Hunting: The Poor and Entitled.

King Charlemagne

Remember this: In a person's life circumstances change. The pauper can become the rich and the rich can become the pauper. Hunting is hunting regardless.

The current atmosphere of hunting as a sport of either leisure or food gathering necessity has shined a pinpoint light on the availability of the hunting act on a landscape both private and public influenced by money, law, status and personal ownership.

In America anyone regardless of gender, ethnicity, or financial background can purchase a hunting license. Once you get that hunting license it is up to you whether you hunt public land, your own private land, or another private land owner’s. You can be a homeless vagrant with no job but if you can provide money for the license fee then you can hunt. Where you would get the gun remains to be seen unless you're going Rambo with a knife.

I have spoken to hunter's that are upset because they can't hunt wherever they want without permission from private land owners. There are also comments about public land not being enough. I have also be privy to conversations where a group of hunters or hunter complains that he is unable to go on 'dream hunts' like other more wealthy hunters. This problem of entitlement where a more wealthy hunter has better access to game and hunting conditions because the outfitter that provides the service dictates the price and the amount of luxury going into the itinerary. I assume on both hunters part no matter the amount of money they both work for it just the same: one just has more than the other.

The financially well-off hunter can travel at his leisure while sharing his exploits. Other hunters dream and envy over that person's life. The financially well-off hunter could just keep his bucks to himself and not help subsidize other peoples economy. On the other hand the poorer hunter can save his money and go on a trip of his own. To me its just a rock throwing contest where instead of sharing brothership in the hunt its coveting all the way. Money helps but its not everything.

I got to thinking about the History of Hunting where social cast systems came into play. I googled around just for fun. How could hunting be used as an element of social control?

The North Carolina Act of 1745 was used to push out people that depended on hunting all year long by getting them to move elsewhere, limited hunting to certain times of the year, and restricted practices such as fire-ring hunting and jack light hunting.

Fire-ring hunting used two men in the dark where they set a fire up to five to seven miles wide to run quarry to a smaller group of hunters while jack lighting was used by putting coals or a fire into a cast iron skillet then using it to shine off the eyes of animals.

Also the North Carolina Act of 1745 stated that if you didn't have a home or were jobless that you couldn't hunt. Hunters had to carry an affidavit they planted at least 500 corn hills. At that time depletion of game was a worry so I guess they figured if you're going to shoot them, give them something to eat or at least show you care.

In 1705 in Virginia, the House of Burgess rolled back the open areas to prohibit commoners from hunting on private land without permission. You were exempt if you owned more than six slaves at the time. This meant that wealth indicated if you could trespass on private property to hunt if you didn't have permission. I guess if you destroyed property they would take your slaves as payment (which has been attested to for other debts in that time period).

Of course with all things and starving people you have law breakers so to ensure no one was poaching the House of Burgess laid down a twenty shilling reward for each incidence of poaching that was turned in. I laughed and thought that was easy money seeing how you could just turn someone in.

I can only imagine what it was like in Europe.

I did find in a poem called the Rime of William where the writer penned his unhappiness at William the Conqueror’s idea to let the wild things of the forest run free. This goes back to aristocracy dictating who could hunt and what game would be hunt. I did think about it and to not take it literally because at that time I am sure there was a lot of starving people with poaching on their mind. At the same time maybe King William saw a decrease in wildlife and wanted it controlled. Wars will do a lot to a landscape while making the animals on it disappear to feed soldiers. Agriculture was going on but it made you wonder why they were going after the wildlife if not to enjoy the hunt themselves as serfs. Who knows?

Whether or not this is going to be a problem as hunting areas get smaller or just the competition to get into a landscape to hunt is pursued through hunting tags is yet to be seen. What if people started to argue they didn't feel the tagging system was right because it only allowed so many people to go. What if they argued it was rigged to only cater to certain people?

Now everyone has a camera where they are filming their hunts. Everyone wants to be the expert because that gives them top ranking. With all this fighting over the best 'piece of meat' did hunters stop enjoying themselves?

Would it be better to be a little nobody that enjoys the hunt for themselves without sharing it with the world on some little speck of land in the realm of obscurity than to not enjoy hunting at all?

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Out of the Hunter’s Sensual Reach.

Remember this: Life is a little drama.

Dubiously I refer to women as huntress but I have difficulties with this verbiage because it does seem to lack a certain lady-like quality. I use it anyway because people know the word and accept it as a descriptive of a woman who hunts whether ladylike or not. I think men like it because it carries the weight of being wild and untamed but being wild and untamed in the male/female relationship goes towards cheap, easy, and disposable. This being said if you’re in a long standing relationship where both parties are comfortable with daring sexual acts by all means-have at it.  Men and women both like romantic amours but society frowns down on promiscuousness. It’s really better to be committed because at least you’re secure to some degree on familiarity. It reminds me of the concept of a trusty pair of well-worn holey shoes you can’t seem to part with.  Men like the idea of this temporary condition but want to have some control over their woman maybe because this makes their role clear even if it makes a woman’s murky. Once again women need to give men a job or a purpose in life and not a hard time (its alienating). Men want the job as protector and boss. That is just how it is. Unless they give up that job and want to cook, clean and have babies (scary thought but the marvels of modern science).

I have always had a general hope for opposite sex relationships (or anyone wanting such a thing). If people want to be together- go for it I say. As I was doing some research on the Southern Belle of Antiquity I was immersed in the construction of a myth: the myth of the Southern Belle. The more bizarre antidote about this is the creator: the Southern Gentleman. How does this pertain to hunting? Let me elaborate.

