Beast Damage Report】Helping the hunter shortage…! The “tumultuous life” of an American man who became a hunter in Japan

Japan is experiencing an increase in the number of deer, boars, bears, and other animal damage due to a decrease in the hunting population and a lack of food due to climate change. Local governments, troubled by animal damage, are making efforts to train new hunters, but the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine have caused the prices of gunpowder and ammunition to skyrocket, and the shortage of hunters is becoming more serious.

It was under these circumstances that I met an American man who makes his living as a hunter in Hyogo Prefecture.

Hamor Jeffrey Heath, 41, hails from Iowa, USA. His family is a dairy farmer who grows corn, soybeans, and raises pigs and dairy cows.

Influenced by his grandfather and father’s hunting, he became interested in hunting at the age of 4. At 14, he picked up his first hunting rifle and started hunting deer and wild birds in the fields and mountains. While attending Nebraska State University, he met and began dating his wife Maho, who was studying there.

In 2002, when Maho turned 20 years old, he decided to return to Japan temporarily to attend her coming-of-age ceremony.

I had never left my hometown in my life,” she said. It was in Yamaguchi Prefecture, my wife’s hometown, that I boarded an airplane for the first time in my life and saw the ocean for the first time.”

After visiting Japan three times, Mr. Hamor became interested in Japan and became engaged to Maho while still in school. He decided to study in Japan, partly because the University of Nebraska and Shizuoka University are sister universities. After leaving college, he got a job at a company that exported cars and lived in Shizuoka and Tokyo for 16 years.

Later, he moved to Hyogo Prefecture when his wife changed jobs. After learning that foreigners could hunt with a license, Mr. Hamor obtained a hunting license and a hunting rifle license.

I didn’t know any hunters in my hometown, so I went into the mountains alone to hunt deer and boars,” he said. I even got a call from someone who said, ‘There’s a suspicious foreigner roaming the mountains with a gun’ (laughs).”

After meeting a member of the Nishinomiya branch of the local hunting club, Hamor was apprenticed to a veteran hunter in the hunting club. He was “very intrigued,” he says, because “ kukuri trap hunting,” which is a major hunting method in Japan, is not practiced in the U.S., where the legs and body of the prey are tied around a loop made of wire or wire.

Now in his seventh year of hunting, Hamor earns his income by working for the prefectural and city governments for bird and wildlife protection and as a secretariat for a hunting fraternity. He lives with his wife Maho, who works for a foreign company, and their son Kaiharu, who is in the third grade of elementary school. Near his home is a rice field that Hamor has been renting since last May, and he has harvested 530 kg of rice. In the field next door, he grows onions, garlic, and cabbage. The taste of the crops he grows himself is exceptional, and they are well received by friends he shares them with.

My family in the U.S. is basically self-sufficient,” he says. It tastes better and is better for the environment if you catch and grow your own food.

Nishinomiya City, where Hamor and her family live, is located on the gentle slopes of the Rokko Mountains, and because of the proximity of residential areas and forests, their vegetable garden has been destroyed by beasts and there have been many accidents caused by wild boars. The wiring of solar panels installed on the sunny slope has often been eaten away by wild boars.

In response to the high incidence of animal damage, Hyogo Prefecture is offering a free “Introduction to Catching Pests and Wild Animals” course for newcomers who have acquired hunting licenses and guns, with the aim of acquiring hunting knowledge and skills. This course is called the Hunting Meister Training School, which Hamor also attended.

The good thing about this school is, of course, that you can acquire knowledge and skills, but you can also make good friends. I have a good relationship with the people I took the course with.

We hope that prefectures where animal damage is becoming more serious and there is a shortage of young hunters will introduce hunting meister training schools.

The second part of the article, “Many Lifes with Beasts…! Close-up on the Hunting of an American Hunter Living in Hyogo Prefecture” will show a close-up look at Mr. Hamor’s hunting.