Deborah Lee Luskin is now an Artemis Ambassador, a volunteer arm of the National Wildlife Federation promoting conservation and women in the outdoors. The Keene Public Library is at 60 Winter St. in Keene, New Hampshire.
WILLIAMSVILLE-I didn’t become a full-blooded conservationist until I became a deer hunter. It was only through learning from the deer how to read the untamed landscape that I came to understand the natural world and my place in it.
I learned to walk into the woods in the dark and started to pay attention to moonrise and phase.
I watched the sun rise like theater lights coming on slowly and stopped suffering from the darkness that annually descended on my soul during the shortening days of November.
I became observant and learned how trees grow in community, red squirrels scold, and the Bruce spanworm moth survives by waiting to emerge after its predators head south for the winter.
I learned how the northern forest is imperiled by human development and by too many deer, by forest fragmentation, and by habitat degradation.
And I’ve experienced the scorn and contempt in which some self-defined nature lovers hold hunters and hunting.
I even experienced cancel culture, when a conservation organization that owns land open to hunting cancelled an event where I was to speak about how becoming a deer hunter brought me to a deeper understanding of our human impact on the natural world and our need to conserve it — for humans, for the deer, and for the Earth.
One of my motivations for writing Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress was to help readers understand how the deer, humans, and the forest are all connected, for both better and worse.
Deer suffer from habitat loss and forest fragmentation caused by human development; the forest suffers from too many deer eating the saplings meant to replace mature trees; and humans suffer from deer-born parasites, crop damage, and deer-motor vehicle collisions.
Humans are the ones who can change these factors by changing our behavior and conserving land, reconnecting wildlife corridors, and protecting the forest from too many deer. It’s a complex equation, with many approaches all with the same aim: a thriving forest, healthy deer, and humans in balance with nature.
* * *
Susie Spikol and I will present “Cousins in Conservation” at the Keene Public Library on Thursday, April 23 at 6 p.m. We are cousins and wise women who followed different paths to similar ends: a deep love for the northern forest, language, and stories.
Susie and I were both born in New York, both grew up on pavement, and have each been living in northern New England for decades, Susie in New Hampshire and me in Vermont. Susie is a writer, educator, and naturalist; I’m a writer, educator, and deer hunter.
Susie is the author of three books: The Animal Adventurer’s Guide, Forest Magic for Kids, and The Book of Fairies. I’m the author of two: Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress, a memoir, and Into the Wilderness, a novel.
I hope those who hunt, those who don’t hunt, and those who oppose hunting will all attend to meaningful and broadminded conversation about some of the many ways we humans can help forests thrive.
This Voices Viewpoint by Deborah Lee Luskin was written for The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at voices@commonsnews.org.