Back in the golden days, men regarded Southern Women (with breeding) as ladies. Their roles were to navigate the social circles without damaging the family reputation, running the house while the man was away, and being there for family, friends, and husband. We could say all things feminine. Ladies were not in direct competition for the necessities of life but rather sheltered by the Gentleman Hunter a.k.a. the husband or father. Nevertheless the Gentleman Hunter was the all-encompassing provider unless the lady was endowed with money at marriage. These women were stereotyped much like the women of the 40s and 50s. Housewives with no longing for an adventurous life outside the home other than what the significant other could provide. Southern Belles were also placed on a pedestal where they were beyond sexual desire and unblemished. This myth building of an ideal of what that particular woman was stringently defined her lot in life and how she was perceived by society and her significant other.

How does this myth building come into play with Hunting? I asked myself that question after reading up on the antebellum ladies of society.

If the hunter and huntress are at odds because of conflict based on competition for hunting based jobs, position in society and community, and role as the patriarchal authority figure (or provider) over home and hearth this could cause the Gentleman Hunter to react in a very defensive way.

The first thing an animal will do is try to drive off a threat with a defense mechanism brought on by hidden or direct threats. I have seen something akin to this in the Gentleman Hunter community. It is the myth building of the hunter’s ideal woman.

Women that hunt are not perfect physically or mentally. Yet the Gentleman Hunter community without knowing it is advertising their ideal huntress in photos on social media. It literally works as a repellant to the average huntress. This may be so reactive that the Gentleman Hunter does not know consciously that he is literally pushing back against the perceived barrages of female invasions into his hunting space, which is sacred to him. It defines his manliness and he doesn’t want to compete with a woman over manliness. Women are women-not men but they take on male roles to compensate for lack of a partner to fill the void of what would be considered ‘your rock’. Poor Cassiopeia is chained to a rock and the wolves are at the door therefore she acts like a man without a choice.  No man steps up to do the job or save her from chain and rock. Also by pushing pictures of an ideal unattainable woman in the guise of a huntress the Gentleman Hunter is sending subtle signals to the female competition that they are not what he or others desires. This is a complete lie but it’s a defense mechanism because they are threatened when there is no need for it. Men have anxiety too. On the other hand the huntress wants to be with the Gentleman Hunter but in the effort to have something in common confuses the situation more. A sad explanation of this tragedy is lack of home training when it comes to bonding with each other by communication and compromise with a willingness to understand and hold each other in equal regard.

Can the Gentleman Hunter and the Lady that hunts come to terms with this invasion into manly space? I don’t know the answer to that.

Therefore you could say to save himself the Gentleman Hunter has pushed the huntress away from him physically to save himself or his sense of self. The huntress has taken on a role that is not so much hers and relinquished the Gentleman Hunter of his responsibility to be the man. Both have inadvertently separated each other from beyond the sensual reach of the other.

Hunting has been about the eternal struggle of man against beast but in this case its man against woman. I hope it’s a draw for all our sakes.

Really can’t this be overcome or do men and women need one more thing to pull them apart? Hunting should be about forming bonds. What is a greater bond then sharing in something with someone you love? Let’s hope that ship has not sailed yet.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Where Did You Go Gentleman Hunter?

Remember this: I have never met a true gentleman. Have you?


"I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentleman, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be: Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a flip."

Charlotte Bronte; Jane Eyre ch.17.

 “Show me a gentleman devoted to the chase and I will show you, with rare exception, ‘the noblest work of God, and honest man,’ respected for manly virtues, a good husband and father, a zealous friend, and open enemy.  “The rich man’s equal, the poor man’s benefactor”-richly adorning the pages of life with the shining virtues of charity and benevolence—who memory will be a green spot in the dreary waste of sordid worldliness.” Quoted Mississippi Governor Alexander McNutt.

There are a lot of things being posted on the internet nowadays about the conflict between men and women. I have seen a lot of news and conversations from the men’s camp about being a gentleman and a hunter. There is also the concern and questions about this ever growing gap between the two sexes. Whether or not the gentlemen hunter is now feeling like he too may become an obsolete dinosaur, while being castrated figuratively by an unknown assailant, is probably for concern. 

There has always been an issue of control. This control is only balanced when one or the other sex has decided, willingly or unwillingly, to acquiesce to the other sex’s demands and wished. I can attest some do seem like manly gentlemen but you also have not so manly impostors. I have never seen such a creature but I would think it would be quite the spectacle if I ever laid eyes on one. This brings me to the question I had pop up in my mind. Let me set the stage.

A gentleman hunter and a not-so-ladylike huntress are out hunting together (as a couple or not). A gigantic dream buck walks through within bullet range while both have a clear shot. Once the realization the dream buck is in the cross hairs, exactly what would be the outcome? How would the story go down? Oh the horror!

Does either one step back and say, “Go ahead. I’ll step aside so you can shoot that deer” or “Ladies first?” Really, in this virtual simulation who is going to get to shoot the deer?

This was a conundrum I really found interesting because it’s happening right now. Not literally, but figuratively. I wondered exactly how far men were willing to be pushed, in what was considered a traditionally male role, before they balked or fought back for lack of better words.

I dug down into history for this lost gentleman hunter. As far as my investigation has reveals, the gentleman hunter was closely the same but more refined in his endeavors. I read from Nicolas W. Proctor book, Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South, a quote the gentleman hunter, “wrote about experiences in the field with the same care and detail they devoted to their business dealings and selected hunting companions as carefully as political representatives.” Most definitely a discerning type of person.

