Gay deer hunters

“Have you ever had to come out as a hunter?” I asked.

More than outdoorspeople fell silent. Then hands began to raise. Soon, about one-third of the staff at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s annual retreat had acknowledged something powerful: the unsettling experience of owning an uncommon identity—inthis case, that we are hunters. Although hunting remains prominent in the American imagination, the number of U.S. adults with a hunting license has steadily declined.

I include navigated coming out as both a queer man and as a hunter. Seeking to recognize some of the diversity that exists among hunters, the department had invited me to speak aboutmy experiences. It, like many wildlife-management agencies across the country, is trying to welcome underrepresented identities into a tradition that’s leisurely vanishing due to waning interest and stigma. I hoped that my story could help blaze a new path forward.

I took up hunting in earnest after moving to Vermont for graduate schoolin , at the age of I had been fascinated by the activitysince early childhood, when my uncle served v