The Moral Contradictions of Hunting and Killing

The Moral Contradictions of Hunting and Killing is a recurring conflict in Ben Givens’s life: hunting remains a practice he values, but its costs resist easy justification. The tension appears in the physical presence of his father’s shotgun, in the altered landscape of his youth, and in a disagreement with Renee about whether hunting is acceptable at all. These moments do not resolve the conflict into a single judgment. Instead, they show how inherited habits, attachment to place, and the act of killing remain entangled even when Ben can recognize their contradictions.

Inherited Practice and the Gun

When Ben’s Brittany dogs chase a coyote across the desert, he takes up his side-by-side shotgun and follows them. The gun is his father’s, and its significance is already charged: earlier that morning, Ben had used it in the course of his suicidal crisis. As he prepares to go after the dogs, he briefly regrets every gun he has ever held. But he does not leave the weapon behind. He packs his belongings and sets off after the dogs, carrying the gun as he follows their pursuit.

The sequence places discomfort and continued participation together. Ben’s regret is not presented as a settled renunciation; it is a moment he shakes off before resuming the journey. The dogs’ pursuit draws him into motion, and the inherited firearm remains part of the equipment with which he answers it. The gun thus carries more than one history at once: it belongs to a family tradition, enables hunting, and has recently been implicated in Ben’s wish to die. His response registers unease without showing that unease has yet changed what he does.

The Changed River and the Cost of Apples

Ben’s recognition of environmental change gives the moral conflict a larger scale. The country he remembers as sagebrush, coulees, and willow draws has become irrigated fields and orchards. The river has been diverted across the land so that its water can reach crops, including apples grown far from its former course. In Ben’s compressed reckoning, the river and desert have both ceased to be what they were; the transformation is not merely a change of scenery but a consequence of agriculture reshaping the place he knew.

He understands that he himself helped burn the sage lands. He also sees that men like his father took possession of the river without believing themselves evil: they were confident, limited by their time, and convinced that the river belonged to them. Ben’s own life spans both the old fast river and the orchards, so he feels attachment to each while recognizing that their interests conflict. Loving the river while participating in the growth of apples that depend on its diversion resembles, in his thought, loving birds while shooting them over dogs. The comparison links environmental alteration to hunting: both involve an affection for the living world alongside actions that damage or kill it.

This reflection does not simply condemn his father or separate Ben from the past. The account makes inherited assumptions part of the problem: people acted within a way of life that appeared natural to them, and Ben says he cannot shake old ways any more than he can shake his name. His recognition therefore arrives without a clean escape from complicity. He can name the contradiction, and can see the river as defeated by the orchards, while remaining formed by the same history that produced them.

Hunting, Ownership, and a Plan for Death

Later, Ben’s attachment to hunting shapes a plan that joins the retrieval of his family gun to his intention to end his life. He arranges to travel upriver by Greyhound and reserves a rental car through a Wenatchee company. His intended route is to drive to Malaga, find William Harden’s Wolfhound Orchard, and try to recover the gun Harden holds. Ben expects that an appeal to ownership, fair play, or his apology for the wolfhound’s death would not persuade Harden. Yet he cannot imagine stealing the weapon either. His dilemma is not only whether he can get the gun back, but how to act when each available approach seems morally or practically closed to him.

The plan continues from the gun to a proposed hunt: Ben intends to walk for grouse in the Colockum Country, find a barbed-wire fence, and shoot himself. In this design, hunting and suicide are distinct acts, but they are bound together by the same weapon and by Ben’s journey toward a place where he expects to die. The earlier moment of regret over guns gains added weight in retrospect: the firearm is at once an object he wants to reclaim, a means of hunting, and an instrument in his plan for self-destruction. The evidence establishes this as his intention, not as an outcome of the planned hunt.

Renee’s Objection and the Unresolved Conflict

In a telephone conversation with Renee, Ben says that he likes hunting. Renee counters that it is awful and calls it blood sport. Ben ends the exchange about the subject rather than defending hunting or accepting her judgment. The brief disagreement makes explicit what his solitary reflections leave unsettled: hunting is not simply an inherited pleasure beyond criticism, but neither does Ben abandon his attachment to it when Renee objects.

The call also places the disagreement within a relationship rather than treating it as an abstract debate. After changing the subject, Ben tells Renee that he loves her, sends his best to her husband and son, wishes her luck with her screenplay, and assures her that he is all right. The contrast matters: he can leave the argument without resolving it and turn to expressing affection. Across these scenes, the moral contradiction persists alongside loyalty, memory, and habit. Ben sees that love of nature can coexist with killing and alteration, but recognition alone does not dissolve the practices through which he has lived.