The social construction of the gentleman hunter was exhibited through his peers. The gentleman hunter could gain recognition based on his prowess, self-control, and mastery of skill. These descriptive words were a direct show of his masculinity. Young men would use these mentor types as a measuring stick for their own accomplishment at hunting to validate their ability to exhibit their functioning manliness. This positioned the man in the role of provider. Depending on how good a provider you were would indicate your responsibility level, dependability and ability to provide security as this is what most women worry over. In a strange way, these types of ideals gained through the hunting endeavor was the backbone for the gentleman hunter’s self-esteem, sense of self, and self-worth. The gentleman hunter’s ambiance was defined. There was no reason to question his role, or position in the world.  

This time period in the South prostrated the gentleman hunter by using hunting as the instrument for social cohesion between men and women. The role of sex changed over the centuries. Now hunting participants, unless married, are standing on two difference sides of a chasm that gets bigger with each circumstance of direct competition.

In today’s world, you have a lot of solitary individuals basically taking care of their needs and no one else. If a lone female or male hunters are in direct competition for the food source, the glory and acclaim while validating themselves to hunting peers there is going to be conflict. No everyone in the world is going to partner up and get married to rectify that situation. I hardly doubt either is going to stand aside especially if their livelihood or basic senses of survival are threatened.

I asked myself: Are men feeling the pressure of being emasculated? I think yes. It questions their value and renders them with a perceived decline in power over circumstance. This leaves them to wonder what their options are and if they have to adapt.  They will either embrace it or exert dominance while running the women they come to admire and love away for survival sake. Maybe this is running the men away? If men and women are meant to be together, social structure and its shifting structure are really making it fall to pieces. The appearance is ugly bleeding cracks in the surface.

If women could depend on men to go back to being present and taking responsibility for the family, would the female hunter let them? Would the gentleman hunter be so detached he just decides to become a hunting gigolo?

If the gentleman hunter’s defined role is being tested and stripped away, what is going to be left of him?

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

Hunting and Slavery: A Moment of Freedom.

Remember: The world knows slavery is wrong but it’s interesting that Hunting was an outlet for freedom (especially in the Old South). It would be nice to think of female slaves hunting but ditto on this one. There were also white slaves but discriminating historians left that part out because the more extreme tales of slavery were advertised because of the more potent effect. All accounts were not horrendous. With that being said I have read some pretty murderous and heart wrenching accounts of plantation life for black, white, and Indian slaves.

I was reading an online book by Nicolas W. Proctor called Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South. There are many examples of how hunting is negative from the non-hunters standpoint. I was surprised to find the sport of Hunting used as a platform to elevate the role of male slaves in the Old South. Yes, hunting elevated the human condition when it was at one of its worse cases in history. In the form of hunting, hope was alive with the re-enforcement that the male slave was still a man and a provider even in the face of captivity.

There was a section that I will quote that Proctor wrote, “Living in a society predicted upon constant degradation, a simple act of generosity could become a symbol of resistance. The point of view of the slave that hunted was a way to ameliorate their own condition. Re-conceptualizing hunting as an activity that benefited the slave community, these hunters created their own meaning for the labor they performed at the behest of their owners.”

Here you have human beings removed from their homes on foreign shores to come to a place where they are enslaved to do the manual labor of European settlers. While enslaved their routine is dictated for the general benefit of making a profit and making the European settler’s lives easier. Life as a hunter in the motherland was no more but the male slave was put to the task of agriculture.

I can only imagine the day one of the plantation owners decided it was time to hunt. That would be the one time the male slave could act as he had acted at home. He could be a hunter. In most accounts in the South, weapons were given to these select few slaves for them to be able to shoot quarry if it were in their reach and the plantation owner would actually share in the kill so the slaves out hunting could enjoy the fruits of their labors too. This sharing provided a form of social cohesion amongst the slaves. There are numerous accounts of previous slave owners holding slaves and freedmen in high regard for their hunting skills.

Even though that one moment to hunt was a temporary freedom it was a freedom nonetheless. Hunting truly does provide outlets for opportunity to be the person you are even if the circumstance is not ideal. It allows that moment of freedom. That moment of release from bondage and restraint even in today's world where people are workaholics and trapped inside buildings making a dollar for the ‘man’ and family. I think everyone has had that moment where you stare out the window shackled down by responsibility or life worry and think, “This weekend I am going hunting. I will be free.”

As a privileged society we should not take for granted the rights we have. This country was built on the idea of freedom, by thieves and murderers cast out by their motherland, the religiously persecuted, death of indigent tribes, oriental railroad workers, and slaves, black and white. Truly we have not suffered but we dishonor our ancestors for all the pain and hardship they have gone through for their children’s children to be able to call themselves ‘free men’.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

 ~Couretsy of the AOFH~

Homo Homini Lupus

Remember this: Homo Homini Lupus in Latin means, "Man is a wolf amoung men".


