Here, the hunting is mostly deer. Our deer are small compared to most and the majority of hunters use dogs, which is a level of atrocity I can't even articulate.

The dogs run the deer to near-death or corner the exhausted prey so a lazy hunter can walk up and shoot them. The dogs often get lost. My former husband, who was a hunter in his youth and never had anything against it but didn't like dog-hunting, referred to it as "hunting dogs" because that's how time was spent - trying to find the dogs, rather than the deer. Dogs on the trail follow the deer blindly, often crossing roads and getting hit by cars. While living in the country, it was common to see dead hunting dogs on the side of roads or lost dogs wandering hungry and disoriented.

Or, deer-stand hunting. A hunter baits the deer under his tree-stand, where he waits lazily drinking coffee or beer, until a deer approaches close enough that a shot can be taken, sometimes from a sitting position. No effort other than waking up early to murder a magnificent creature.

How is any of that sport? It was less about the venison than it was about a rack to hang on your wall.

I was the freak in my then-husband's family - the liberal, anti-hunting vegetarian. At family gatherings, meat would sometimes be hidden in a typically vegetarian dish just so everyone could cackle when I took a forkful. Or, someone would sneak hunting photos of bloody dead deer into a stack of birthday or holiday photos just to watch me be horrified as I came across the offensive pictures.

I'll give my husband and a few others credit for standing up for me but never was their displeasure the kind of outrage that may have stopped the cruel jokes played on me.