Members of the Nimrod Fellowship pose for a photo after dove hunting. Courtesy | Morgan Morrison

Students shot doves and turned them into jalapeño poppers on a trip to Indiana Sept. 14, sponsored by the Drummond Family Silver Fellowship scholarship as part of the Nimrod Education Center.

Morgan Morrison, associate director of business and industry for the Nimrod Center, said Hillsdale students are intrigued by the opportunity to hunt. 

“Students learn about all sorts of things in the classroom, but then you have to take those things and apply them out in the field,” he said.

Morrison said the students worked with a farmer in Fort Wayne to lease the hunting property and planted it with sunflowers, which were cultivated to prepare for a good hunt.

Junior Alexandra Comus said after the hunt, the group processed and cooked the doves at the host’s house. 

“The doves we got were directly translated to our table, and we had our hands in every part of the process,” she said. 

A total of 12 students are in the Drummond Fellowship. 

Junior Ian Matson said the fellowship enhances awareness of hunting’s societal and conservational benefits. 

“Hunting is closely intertwined with our American culture and heritage,” he said. “You can take a lot of pride in it. It’s rewarding to eat your own harvest.” 

Comus said hunting reflects a natural order and she loves the mindset of returning to the natural world that hunting brings. 

“There’s a whole new level of gratitude and recognition that something valuable in our heritage has been lost when we don’t hunt,” she said. 

Comus said hunting allows for deeper self-reflection.

“Whenever you’re contemplating nature you’re truly able to consider yourself in the world and your place in it, you realize all that you subsist on is a product of something else that is beyond yourself,” Comus said. “That’s an incredibly powerful realization.” 

Morrison said Hillsdale hopes to offer future hunting options for the college’s community. The next trip will be an annual Hillsdale Hunting Retreat in Attapulgus, Georgia, held Oct. 17-20. 

He said that the fellows also assist with activities of the Nimrod Education Center, such as a speaker series, new hunter outreach, and publications. According to Morrison, the Nimrod Center hopes to have a duck hunt in the future in partnership with Delta Waterfowl.

Comus said that hunting allows her to appreciate self-sufficiency and survival.

“We still do activities of self-preservation but we have so many degrees of separation now that we lose track of what matters,” Comus said.

Comus said hunting compels gratitude to God and the people who made the hunt possible.

“If you can get all the food you need from a supermarket, you don’t think about things the same way as someone who a few hundred years ago had to farm or hunt food themselves,” Comus said.