I really must inform you, this is not an 'anti-hunting' treatise where wolves are concerned. There are laws regulating that endeavor which makes it legal, so it's fair game until someone in the Big House decides it's time to give it a rest.
This piece is more how I respect such a thing because I am such a thing (metaphorically speaking).
No,  I do not change at the full moon, run naked, and all the while killing sheep or small children.
The truly understanding reader would be open to this explanation and not one that immediately scoffs to disregard the commentary. They are in denial. Ego has blinded them from what is naturally wild within them. When I say wild, I do not mean savagery. Savagery is beyond control. There is always protocol in the Animal Kingdom,  even where killing is concerned, unless you have the rogue. The rogue beast can have its defining factors of what it will and will not do.  The animal that is without bounds is what one would consider a killing machine; without any kind of prejudice. As a human being, I chose not to be a killing machine, where life is without value.
This is one of the concerns for hunters and huntresses. When does hunting stop being hunting? At what point do you become nothing more than a killing machine? Once you have quested and succeeded with every animal species,  when do you turn to or on man? Could this happen?
I found this quote while researching and its always stayed with me. Aside from the fact that man does not have the same characteristics of the wolf in physical form,  but shares a kind of hierarchy of levels, from dominant alpha to the lower less dominant omega. There are similarities in intellect, mating, and somatics. In life,  we refer to human packs as cliques. A clique in  itself can be benevolent or exceedingly violent. There is always a ring leader and his/her followers, for good or bad. The underlings will do everything the leader wants because there is a limited amount of protection to be had in one. The dire part is being tossed out. Having to find a new way  is probably more beneficial because the atmosphere of your life changes for the better. The 'lone wolf' as it were, is the most free. That person can go their own way without being under the heel as a suppressed person or held back by another person's decisions. They can choose to be with whomever they want but move in and out of territories. I have wondered why people give that kind of power to others who  are beneath them,  but it happens.
I then laugh and say, "Why didn't people in antiquity pick a porcupine?" A porcupine is mean enough and will leave you with presents in the form of quills. It reminds me how kings use lions as their representing mark when a male lion is a dandy. The only thing magnificient about him is his hairy coif.
I have read that Homo Homini Lupus can be translated as man's aggression against one another. This can be seen on the internet and in war, class, or ethnic torn countries. I have also noticed from the online banter,  in a most unfriendly way,  the conversations between hunters and huntresses range from  arguments over hunting technique, imagery, and whose the coolest hunter of them all.
It's my belief anyone that wants to hunt properly is more than adequate.
There are also people that legally know they can't kill but will exert their aggression on another person because violence is achieved to some degree,  if not fully.
Man is known to hunt. Wolves are known to hunt. They could possibly hunt each other in the right circumstance if presented with it.
I always took movies into consideration that were about lycanthropy. On one hand, the moon drives the character crazy. It's almost always about a man that turns into a wolf or has wolf attributes. He loses his humanity, to eat and kill things (mostly sheep and people). When the character is not fully animal, he/she is fighting with the  creature inside. In truth, people are always struggling with some inner turmoil. Even now,  you can see it where people are fighting against societal rules and want to be free. Does that mean free to act as wild animals without defining boundaries? There are people courting anarchy but anarchy leads to even more violence because it's unregulated. People have a problem regulating themselves, where right and wrong exist.
In regards to wolves,  you could see it as another species running through the woods with an open season placed on it for hunting purposes. It has no meaning other than nuisance or quarry. Value comes from its fur,  which I wouldn't eat one,  but I am sure there are people out there that eat anything,  much like a goat.
There are people that need to believe in things, even at the exasperation of others that do not share their beliefs or views. Is it wrong either way? No.
There are people that come to terms with the close association of the other. Humans have the uncanny ability to extend a certain amount of respect to another animal species while knowing that respect will not be returned, acknowledge or seem real to the other. That is man's coming to terms with the sameness in the other animal, even if they come to kill one another. I like to think in terms of the idea that man thinks to itself, "I can take your life but choose not to do so right now." We can mentally chose.
After some previous research the moon has also been  representative of a woman's female parts which has been known to drive men crazy, so maybe some of that is about the relationship of women. Of course there is Cleopatra and Helen of Troy.  All kinds of violence ensued after a man fell in love/lust with them.
You, as the hunter or huntress,  can always choose your behavior. You can choose how you present yourself and treat other people. You may be an animal but you are not a savage.
As far as wolves go,  there are those that look at this animal as a nuisance or just another dog. It has been my long held belief that nothing is above you or below you. Being egotistical by having a condescending attitude,  by devaluing a creature with dismissal, would lead you to devalue the idea of life itself. As long as you can learn something from it to help you understand yourself; to kill a wolf is to kill a hunter. You, as a hunter, could kill yourself metaphorically because not revering something that teaches lessons in the natural realm as you would percieve it in yourself would mean you are denying or killing off that part of you ( that you wish to deny) is thereby its equal. Man is a wolf amoung men. Man is a wolf in heart. Man is a hunter and a predator. Man is man.

~Written by: W Harley Bloodworth~

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

The Huntress and the Sexual Predator.

Remember this: Do not throw stones at people talking from experience. It might save your life.



I am writing this piece more as a warning than a commentary on ruining some outfitter's hunting business. At the rate someone participating in this kind of behavior is pursuing, they are going to harm themselves. Always investigate outfitters from a reputable or irreputable outfitter service.

