Hunting Teaches

Speaking to delegates from 70 nations assembled on May 3-5, 2001 for the International Council for Conservation in Portorose, Slovenia, Dr. Randall Eaton said that hunting is the ideal way of teaching universal virtues to young people. He even proposed that hunting should become standard curriculum in schools. The award-winning author and TV producer said that public education has not lived up to the vision originally advanced by Horace Mann who stated, The highest purpose of education is the moral development of our youth for knowledge without virtue is a menace. Quoting his forthcoming TV production, Hunting as Character Education, Eaton referred to an interview of Dr. Don Jacobs, author of Teaching Virtues. Jacobs is convinced that hunting teaches generosity, as in sharing meat, patience, courage, and fortitude. He also believes that hunting evokes humility by immersing people in nature and the food chain, and that it fosters respect for animals and the environment as well as responsibility to nurture them. Eaton also advocated hunting for delinquent youth. Citing native and non-native programs, he said that proper initiation in hunting has successfully transformed the lives of wayward youth. Eaton said, The taking of a life for food makes the young hunter keenly aware of the consequences of his actions while it engenders a deep respect for all life. It's not a video game. Eaton showed clips from his a ward-winning TV production; The Sacred Hunt II: Rite of Passage, of a 13-year program in southern Idaho in which the delinquents had to gather or hunt their food for two weeks. Follow-up surveys conducted one year later indicated that 85% of the boys had not resumed delinquent behavior.