THE HUNTING INSTINCT

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s extensive literary credits not withstanding, her credibility in reviewing Ted Kerasote’s “Bloodties” (Book Review, August 22) is more than suspect. I find her comments about what she thinks hunting is all about totally lacking in reality.

A: No place in these United States or Canada is hunting, while riding in a helicopter, airplane or boat, legal.

B: Semi-auto firearms . . . have been around since the turn of our century and are still fired one shot at a time and legal in every place hunting takes place. Reviewer Thomas tries to make us think machine-guns are spraying wildlife. That’s illegal and unethical.

C: Soft-pointed bullets are designed to kill cleanly and hopefully the first time.

If the writer prefers not to know who kills her T-bones, pork chops and salmon steaks, she should admit she is faint of heart and squeamish, as many modern women are, but to deny one of man’s basic instincts, one of his driving forces, is sheer ignorance and folly. I sincerely feel the act of killing is abhorrent to writer Thomas. She should say a prayer for the 10 million animals she kills every morning with her antiseptic mouthwash and watch out for those red ants on the pavement as well, all fine animals and God’s noble creatures.

JOSEPH S. RYCHETIK

PALM SPRINGS

*

I’d like to address several errors in Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ review of Ted Kerasote’s “Bloodties.” Thomas comments that before humans became hunters, we met “our need for animal protein” by snacking on insects and other animals too small to share. Humans have no need for animal protein. There’s a need for protein, but entire cultures less brutal than ours have long flourished without eating animals--and lived longer and healthier lives than meat-eaters do.

Thomas endorses Kerasote’s assertion that under certain conditions, hunting and eating one’s prey is less harmful to the environment than eating supermarket vegetables associated with pesticides and high energy use. But this is a very classic dilemma; for of course one can do better than either of these by eating organically and sensitively grown produce, as many vegetarians in this country already do.

As to Thomas’ enthusiasm for the claim that sex and hunting are atavistically linked for all of us, this is both bad science and morally offensive. To claim that those who feel only repulsion at hunting have somehow had their innate killing-sex connection “short-circuited” makes the thesis of an atavistic link unfalsifiable, and reduces a reflective moral position to a biological defect.

KATHIE JENNI

ORANGE

*

It’s really a shame. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas spoiled what was otherwise a thoughtful, well-written review of Ted Kerasote’s “Bloodties” when she started interjecting her personal anti-hunting beliefs into the narrative.

Her description of modern-day hunters as “ . . . beer-sodden macho types with automatic weapons who infest the woods each fall” has no relevance to the review, and is in fact a patently false accusation. This kind of irresponsible statement is an affront to hunters and other law-abiding gun owners, and serves only to confirm the public’s growing suspicion that journalists no longer practice objectivity.

B. PANGBURN

TEMPLE CITY