I was born in a small town in Kansas and did most of my growing up in a suburb of Denver. I hiked with my parents on occasion when I was young, but it wasn’t until a school-sponsored backpacking trip in middle school that I really learned what being outdoors was all about. I loved the immersive, visceral experience of being outside, and by high school I was going on my own backcountry adventures. Wild places, I found, meant the world to me. 

Colorado is home to all types of outdoor enthusiasts, and in my teens and early twenties I became friends with a lot of hikers, backpackers, skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers, and even a few anglers. But even though I was really into the outdoors, I didn’t have any contact with hunters. I didn’t grow up hunting, and I didn’t really know anyone else who did. 

Had I grown up in Kansas, things would have been different, I’m sure. I bet I would have been just as interested in the outdoors, but I would have taken a different path into the woods. I probably would have asked for a shotgun for Christmas early on and taken an interest in quail and deer instead of bikes and backpacks. 

As it turned out, in Colorado I became a hiker, a mountain biker . . . and a vegetarian. I stopped eating meat as a teenager because I realized that the meat that was available in suburban Denver in the 1990s came from factories rather than farms. I saw meat not as a link to the natural world, but, rather, just another unhealthy industrial product. 

Although I spent as much time as I could in the backcountry, hunting was totally foreign to me. Not only that—after a while hunting started to seem wrong. Why did people need to kill animals? Why not take photographs of them instead? The hunters I imagined were caricatures. I assumed they were obsessed with guns and death, and I never considered that they might find real connection to the natural world through hunting. 

It wasn’t until I was older, in my early thirties, that I began rethinking all of this. I started reading about hunting, instead of just going by my assumptions. And then I started talking to actual hunters. What I realized was that most of the hunters I met were not so unlike me after all. They loved the land, too. They cherished their time in the backcountry, just like me. They wanted to protect wildlife as much as any hiker I had ever met. And they made gun safety a priority. 

What became clear to me was that much of what separates hikers from hunters are cultural barriers, stereotypes, and misunderstandings. In some respects, it comes down to the brands of clothes we wear and the stores in which we shop. Hikers wear The North Face and Patagonia. Hunters wear Carhartt and Sitka. Hikers shop at REI. Hunters shop at Cabela’s. While hikers seem to go for bright colors, hunters generally prefer camo. 

That is to say, what separates us is not philosophy so much as style. It’s as though we are in a high school cafeteria jostling for the right table to sit at. In truth, we agree on much more than we disagree on—and that includes food choices. Most of the hikers I know are meat eaters, not vegetarians. And most of my vegetarian friends would rather that meat eaters hunt than buy meat that was raised in a factory. 

Me, I started hunting a few years ago. I live on Vashon Island, in Washington State, and the place is overpopulated with deer, like many other areas of the United States. Hunting has a positive effect on our local ecosystem by keeping the deer population in check and not allowing them to over-browse the local vegetation. I use a bow and arrow, and I’ve killed, butchered, cooked, and—with my wife and friends—eaten a couple of deer. Being in the woods during a hunt has been one of the more profound experiences I have had in nature. Not better than hiking, per se, nor worse. Just different—and just as worthy. 

I still hike and backpack and mountain bike. I still opt for REI over Cabela’s. I just happen to have wild venison for dinner a couple nights a week. 

If you’re a hiker, I’m not asking you to become a hunter. And if you’re a hunter, I’m not expecting you to become a bird-watcher. That’s entirely up to you. What I am asking is for both communities to discard old biases and come together around shared goals. 

We are now entering a period when our public lands are under real threat. There are politicians and industries that would love to privatize our public lands, or to carve them up with more logging roads or gas wells. They don’t care about hiking, and they don’t care about hunting, either. But when they try to sell off our beloved mountains and canyons and prairies, they will no doubt try to pit us against one another. 

We should not let tired stereotypes eclipse the fact that we love many of the same things: public lands, healthy ecosystems, and time spent outdoors. We are in this together. There are many hunters, like the members of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, who are ready to stand up for our public lands. It’s time to reach out to one another as allies with a common goal.  

Let’s not sit at our separate tables while our beloved lands disappear forever. Let’s stand together.