A Hunter’s Confession

A Hunter’s Confession tells the story of hunting—both its history and the role it has played in David Carpenter’s own life, including the reasons he once loved it and the dramatic hunting incident that made him give up hunting for good.

Winding through this narrative is Carpenter’s exploration of the history of hunting, subsistence hunting versus hunting for sport, trophy hunting, and the meaning of the hunt for those who have written about it most eloquently. Are wild creatures somehow our property? How is the sport hunter different from the hunter who must kill game to survive? Is there some bridge that might connect Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal hunters? Carpenter ponders questions like these as he describes what hunting has meant to him and to others throughout history and in our own time.

David Carpenter is the author of eight books of fiction, including Niceman Cometh and Welcome to Canada, and two nonfiction books, Fishing in Western Canada and Courting Saskatchewan. His fiction and his essays have won seven literary awards. He lives and writes in Saskatoon.