Hunters frequently cite the peace and closeness to nature they feel as a powerful draw … to the killing of animals.

While Fosmire asserts that she “is not here to discuss the moral implications of hunting” and that she does “not come from a family of hunters,” Fosmire nonetheless provides her readers with exactly that, a shallow article with glaring omissions concerning the cruelty inherent in hunting and the actuality of the “traditions” and “culture” maintained through blood sports.

In her column, Fosmire relies on myth and romanticized conceptions of hunting to support a shortsighted and self-interested pastime that contributes to the destruction of what In Defense of Animals estimates as more than 200 million animals and their ecosystems, yearly.

While Fosmire only mentions the killing of deer in her article, more than a dozen other species are shot with bullets and arrows, trapped and gassed within our state under the guise of “wildlife management” or “family togetherness.”

During designated hunting times, hibernation and mating are disrupted and toxic ammunition casings and other trash are left littered throughout Michigan forests.

Despite Fosmire’s assertion that “the first day of deer season is viewed almost as a national holiday,” according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey conducted in 2006, less than 5 percent of the U.S. population hunts. An additional study found that less than 2 percent of total animals killed by hunters are U.S. deer.

According to a report by the Texas Park and Wildlife Service, half of the deer who are struck with an arrow from a bow hunter are not retrieved and are left to painfully suffer and slowly die.

Regarding hunting, animal activist and author Brian Luke writes, “It is not that men hunt to get meat, just the reverse, they eat the meat in order to hunt — that is, in order to gain ex post facto legitimation for the hunt itself.”

Luke also writes that hunters and others who exploit and kill animals seek to escape public critiques or personal guilt through the creation of “cover stories.”

These stories falsely address a supposed need for “population management” or, by incorrectly asserting that we must eat meat, justify hunting as a means of feeding people.

Hunters also attempt to “deny the harms done to animals,” claiming an animal’s death at the hands of a hunter is painless and compassionate or by viewing the animals as willing victims in their deaths and finally through the “derogation of sympathies [toward] animals … typically done in gender-specific ways.”

Feminist author and activist Carol Adams believes that “hunting essentially normalizes violence” with the “armed hunter … armed most intimately with his own penis.”

Adams and other feminists assert that hunting is a means for men to exert their dominance and total control over animals who are often feminized — their bodies ogled and objectified, posed for pictures after their killing and often mounted and displayed for further enjoyment.

In her article, Fosmire ignores the sexual politics of hunting and the cruelty inflicted upon animals.

As a state and as a society, we must find other ways of feeding and entertaining ourselves that do not rely on an assertion of a male-dominated patriarchy and the killing of animals.

Mitch Goldsmith is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at goldsm4@msu.edu.