supermarket, paying some faceless person far away to do your killing for you).

There is another element that has just occured to me. When we enter the hunting grounds, we are all equal. The guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth with an expensive custom Mauser is basically at no advantage relative to the guy who has a used .303 British with open sights he bought in the pawn shop (I'm not talking about trophy hunting, which DOES seem to be about money and fat cats have an advantage). One's political connections and ability to brown nose are largely irrelevant. You are on your own. I have done a poor job of articulating this idea, but this "equal" and "level playing field" thing is also an aspect that pleases me about hunting.