Having the right gear and a place to go are essential, but there is something more about hunting that sets it apart from most other outdoor sports — spirit — and the rich heritage of customs and traditions that support it.

Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset writes in his classic work Meditations On Hunting, “Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery and therefore contains something of a religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, in the laws of nature.”

Regardless whether a hunter is an Eskimo in a kayak with a spear, a freckled-faced teenager with a .22 rifle chasing a rabbit with a beagle, or a baron swinging a $50,000 Beretta over-and-under after a fleeing grouse on the moors; and despite his beliefs — animistic shaman, Christian, a Muslim or a Buddhist; which all offer guidance to the hunter — an ethical hunter is inspired by the spirit of the wild to become a passionate killer who shoots from the heart.

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