Sexual predators have been around for a long time. Usually these sorts of people are found in the form of rapists, child molesters, pimps, sex traffickers and overtly-dominant types in relationships. Sexual predators always find an environment where they can take every advantage for themselves by the 'spot and stalk' technique that is prevalent in hunting circles. There is also such a thing as prostitution rings in hunting. This is not a part of hunting, yet a way for a group or person to take advantage of the beloved sport that I have come to love. It even extends into shooting as the escort service type. These types of endeavors are more socially directed than anything to do with hunting itself. It's a way to take advantage of an activity for selfish and polluting purposes. I guess some savvy individual sees a 'need' and offers a 'service'.
Sexual Tourism has become a global problem. International businesses are using self-prostitution as a means to acquire money under the guise of a service. Sex sales because it's on the mainstream  commercials and magazine ads, but it's meant to be titillating. There are those that actually prostrate women out as a advertisement, knowing that it allures to the empty promise of sex with a beautiful, unattainable woman. If that woman isn't getting paid-she's being exploited by a pimp-like individual.
Human beings are sexual beings. It's when that ideal gets exploited for monetary rewards in the form of the age old profession.
How would the sexual predator use hunting as a lure to attract unknowing females or females that want to get into the sport but haven't participated before?
Build a social media page with a corresponding internet business page then connect with strangers on the internet while researching their personal likes and dislikes. Oh happy day when they enter a private page. They then stay silent, watch and wait for opportunity. It's literally a virtual Ghillie suit.
You would have to be an adept hunter who can notice anomalies to spot one of these because it is usually another hunter. Yes, the sexual predator is an actually hunter. Why break from tradition?
Not to long ago, I used a social media site and became connected to a person there that was advertised as a guide. I made the random comment but there was limited response. There was also another safari page I was connected to that the year before solicited me to 'come there and hunt' but my father was ill. I said no, but kept it in the back of my mind so if my situation changed I could look into booking a hunt. Of course, I didn't feel the need to disclose my intentions as it was a business. I also wanted to open a dialogue with the owners so that I could feel comfortable about going to a foreign land by myself without the worry  someone I wasn't sure of was waiting for me.
I deleted that page because I became more concerned the business was shady. Within an hour of the disconnect, the other outfitter sent a request. I took it then re-friended the other page I had just left.
Why would I do that? Like in Hamlet, I thought something was stinking in Denmark. I also thought the likelihood there was a herd behind this unsavory business, I could just relieve myself of the whole mess and block them all. I also figured if I didn't 'nip it in the bud' like Barney Fife said,  I would have an ongoing problem of strangers having fun at my expense.
Later, I would learn these two men (with the help of others) worked together anonymously doing questionable things on the internet at the admission of the other.
In a nutshell this is what happened. I was approached by an individual that was drunk by admission who later sent me a nude photo of himself with the promise that the following month if I were to book a safari with him,  that I could have sex with him the whole time, hunt and have me pay for it. When he found out I wasn't interested based on his behavior,  he proclaimed I was stalking him. He became very angry then the following conversations reeked of a fake remorse at his behavior.
After that conversation with the photos, I decided to investigate the people I thought were involved. It seemed to me they were passing the phone around while they were on a hunt or online because they never could keep up with the conversation or the right language. I am really not sure how many were involved. I spoke to this lovely lady who told me what I suspected the whole time. It was a lure to get unsuspecting females either married or with children to go abroad for sex and hunting at a price. If they were married that would be all the better because then if they consummate the deal in the bed, there is always the threat of blackmail because of adultery and shame to their children or family.
The other aspect to this is, if the trip were planned with the intention to hide some adulterous act, the female couldn't be promised that once she arrived in that foreign land that she would be meeting the person she was suppose to. Even meeting the intended outfitter once she leaves the airport, the fact she may never be seen again is likely. There is also the fear of being sold as a sex slave.
I really don't have to name names because this is real. Other women should know that these things can happen to them. Most will believe it could ever happen to them. There is your first mistake.
It's detrimental to the sport. As women are becoming more involved, you have novices that do not have mentors to see them over rough spots or have their back when they get in this kind of situation.
It's probably single mothers, divorcees, wives, and singletons.
There are also adventure seeking young college students dreaming of fabulous trips to foreign lands and having a good-looking guy as a plus would lure them because in truth they are not worldly,  only intrepid.
It's  like going into the Alaskan tundra inhabited by bears. If you're not savvy enough or knowledgeable, the chance you're going to get eaten by one is almost assured. Unless you're crazy like a fox.
By the time this person or persons got through they asked for my silence or 'not to tell'.

Here I was thinking:

1. I got propositions with nude photos and empty promises.
2. I got insulted because I rejected the offer.
3. The person or persons thought I was a target or wanted to get incriminating info on me.
4. Asked for my silence on their bad behavior.
5. Finally stated they have a physical problem to excuse bad behavior.

I then thought what could possibly happen to a woman that goes abroad by herself to these places:
1. Once she's picked up from the airport she disappears like Natalee Holloway. Never to be seen again. I watched a documentary where women would consort with him even after he was all over the news for murder. He eventually was videotaped trying to start a sex trade operation in Thailand(??) then he killed a Peruvian girl, which ended in his imprisonment.
2. She decides she has been mislead by the person because once she meets them in person, they are not what they advertised. She might get away by leaving for a hotel before going with them.
3. She is suspicious something isn't right but then finds out later when she gets to where they are taking her,  that she is then threatened, raped, or fed to the hippos.
4. She goes, gets emotionally entangled then tossed aside while depleted of her money. Again if the outfitter is nice, she might return and put more money into the business but when she becomes to clingy, is dismissed and threatened with blackmail or shamed into silence.

Sexual predators see their targets as emotionally compromised or to open. This lady I talked to asked the question more to herself, "How did that happen to me?". The guide/outfitter that took advantage of her, probably saw a generally honest and open person then went in for the kill. I would suspect he took his time, learned his quarry, what lured her, set out the bait and waited for her to approach.

