I pastored Somerset Baptist Church in Mt Perry, Ohio, for eleven years in the 1980s and 1990s. Located in the Appalachian foothills, the church was surrounded by beautiful scenery, dusty country roads, stripper oil wells, illegal pot growers, and farms.
One family had a large farm a few miles away from the church. The mom and her three children attended church, but the dad did not. I was a hunter at the time. The dad gave me an open invitation to hunt on their land.
One sunny fall day, I decided to go squirrel hunting by myself on the aforementioned land. I walked the rolling hills for what seemed forever before finding a place to sit in the woods. My gun of choice that day was a bolt-action Mossberg .410 shotgun — a gun I bought for myself when I was twelve.
I plopped myself on the leaf-littered ground and leaned up against a huge tree. I thought that this would be a great spot for spotting squirrels. Long days and short nights had their way with me, and before long, I fell sound asleep. A while later, I was stirred by chipmunks running over and around me. As I lifted my head and looked off into the distance, imagine my surprise to see two foxes intently watching me. What a beautiful sight — breathtaking. Eventually, the foxes ran off, as did the chipmunks.
No squirrels were killed on this day or any other thereafter. I became increasingly uncomfortable with hunting, especially killing animals for no other reason than that I could. I no longer had the bloodlust necessary to kill wild animals. Photography became my new weapon of choice, “shooting” animals without killing them.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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