It started as a spontaneous joke. My duck hunting partner and I had experienced a weekend of misadventure, including decoy-shy ducks, an outboard motor that had let us down, and poor shooting when we actually did have opportunities. Our tally of ducks harvested was small by any standard. As my partner and I were engaging in exploratory driving on duck country backroads, I made the suggestion that perhaps “We should reinvent ourselves. We should tell people that we’re naturalists, but occasionally we like to harvest a duck or two!”

We both got a laugh out of it. But the more I thought about it, and reflected on the way we spend our time when we go off for a weekend of “duck hunting,” the more truth I saw in the concept. Some people associate “hunter” only with consumer or killer. Some people think a “naturalist” is someone who is interested in the workings of Nature, but from an academic or observer’s standpoint, not as a consumer. To them, they are not one and the same.

But our interests and appetites on these so-called duck hunting trips go beyond simply wanting to do a better job at the tasks of the hunt. For example, we are just as fascinated with the habits and majesty of the trumpeter swans common to the national wildlife refuge where we hunt, birds that cannot be hunted, but are symbolic of wildness, the mysteries of migration, and a great conservation success story. After a morning’s hunt, Jim and I routinely spend part of the day driving around this massive refuge’s lakes and flowages, and are as likely to train our binoculars on these swans as we are to look for concentrations of ducks that we could potentially hunt. While hunting, when a family group of these B-52-sized waterfowl passes near our blind, our attention automatically shifts to them instead of the ducks we hope will visit the plastic decoys bobbing on the water before us.

On these mid-day explorations after the morning hunt we make note of where beavers have made new cuttings as they refurbish a dam, or in gathering woody foodstuffs to meet their survival needs during the coming winter. We ponder the uniformly gray coats of squirrels here, whereas just two hours to the southeast where I live, gray squirrel genetics are now often expressed in all-black individuals of the subspecies. These things, too, matter to us.

Okay. You win.  You get the right to call yourselves naturalists. If I get to call the oil well digger a minerologist, the child molester a man who loves children and the bank robber an appreciator of rare coins.

Obviously burglars love the things they steal. (Or at least love what they can do with them.) Otherwise what would be the point? I’m glad you enjoy nature while you’re outside shooting at it. I’d rather you appreciated its splendor than solely enjoyed its destruction. An art collector can appreciate art, and a slave trader can appreciate beauty.