It would be quite easy to take advantage of an emotionally compromised person that is having trouble at home. They tend to seek out a trustworthy soul to counsel them through their problems but this is when the predator strikes. When they think you are weak-minded or distracted.

Most animals are naive, will come right up to danger, and be the willing victim by happenstance. They see no danger. The outfitter that is a sexual predator will exploit this by appearing trustworthy and a protector. Once he has you in his clutches in a foreign land, where else is there to go but along with it or fight your way out the bush the best way you can. Once you are there you are in it. Its called Deep Shit.


~Written by: W Harley Bloodworth~

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Hunting: The Sanguine Moon

Remember this: Its the experience that counts. Tell a story.

When I was a little girl, older men would come up to my grandfather's store to sit on Coca Cola crates to tell stories or gossip. Men seem to be the worse at gossip, funny as that sounds. On other days, you could sit around while friends or family pulled peanuts, cropped tobacco, or sat on the porch in the late evening when rain fell like a vail and the breeze was cool.

I realize people no longer tell stories in this manner, unless they are coming up with some hare brained  scheme to write the American Novel, or submit some work for a handsome paycheck, only for the reader to find the book they paid for leaves them lacking.

If someone tried to tell a verbal story to younger people, they would not sit and give their full attention to the hog swallow someone was serving, but walk off or give the person a crazy eye then move away.

Much as I do now.

Creativity suffers because things are not original tales or stories that are passed along from parent to child, even within an ethnic group. Stories lose their color and value because it is not closely associated with something in your life that you know or have experienced for a fact, even if it is a colorful mishmash of  truth things.

It has been documented that stories always took place before, during or after hunts. Stories were a way to heighten the hunting experience by making it an activity that one looked forward to. Stories kept non-hunters and hunters entertained, interested and ready to return to the chase. Stories bonded people, but it had to be the right kind of story for the appropriate time or activity.

I reached a conclusion that with all of the technology hunters have at their disposal, the stories are just as bad as submissions one renders to a publishing house: scripted and uninteresting unless you are an adept storyteller.

Ancient man's life, with all its hardships, was interesting and filled with stories and ideas that we do not have. The ancient hunter was a rich man indeed for all the true or false tales leant a richness to their very being. We only have someone's posts of a picture but nothing to offer on the details other than the generic. It reminds me of weak coffee and I don't drink coffee.

Hunting lacks rituals as well, not that one should sign up to some Moon cult but there should be something to make it relevant.  The reason I say this, I recently read an article in Field & Stream about the Deer Czar but buried down in the well written article was the comment on the part of the Wisconsin hunter's that 'the fun needed to be put back into hunting'. I was greatly disturbed. I have my ideas on this but that is for another post.

I noticed that Hungarian/Romanian people have rituals built around their hunting, which I think is great. Everyone should have something even if it looks strange to the outside viewer. It's the experience that counts.

Should people necessarily dance around with mutilated animal parts-not so much. That behavior becomes ghoulish and disrespectful.

I was standing outside in the cold air because it was the first of the cool days brought on by Hurricane Sandy. I love to hunt when it is cold. The animals come out during the day and the night.  Another benefit is the lack of those aero-devils: the mosquitos. Animals have to move around more to get their blood flowing and to forage.

My brother recently phoned me and told me a story about how the deer were going out to lay around this barrel he was burning things in to be either near the light or the warmth. I do not know.

The Moon in the sky was beginning to phase away from the fullness it previously had. I was taken aback because the shine from it was a rich golden color. I felt hypnotized like the baby owls in the Owls of G'hoole. The Moon's shine was so rich in fact that I couldn't see the stars but had to wait for two hours for the shine to recede. I can't explain my fascination for the Moon but I have one because I think it is beautiful. You can't stare directly into the Sun like that.

This moon is called the Hunter's Moon or Sanguine Moon. Sanguine means blood as most people know. During this time of the year before the autumnal equinox, early people would go out and do a spree killing to stock up on whatever they could get because it was much colder back then. I myself have noticed from childhood to adulthood the weather has gotten warmer and warmer where I live. It was cold in August. Now there either has to exist a weather changing storm or its not really cold until November but I am not talking about global warming here.

I would guess there are people that hunt who are teenagers or even adults that do not know it is called by these names or why.

Now there is no ritual hunting during the hours of the Full Moon or any moon because the law doesn't allow this for conservation purpose. People would only take advantage as they do during the daylight hours.

There is a habit where I come from that when the last hours of the hunting day are ended people will build a fire to socialize outside in the cold to tell stories even if the story are not hunting accompanied by some kind of meal such as chicken bog, barbecue or less elaborate meals such as 'undetermined meat on a twig' jammed in a fire along with another 'undetermined foodery thing' dangling vicariously over flame after a couple few good pokes.

I read a lot of stories about how the Sanguine Moon got its name. Other than hunting, which deals with a lot of creation stories, incestuous rape, menstruation and shape-shifting: totally not appropriate at this time.

As for the Sanguine Moon, it has become another piece of historical folklore that has been passed down through time that doesn't mean what it use to but it is still there all the same.

Stories are important even if you make one up to explain something. It always walks the line of a well told lie. Where the place of story is in the hunting experience remains to be seen, but it should always have a place somewhere between the time you decide to hunt and the moment you finish then on to the next, or even in the mundane hours of your old age when you have a story or two to tell just yet.


