A Quiet Place of Violence: Hunting and Ethics in the Missouri River Breaks

by Allen Morris Jones

In an ever-changing society this book offers an ethic that justifies hunting and places it in the context of today’s current environmental problems and issues. Allen Morris Jones brings together all the major aspects of hunting, making this book a must for anyone who enjoys hunting...or wants to explore why others enjoy it so much.

Genres: Conservation, Nonfiction

152 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1997

Reviews

[Todd Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found both moments of great clarity and moments of great ignorance in this book. I am in awe of how well the author expresses the feelings a hunter has while being in the hunt. I will steal his explanations of 'the project' and 'the process' as a way of describing the focus and ethics of the hunt as I speak to people about life and business.
The tragedy of this book is the ignorance of the author of the spiritual and at the least an ignorance of range of feeling of those who believe in the spiritual. So much of what is said here makes is seem as though a believe in God and humanities place in nature are incompatible.

[Robert Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essential question posed by Jones is this; in a world without God or moral absolutism, how we arrive at a relativistic explanation for the morality of killing animals.

Unfortunately that just isn't an interesting question. A sufficiently comprehensive answer through the lens of relativism would be "because we've always done it!"

Which is a shame, because Jones does write quite affectingly about the actual hunt. The work, the suffer, the emotional response to taking an animals life. Which seems antithetical to Jones larger stance, if there is no spiritual connection to animals, nature at large or a creator then we're just animals killing other animals and no greater conversation is required.

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

I decided to DNF this book after chapter six. It just didn’t do it for me.

[Jedidiah Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jones’ exploration of ethics, while occasionally thought-provoking, seems to be more driven by insecurity than curiosity. Every decent observation he makes about our relationship to the natural world is counteracted by an awkward tie-in to an ethical construct that feels manifestly reverse-engineered. For all his talk of a return to the process and his condemnation of objectifying nature, Jones’ alternative amounts to making a theatre out of the Breaks. There is no attempt to seriously challenge our society and how it is out of step with the natural world, but instead a complete concession to it. It’s a philosophy of half-measures, concerned with the immaterial in a purely material world.

“I do not have the courage, or audacity, to advocate a physical return to a hunting and gathering existence, to give up our colleges and cars in favor of wattle huts and stone spears. I find this idea vaguely ridiculous. But perhaps we should look into the possibility of a spiritual return, an embracement of the mind and soul that was the by-product of our original hunting and gathering existence.”

Perhaps the reason Jones holds so much animosity towards “animal rights activists” is because he can see in them the courage and imagination he lacks.

[William T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pub. 1997
This is a profound meditation on hunting and the vitalness of the role of the predator-prey relationship as it pertains to ecological, and even psychological balance. While Jones makes many worthy points to be considered, one stuck with me in particular, as it is a notion I have grappled with, but never been successful in articulating. I have often pondered the seeming paradox of how can one hunt (read: kill) that which one loves. It is more of a sense; a state of being. It must be honestly experienced to be understood, or if not understood, at least to find some peace in the notion. Jones seeks to give reason to this idea, by placing humans within our rightful context of this ecological balance, as opposed to being mere observers or puppet-masters playing god with the ancient process of the earth.

I once heard the folk singer Jewel (of all people) when reflecting on her childhood being raised on a homestead in Alaska, hunting, fishing, growing food, toting water, remark, “You can only value what you have a relationship with.” She went on to talk about how one is only negligent with water, when one has not had to carry it. When one understands how heavy it is, one doesn’t spill a drop.

Although that interview with Jewel post-dated this book by 25 years, Jones, as I’m sure others did before him, came to his own similar perspective when it comes to hunting. This standpoint of having a relationship with deer, elk, pronghorn, what have you, must be acknowledged for what it is: a predator-prey relationship. Outside of this context we have no meaningful relationship with these animals. In any other context, according to Jones, they are being objectified. Be it through wildlife photography or nature observing, they are being held as static individuals, as opposed to a vital piece of a whole ecosystem. Part of their role in that ecosystem is that of a prey species, while part of our role is that of a predator species. Our role (made all the more vital by the man-made removal of other large-game predator species, including wolves, bears, and mountain lions) bears a certain obligation in Jones’ words. We, man, have unbalanced the natural world. Some of us accept our role, and participate responsibly in its order. An order of life and death, which we all, despite our efforts, unmistakably belong to. One cannot love the natural world and obfuscate death from it.

Jones asks, “How could anyone love an animal without having experienced it, having interacted with it? … How could you love an animal without knowing the way it fulfills its role, the way it reacts to a predator, and most importantly the way you react to it? How could you love an animal through any role that objectified it, that placed you at a distance from it? Without experience, what you are loving is the idea of the animal not the animal itself.”

I liken one who claims to love deer, but has never hunted one, to a 12 year old boy who says he is in love with someone he has yet to talk to. Surely love is a good thing, and no doubt this child does have love for whomever his object may be, but is his understanding of love, the same as an adult who has experienced intimacy, loss, fear, and jealously? Who seeks to embrace the depth and complexity of what it takes to bind yourself to building a life and family with another human being? Kahlil Gibran wrote of love in The Prophet, “For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.” This kind of love is not about ease or happiness, but about growth. It is a life of devotion. Devotion to a whole that encompasses more than the self. Similarly, James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense, but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy, but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” While I would happily encourage any 12-year-old toward a path of love, it would be foolish to call those different kinds of love - the infantile, and the quest-seeking - the same thing.

This is the kind of love it takes to hunt. When one has related to these species as the natural order dictates: as predator… When one has stalked them, tracked them, learned their eating and mating habits, grasped the notion of carrying capacity, and lent one’s own hand to the healthful balance of the herd, taking one life so that others will fare better; worked hard and skillfully for a clean kill, harvested meat and hide for the benefit of your close ones, all the while lamenting the loss of life; existing in the paradox of simultaneous gratitude and mourning… that is a depth of relationship which has earned the name of love much more than a person who finds these animals cute and otherwise has no relationship with them outside of the occasional swerving of the wheel or hike on a pre-scripted trail. Hunting is a relationship of devotion.

For hunters and non-hunters alike, who may be seeking a delve into the philosophy of ethics as it pertains to the hunt, I highly recommend this book if you have an open mind.