A local television station aired a story the other night about a Wisconsin high school biology teacher and avid hunter, who after three years of tracking one elusive deer with a lot of antlers ("16 points" I think I heard), finally bagged it with his bow and arrow.

In the hunting-for-sport world, I guess that's a pretty big thing he did. I got the impression from the story that this hunter scored big in the eyes of his hunting peers.

In our state, those peers number a half million (a half million!), according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Obviously, I'm not a hunter. So no, I haven't experienced what many hunters describe as the thrill, the challenge, the coming-of-agery and the camaraderie of the hunt." (A thoughtful piece about all that was "Deer stand meditations," Nov. 5.) And no. I've never felt the elation that follows a "successful harvest." I've been told to try it, and then I might understand. "But until you do…."

In the past I couldn't and wouldn't understand what makes hunters tick — no way, no how. The bottom line for me was that an animal was killed for the heck of it. Period.

But my thoughts are, let's say, evolving. Who would have thought?

Here's why: In the past I invariably went looking for an argument with a hunter. I exposed my bias from the get-go by starting with loaded questions and declarations like: "How come you kill innocent animals?" or "I don't see how you can like killing an animal" or "I'm guessing you don't hunt for food?" or "So you think killing an animal is fun. Right?"

Those conversations died a faster death than one beginning with, "How could you possibly vote for…."

But over time and getting nowhere, I wised up, held my tongue and asked my hunter friends to list reasons why they hunt (the same method I've applied to my golfer friends. But that's another story). Once I opened my mind and shut my mouth, some responses seemed downright reasonable: "Hunting connects me with my son." "I'm helping balance the herds." "I'm getting back to nature." "Meat for the food shelves." "Solitude."

Still, I'm not quite convinced. There's that statement I hear a lot, epitomized by a guy who posted his version in his blog: "And when your bullet or arrow takes that deer, it's great to know that its life ended in a merciful, ethical and far more painless way than nature herself would have given it."

So the hunter is doing the deer a favor? That presupposes that hunters are good shots and can kill the deer more or less painlessly with one bullet or arrow. Am I right or wrong about that?

Adding to my lingering skepticism are those euphemistic hunting terms like "take," "harvest," "fell." Am I reading into that way too much?

I still believe that hunters don't kill a deer unless they find some joy in it. Despite all those reasonable-sounding responses, if hunters didn't enjoy the killing part, they wouldn't do it. Right? And that's where I'm still stuck. I can't yet understand the joy, elation, satisfaction — whatever you want to call it — that hunters seem to experience.

Near the end of the segment about the Wisconsin hunter, the narrator over-voiced, "He was fraught with emotion over the animal he now had in his hands." Then you see the hunter himself holding his prize in his lap and I'm pretty sure we hear him addressing it tearfully:

"I'm so sorry, buddy."

"Sorry?" For what? I'm still wondering.

I'm less judgmental about this guy or any other hunter than I once was.

But still, I wonder.

Dick Schwartz, of Minneapolis, is a retired teacher.