Written by: W  Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Huntress and Wildlife: The Milky Way.

Remember this: Everything is star dust.

It was reported over the previous two nights there would be a rampant meteor shower like no other. Last night I gazed out the window but no luck. Tonight on my way out the door I saw one of the last meteors to soar across the heaven above my house. I told my son that I had seen a shooting star. I should have made a wish. Maybe I can say a silent one now.  

Usually during the summer the one space anomaly I see nightly is the Milky Way. It hangs in massive size like a great eye watching the inner world. It has been woven into many a cosmological myth. Its glowing light looks like the fabric of the universe is tearing in two to let our Earthly plane leak out. There you stand unmoved but gawking at it for quite a while but the idea that many people do not see this celestial dance is even more worrisome.

I was either reading or watching a show on black holes. The information I was receiving was the concept that the Milky Way was a galaxy with a series of compressed black holes with a competing space in-between where the stars visually display its ‘squishedness’. These compressions formed that nice line of stars that we see in the Eastern sky at certain times of the year. I wasn’t reaching for becoming a Milky Way expert but I am sure there are other more accurate accounts of this. I will leave that to you for I am not doing a scientific commentary.

The one fact that struck me was as a viewer from Earth with our human eyes, we are gazing upon that glowing streak of stars from inside the galaxy of the Milky Way. We are not passing by it as outside viewers. As a part of a cosmos, if this fact cannot strike awe and wonder in your heart then you are a person detached from the reality of the universe and its effect on you.  We move throughout our daily lives taking for granted all the wonders around us. On some accounts we are tearing them apart for more useful or gainful employ.

What can the Milky Way illustrate to us in the realm of hunting?

I thought how a huntress and the game she chases are like the Milky Way. The black holes represent civilization, populations, space competition, industry, development and government. The galaxy of the Milky Way contains all those things that are viable creatures moving through some great mysterious composition: one chess piece at a time. The huntress and the game she oversees partake of a life of compression. With this life of compression there is always an amount of instability. The hunter feels this as well.

The space for wildlife and the huntress is not expanding exponentially. The space the huntress has to work with is ever shortening. The space the wildlife has to live and thrive on is becoming less. Both are compressed to allocated landscapes and are required to maintain a certain level of existence under the close scrutiny of government and populations living in developed areas. These developed areas discourage wildlife habitation. Developed areas also discourage the person that hunts by only allowing the endeavor of hunting to be performed in areas where wildlife have been pushed or contained. Yes, I stated the word ‘contained’.

Recently I have seen this with gardening. There are places that do not want people to garden in the front yard because it is not pleasing to the eye even if you are growing food to feed yourself. It’s more important how things are perceived on the outside of a property but someone else is making your decisions for you and enforcing them by way of the ‘law’.

To interject another story from the local news about coyotes becoming a nuisance in town the article dwells more on the new regulation being passed in town that require the weeds in a patron’s yard be no more than X amount of inches high. The penalty is a $250 fine. This lead me to believe it was more important to contain the weeds instead of the coyotes. Priorities crooked?

Boundaries and legalities harass us all. No one can really just walk anywhere unless it is down a street uptown. Even there the glowing signs of walk-don’t walk glare at us in a menacing fashion. If you go out to the country to walk around it better be on public land or you’ll have a landowner pointing a gun at you or confronting you for trespassing on his property lost or not.

I recently saw a conversation about a huntress walking in a public area but became agitated by strangers because they felt she and her hounds should be subdued for their natural inclinations. This is the kind of compression I am talking about.  I see women who hunt having to defend their natural inclinations to reach back into old times and walk with the mother but instead are pressured by outside forces to go against their nature. This is not about empowerment. It’s about being your most authentic and natural self-down to your marrow bone.  Being me, I would tell you to raise up and fight that like a bit someone is trying to slide into your mouth then break you out before the saddle goes on. That is just me though; wild as Hogey’s Hant.

It’s the idea of invasion of space and the ability to feel free and act accordingly. I would think it is especially oppressing when you are given the legal go ahead to do what you desire without repercussion but some people constantly feel they are an army of one with no real authority to act or even say anything. Sometimes I want to ask people like that who elected you the captain of my pirate ship. Out would come the plank, gun with one bullet and park that boat by the nearest oceanic sandbar for them to fend for themselves the best way they could.

The thing about invasion of relocated space is you can drive them right out or move along. Depends on whether or not you are the sole owner of that space or just visiting.

If you thought of it in those terms there are always fences around where you hunt even if you don’t see them physically. 

The huntress or hunter is no freer than the wildlife roaming on fifty acres of land where before it was 35,000 acres or more. Both are in a contained invisible boundary.

Even though this boundary can give the huntress and wild game some room to breathe the amount of distance given the area the drama plays out foreshortens the experience to an ever briefer moment. What would happen if finally the compression leads to a complete eradication of hunting? Or wildlife existence in a given landscape? How would the huntress cope if she were no longer able to act out a natural born inherent desire to act as a predator would?

Human habitation is growing in the perpendicular direction. People live horizontally above the ground in manmade structures that eventually are abandoned for different reasons. These structures are not removed to rebuild habitat. People also live vertically in an upward fashion in high rise buildings or apartments. People are even digging into the ground to make homes. The more the population of man grows the more it has to be accommodated for.

If the known universe is expanding while at the same time certain parts are living under a considerable compressed existence then eventually something will have to give. That compressed space will become thinner to the point of rupture or decimation. The glowing light from that galaxy's center spreads something  out in the universe in retaliation that will change and cause it to expand itself inflicting a form of compression on its surroundings.

