The Church doesn’t forbid hunting or fishing. These are legitimate ways to provide food for your family and participate in God’s creation as a steward, not just a consumer.
But there’s more to say than just “it’s allowed.” The Orthodox approach to hunting and fishing involves questions of motive, mercy, and what it means to have dominion over creation. If you’re heading out to Lake Sam Rayburn this weekend or sitting in a deer blind off Highway 105, you’re doing something that connects to how we understand our relationship with the natural world.
Stewardship, Not Domination
When God gave humanity dominion over creation in Genesis, the Fathers understood this as a calling to stewardship. We’re caretakers, not tyrants. We can use animals for food, but we can’t treat them with cruelty or waste. The distinction matters.
Hunting for meat to feed your family? That fits within Orthodox teaching about responsible use of creation. Trophy hunting where you’re mounting a head on the wall but discarding the meat? That’s harder to square with Christian compassion. Fishing to stock your freezer with redfish and speckled trout? Good. Killing animals for entertainment or to prove something? That’s where Orthodox writers draw a line.
The Church has always distinguished between necessary use and gratuitous cruelty. Several of the apostles were fishermen before Christ called them. St. Peter didn’t stop being a fisherman because fishing was wrong. He stopped because Christ gave him a different mission. And even after the Resurrection, we find Peter and the others fishing again in John 21, where Jesus meets them on the shore and cooks breakfast with them.
What About the Clergy?
Here’s where it gets more specific. While laypeople can hunt and fish, clergy generally shouldn’t hunt. This isn’t written in stone as a universal canon, but it’s a widespread pastoral tradition. The reasoning has to do with the character expected of priests and the avoidance of activities that could foster aggression or appear unseemly for someone who stands at the altar.
Different bishops handle this differently. Some might permit a priest to fish. Hunting is more consistently discouraged. If you’re considering ordination and you’re an avid hunter, that’s worth discussing with your priest early on.
Fasting Considerations
Game meat is still meat. If you shoot a deer during hunting season and it falls during a fasting period, the same fasting rules apply as with beef or pork. On strict fasting days, you abstain from it. This sometimes surprises people who think “wild” meat might be different from “store” meat, but the Church doesn’t make that distinction.
Fish is more complicated because “fish” in fasting terminology usually means things with fins and scales from the water. Shellfish often fall into a different category. Your parish priest can help you navigate the specifics, especially if you’re bringing in a cooler full of shrimp or crab from a Gulf trip.
Saints Who Hunted and Fished
St. Eustace was a Roman general and an avid hunter. According to his life, he encountered a stag with a glowing cross between its antlers while hunting, and Christ spoke to him through this vision. He converted, was baptized, and eventually martyred for his faith. The Church remembers him on September 20. He didn’t become a saint because he hunted. He became a saint despite his former life, through his conversion and faithfulness unto death.
Martyr Peter the Aleut was a young fisherman and hunter from Alaska. In 1815, he was captured by Spanish authorities in California and tortured for refusing to renounce Orthodoxy. He’s commemorated in the Church as a martyr. His life shows that ordinary work like fishing and hunting can be the context in which we live out our faith.
These saints didn’t romanticize their occupations. They worked, they provided, and they encountered Christ in the midst of ordinary life.
Practical Guidance
If you hunt or fish, do it responsibly. Follow game laws, they exist partly to prevent the kind of exploitation and waste that Orthodox teaching condemns. Don’t take more than you’ll use. Treat the animal with respect, which means a clean kill and no unnecessary suffering. Thank God for what He’s provided.
If you’re teaching your kids to hunt or fish, teach them why we do it and how we do it matters. This isn’t just about bagging a limit or filling a stringer. It’s about participating in creation with gratitude and humility.
And if you don’t hunt or fish? That’s fine too. There’s no requirement that Orthodox Christians do these things. Some of the greatest saints were monastics who ate very little and certainly didn’t hunt. The question isn’t whether you hunt or fish, but whether you approach creation with the right heart, whether you’re standing in a deer blind, buying meat at Brookshire Brothers, or eating beans and rice during Lent.
The Church calls us to mercy. That applies to how we treat animals, how we use the land, and how we think about our place in God’s creation. Hunting and fishing can fit within that calling when done rightly.
