In a candid video on her History Boutique Films channel, Erin Derham opens with a line that disarms both sides: as a former vegan and self-described liberal, she now believes hunters are true conservationists.
She’s not trolling. She’s not dunking on vegans. She’s admitting she was wrong about a world she misunderstood for years.
Derham says modern life hides where food comes from, and that distance breeds judgment. She once wore that judgment like a badge. Now she calls it what it was: misplaced superiority.
I think that honesty is what makes this confession land. It’s not a lecture. It’s a bridge.
From Disdain to Curiosity
Derham grew up in the South where hunting was normal, and – by her own account – she rebelled against it. She “truly despised” hunters and could not see “one good thing” about killing an animal.
The turning point came through taxidermy – of all things. A film partner pitched it as her next documentary. Derham leaned in, read Kingdom Under Glass, and started researching a craft she’d once dismissed.
What she found surprised her: direct links between hunting, taxidermy, and conservation. That path led to her documentary Stuffed and, more importantly, to a changed mind.
As a narrator of her own ideological U-turn, Derham shows how curiosity beats certainty. That feels like the bigger lesson here.
Conservation, With the Labels Peeled Off
Derham doesn’t argue hunters are saints. She says hunters are participants in a system where wildlife management, science, and economics collide.
Museum taxidermists told her birds are hunted daily on vegetable farms to protect the crops she once ate while vegan. The cognitive dissonance hit hard: death happens even without hunting, just out of sight.
She voices a European perspective too. In the Netherlands, she notes, people often view hunting as cruelty while eating animals raised in factories.
Meanwhile, in protected areas, deer starve in winter if herds aren’t managed. That’s not compassion – it’s neglect by policy.
To me, this is the crux: reality doesn’t care about our labels. Either we confront the messy trade-offs in the open, or we outsource them to someone else’s hands and look away.
The Economics No One Likes to Talk About
Derham also touches the third rail – money. She notes that hunting licenses in Africa and parts of the U.S. fund conservation and provide revenue for local communities.
When wildlife has no economic value, it risks becoming no wildlife at all. Anti-poaching, habitat restoration, and community incentives don’t run on vibes. They run on budgets.
That statement isn’t a blank check for bad behavior. It’s a reminder that conservation is a practice, not just a feeling. Done right, regulated hunting funnels dollars to land, law enforcement, and livelihoods.
My view: if we want wildlife to thrive, we must build systems where animals are worth more alive in healthy ecosystems than dead or displaced. Sometimes, a well-designed hunting framework helps tip that balance.
Meeting Hunters, Meeting Stewardship
Derham’s shift didn’t happen from behind a screen. It happened through people – especially Shawn Hendrix, whom she praises for disaster relief work in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene and for the way he treats animals on his farm: dogs, goats, cows – loved and respected.
Hendrix, as she tells it, embodies the stewardship ethic she now sees in many hunters: give back more than you take. Provide clean meat for family. Manage herds for health. Treat wildlife like a shared inheritance.
Derham also drops a fact most non-hunters don’t know: hunters donate more to conservation than almost any other group, via excise taxes, license fees, and nonprofit giving. Yes, there are “jerks” in the space, she says – but they’re not the norm.
That matches what conservation budgets show year after year: hunters and anglers are pillars of funding, not outliers.
Clean Meat vs. Factory Meat
One of Derham’s most striking admissions is about food ethics. She used to roll her eyes at a pickup with a deer rack. Now she sees the other side: that venison came from an animal that lived a full life, not a factory cage.
This is where her vegan past becomes a translator. She still respects vegan friends, says so repeatedly, and isn’t asking them to switch teams.
She’s asking them to consider the hidden costs of the food system they don’t see – and to grant that ethical hunting can, in many cases, reduce harm compared to industrial meat.
That doesn’t settle every argument. But it reframes the moral math honestly.
Nature Is Beautiful – And Brutal
Derham speaks about entering the wild with reverence: nature is sacred, and worth fighting for. She’s not romanticizing.
She’s acknowledging that death, predation, starvation, and disease are part of the picture. Human management – when done carefully – can reduce suffering at scale while keeping ecosystems balanced.
She’s also clear about her own line: she will probably never hunt. And that’s okay. She can honor the role hunters play without becoming one.
That nuance matters. Supporting responsible hunting isn’t a personality transplant. It’s an update to how we think about responsibility.
Stereotypes Break Fast When You Listen
Derham closes with a simple challenge: the next time you see a hunter, don’t scoff. Ask a question.
In her experience, the caricature crumbles quickly when you actually talk to people who put in the work, pay the fees, learn the land, and take one life to feed a family – instead of outsourcing that act to an anonymous line worker in an industrial facility.
I think that’s the invitation here: trade certainty for curiosity. Trade virtue signals for hard conversations. Trade distance for accountability.
Humility Is the Way Back to Reality
Derham’s “confession” isn’t about switching teams. It’s about integrity. She followed facts, met practitioners, and let new evidence rewrite old assumptions. That’s what adults do when reality knocks.
Three takeaways stick:
First, food has consequences you can’t erase – only choose. Ethical hunting is one way to own the cost rather than hide it.
Second, conservation needs money and management, not just slogans. Hunters often provide both.
Third, empathy should run both directions. Vegans and hunters can disagree fiercely and still share a common goal: less suffering, healthier ecosystems, and honest food.
Erin Derham’s words won’t convince everyone. They don’t have to. They offer something rarer: a model for how to change your mind without changing your values – by bringing those values into contact with the real world.
And if you’re still skeptical, she’d probably say this: go meet a hunter. Walk a property. Visit a check station. Ask how license dollars are used. The stereotypes won’t survive five honest questions.
That’s not capitulation. That’s citizenship.
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Image Credit: Survival World
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The article “Vegan Friends, Don’t Hate Me”: This Liberal Thought She Was Superior But Now Supports Hunters first appeared on Survival World.
Mark grew up in the heart of Texas, where tornadoes and extreme weather were a part of life. His early experiences sparked a fascination with emergency preparedness and homesteading. A father of three, Mark is dedicated to teaching families how to be self-sufficient, with a focus on food storage, DIY projects, and energy independence. His writing empowers everyday people to take small steps toward greater self-reliance without feeling overwhelmed.
