High-end hunters talk of outdoor tradition, but it's a touchy subject
Post by (ugg boots günstig) Oct 2010
Most Sundays in fall and winter, Joseph Silich leaves the city for Deer Creek Hunt Club in Three Oaks, Mich. In a morning of hunting, he can breathe the forest air, hear his boots pound the ground and marvel at the precision and spirit of his bird dog, Ryder, trained at a cost of $8,000 to tenderly retrieve his prey.
A senior vice-president and wealth adviser at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC in Chicago, he often brings clients and friends along for the experience and the bonding.
“I've given up golf. It's a one-hour-plus drive to somewhere in the burbs, and then five or six hours of slow play. After lunch and the drive home, you've lost nine hours of your day. Hunting is easier,” says Mr. Silich, 41. “I go to the club that's an hour and 10 minutes away; two or three hours hunting, and you're home by 1. And the quality time and camaraderie-building is so much better.”
He's aware that hunting isn't universally admired—”when I encounter absolute animal lovers, I'm aware of the fact that it's a sensitive topic”—and that businessmen who hunt may appear incongruous. “Every day, you wear custom suits, and people have a hard time picturing you hunting,” he says.
Mr. Silich has traveled to Pike County to hunt deer, Texas for boar, the central plains for bison and North Dakota for elk. The pleasure lies not just in the shooting, he says, but in the outings themselves: “People don't understand that it's about more than just the hunt.”
In Illinois, hunting for pheasants, ducks and deer begins in October, with the seasons varying depending on prey, weapon and region of the state. At private clubs, a certain number of birds will be released depending on how many hunters will attend on a given day. Some Chicagoans travel abroad to hunt grouse, partridges, ducks and rabbits in Europe, or big game in Africa.
Hunters say the sport connects them to the outdoors, allows them quality time with friends or family and presents the challenge of the chase.
But high-end hunters are also steeled to criticisms on the cocktail-party circuit that their pastime is more blood than sport.
David “Buzz” Ruttenberg, founder of Chicago real estate company Belgravia Group Ltd., is repulsed by hunting and will debate the issue in otherwise polite conversation.
“I enjoy the outdoor recreational activities that don't involve killing,” he says. “Hunting originated for survival but, as sport goes, the universe of endangered species is growing.
“Rather than hunt, I prefer to ski, snowshoe, hike or golf. There's less harm to the animals—and much less chance of pulling a Cheney,” he adds, referring to the 2006 incident in which then-Vice-president Dick Cheney shot and injured a fellow hunter instead of a quail.
TOUCHY CONVERSATION
John Hickey, 58, a trial lawyer who knows how to maneuver around a tricky conversation, doesn't bring up his love of hunting casually or with strangers.
“Most people who know me know I enjoy it, so they don't steer the conversation in a rough direction. When someone reacts adversely to the fact that I hunt, I don't say much,” says Mr. Hickey, a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago. “My basic reaction is they don't understand it because they haven't done it.”
Mr. Hickey has traveled to Montana and Colorado to hunt mule deer, Louisiana for ducks, Wisconsin for wild turkey and South Carolina for quail. He's planning an African safari in a few years, possibly going for kudu or gemsbok antelope.
Like any hunter, he savors the hefty Cabela's catalog, which offers everything from low-brow to top-of-the-line hunting gear and clothing. He usually hunts with his three sons and son-in-law, often at his cabin in northern Wisconsin, where they fish and stalk deer.
To these hunters, the sport preserves a time-honored tradition that promotes environmental awareness.
CULTURE OF THE HUNT
Jamee Field, of Chicago's legendary Field family, revels in the traditions of bird hunting, which has taken her to South Carolina to hunt quail and England for grouse. A proponent of conserving lands for hunting, she's a member of the Illinois Nature Conservancy and the National Council of the World Wildlife Fund.
“The majority of my time is spent trying to conserve nature and the animals that live in it, and to help people learn to use it sustainably,” she says.
There's also an entire culture around hunting, from wardrobe to the after-hunting meal.
For grouse, Ms. Field, 35, owns three tweed suits in varying colors with knickers (they need to cut off at the knee to fit her boots correctly), wool knee socks and a rain hat. “It's England, after all,” she says.
For quail, she dresses in “shocking orange” and likes the action of riding on horseback or a mule-drawn wagon with at least two guides and a few dogs.
“When the birds go up, you have your two shots. You have to really be careful where you're shooting, as the birds can fly in any direction and you don't want to hit the other shooter or any of the people still on horseback behind you—like Dick Cheney did,” she says.
After the hunt, she says, it's time to dine. “We go back to the house to relax while someone cooks up the quail, usually in a tub of butter, as we're in the South. We eat everything we shoot, being mindful of the pellets,” so as not to chip a tooth.
Hunting has weathered the economic slump, though some have trimmed the travel expenses.
Taxidermist George Swiderski, of Old World Taxidermy in Palatine, says fewer hunters are bringing in trophy game from Africa. Instead, they're taking lower-priced trips, to Asia to hunt exotic sheep or around the United States to go after bear, deer and bison.
However, “there are still hunters going to Africa,” says Mr. Swiderski, 69, a hunter himself. “I just finished work on an elephant.”
Marc Watts, a Chicago media agent known for negotiating television newscasters' contracts (Diann Burns is his wife), has hunted Big Five game—lion, leopard, hippo, rhino and elephant—on hunts that can run as high as $55,000 each. He has led numerous trips with executives from Chicago and across the country.
Gary Shields, 60, a business development and marketing executive at KJWW Engineering Consultants P.C. in Chicago, has hunted all over Canada and the lower 48.
But he found the greatest adventures in Africa, where he has almost exclusively bow-hunted all kinds of plains game—kudu, impala, wildebeest.
“I like the physical and mental challenge of it. It's a wonderful escape from what we do Monday through Friday,” he says. “It's a lot like golfing. When you're looking over the ball, those 10 or 12 seconds are the most important thing in your life. When I'm bow-hunting, that's all I'm thinking about.”
Mr. Shields consumes everything he hunts in the United States; in Africa, kills go to restaurants or local residents in need of food.
“Hunting gives the animals value,” he says. “You go there and spend a lot of money, and it goes into the local economy. Money goes to villages, builds schools and supports the industry.”
Kyle Davis, an architect in Chicago with global firm Gensler, is “strictly a wing shooter”—he hunts only birds—who travels a few times a year to South Dakota to go after pheasants and to his home state of Oklahoma for duck hunts.
He's irritated by the kind of anti-hunter “who clearly is a meat eater. It's one thing if you're a vegan and making a tough choice. I would never judge someone for that,” says Mr. Davis, 41. “And I would assume rightly or wrongly that no one would judge me for my choices.”
NO ELMER FUDD
Ed Rutledge, 38, took a few days off from his now-failed campaign for lieutenant governor of Illinois (he was the Libertarian candidate) to go grouse hunting with seven other men. He says he doesn't hide that he's a hunter, but he doesn't advertise it either because people don't always understand it.
When people do learn he hunts, they're often surprised because they think he doesn't fit the stereotype.
“People see hunters as Elmer Fudds, but hunters in general hate to see suffering. We're passionate about game: We donate to conservation groups to preserve habitat and study game birds. We're outdoorsmen and sportsmen as much as hunters. We love the game that we chase, so we work to protect it,” he says.
Mr. Rutledge also likes to eat what he kills.
“People will eat chicken from the store and not think twice about how it got there,” he says. “I'll shoot a bird and cook it, and it's spectacular.”
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