Heartsblood: Hunting, Spirituality, and Wildness in America

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and Compelling
Review: I found this to be a thoughtful and compelling analysis of not only the issues involved hunting but in man's overall relationship with the environment. Petersen deftly cuts through the hyperbole surrounding the hunting debate and presents fascinating insights into the subject, often backed by personal experiences. Must reading for anyone involved in (or for that matter against) hunting.

Rating:
Summary: Discover the world we were all born to live...
Review: I say with sincere passion and humility when I say that David Petersen is my favorite author of all time. No one, in my humble opinion, gives me the ride I seek in literature like Petersen. His ability to deliver critical conservation, evolutionary and spiritual messages in this current state of our world is beyond compare. He is fun, brilliant and spellbounds the spiritual seeker in all of those who seek "the lessons that only nature can teach."

Rating:
Summary: With compelling first-person hunting narratives
Review: In Heartsblood: Hunting, Spirituality, And Wildness In America, author, editor, and wilderness expert David Peterson provides the reader with an informed, intensely personal, candid, and occasionally unsettling exploration on the subject of hunting in American culture. Petersen documents his observations with compelling first-person hunting narratives, as he also draws upon philosophy, evolutionary theory, biology, and scholarly studies on hunters and the "hunting culture". Hunting issues are as topical as today's newspaper headlines. Heartsblood is a welcome and very highly recommended contribution to familial, environmental, and political dialogues over the role of hunters and hunting in our lives, culture, and society for both good and ill.

Rating:
Summary: Essential Read for the Thoughtful Hunter- or Nonhunter
Review: Once again, Petersen proves he is a (the?) leading writer on the subject of why hunters hunt, drawing from the existing literature and expanding on the subject in a way that is both accessible yet scholarly, with wit to boot. Critical of both the "shoot anything that moves" camp and its supporters in the mainstream hunting press, as well as anti-hunters (although sympathetic to thinking non-hunters), Heartsblood is a must-read for those who seek clarity on why *they* hunt, or who seek insight into the mind of the hunter.

Rating:
Summary: thoughtprovoking, careful, enlightening
Review: There is not enough space in this review block to enlighten the uninformed as to what propells an ethical hunter. Suffice to say it is a passion...a love of the wild and things wild and finding a niche in this timeless chain for one's self. If you don't hunt, this book will help you understand why your dad or neighbour or uncle will waste countless hours in adverse freezing conditions in a deer stand or a duck blind. However, if you do hunt, this book is worth it just for the expose' of the roots of the "Bambi" syndrome and the unethical mechanisms used to discredit a heritage freedom and a nobel and ethical pursuit.