If it is true, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, the hope still remains. Whether or not the role of wildlife and the huntress is one of compressed inevitability or there exists a chance the drama of the huntress slowly pushes back and expands to further the distance of her cosmological existence is something to meditate on.

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

 ~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Feminism and Hunting: The Discerning Huntress

Remember this: Sometimes a person or group can call something by a defining label. Seek for yourself the definition of that group's concept before assimilating the message it holds as a part of your mystique. This message could start out clear, but become less clear, pointedly destructive, or misleading. It is not unknown for members in a group to branch off and distort the true goals and objectives for selfish, emotional, manipulative reasons. We, as people, must take care at all times.

For a while, I have seen commentary on women's invading role in the sport of Hunting. Even though my research on this topic is incomplete it does help me build certain viewpoints or perspectives on the subject; spectrums are like that.

As a point of interest, I perused a somewhat popular social page for relevant information to make some of my assessments. I will not divulge the name because it is not my intent to ruin the work the administrators of that page have generated. This page, I assumed, had a target audience geared toward manly men with a hint of class, style and elegance not teenage boys with raging hormones. Even though at times, I wondered if a teenager with raging hormones was at the helm.

Occasionally, I saw comments toward feminists. I could only imagine this was for that group tagged as extreme. What these said feminists brought to light, in a not so subtle way, was the true nature of the page administrators or their real beliefs towards women in the sport. I will note some of the feminists were huntresses. Family people sickened by the lack of consideration to their viewership and spoke up. The concepts being posted were at times confusing for the viewer. One post might have been a woman holding a gun attired with a bikini. The next day, there might be a post of a woman doing non-hunting activity but proclaimed as a mother, wife, huntress, etc. Yet again, a photo posted of women holding guns.

Granted photos can be misleading. Just because it looks like something doesn’t mean it is so. The photo is put there as a suggestion and leaves it up to the viewer to fill in the blanks without concrete facts.

That is the travesty of thinking someone is a person with unquestionable public standing. What they are conveying to you may not be a truth, only a misleading idea. Bad people build excellent reputations all the time with an appropriate facade. Not that I am saying this page was that way, but it is an idea to keep in mind.

Those objectified posts were far and in between but mostly the post of objectified women as sexual objects were more than available. Every once in a while, you would have an administrator make comments about the photos then the postings would change as would the viewership. I noticed the number at the top of the page for subscribers. There were 57,000 as a number but on days when it was strictly about hunting, regardless of gender, the numbers were around 25,000 viewers.

On days where there was what seemed to me a different administrator with posts geared toward objectified women, the number of viewers went down by 10,000. I watched this over several days and did much research on the affect negative posts had influenced viewership with rotating administrators.

Otherwise, I watched a page that I truly enjoyed become one that made me feel like I should avoid it and go elsewhere. I thought in terms of the page being a business or a platform for public relations, or product advertising. The idea, if you put it into terms of money, was on days women in objectified posts were put up viewership decreased. Those would be the days the business would lose money as women are consumers. Women are also avenues of word of mouth for a business.

Not having consideration for the female consumer would be damaging. How negligible this effect would have on sites where hunting was a topic but women were discouraged, would be up debate. That would lead me to believe that even though there were loyal viewers they tended not to take part in such posts. My other question was: if these viewers were women, what long term effect would it have on this page I considered wonderful at one time?

My disappointment deepened.

Even though my activities did seem like a strange sort of market analysis, things that can ruin a website or page, it was enlightening. One reason for this scrutiny was not to tear apart a page on the internet. In truth, I was reading a book I had checked out from the library about building a better website. I merely applied the rules the author provided inside on a known page to confirm the author was pretty spot on. The question asked specifically was: if you were the viewer perusing a page, what would drive you off?

With that I can say, if women are enjoying a page based on hunting but posts are put up that would discourage their partaking of the social aspect of it, then it is not geared towards all hunters united. There is always an exclusionary clause to these activities that is hidden amongst the fine print.

As to men that hunt and their view of huntresses, there are double standards everywhere. Women can view a hunting page but not comment or say something bothers them. Women can hunt but should not compete with men directly for an audience. Women can hunt but only in the term of a follower and not a leader. Women can morph into the hunting societies elite only if they have all the trappings and maintain a respectable distance as a viewer, not a participant. That is limited to how serious people treat you. Somehow, you made another person an expert and you had to convince  them of your relevance.

It made me wonder as a woman who hunts, why can’t I just be me? Why do I see the suggestion, to be considered relevant or acceptable, people have to live a certain lifestyle to be amongst other hunters? Why do I have to fit in with them? Why cannot they fit in with me? It was a funny set of questions.

WHY MUST I CONFORM TO SUIT SOMEONE ELSE?

I can see where people would feel they were applying for some fabulous job, only to find out the boss really is a beast.

I say when you have women that advertise themselves as an extreme huntress, you will find a person that has been limited at some time by this very ideology. This person will have taken things to extremes to be put in a position where the huntress herself has to fight for meat in a wolf pack.

The idea is to elevate one to a influencing position, where these concerns are no longer a consideration, generates others to seek your acceptance. The negative side to this is there is always someone vying for your spot even if you feel comfortable. After that, she might get respect but men will always hold her separate because of the thought she is not controlled or influenced for very long. Beauty will only get you so far, for so long, after that media is looking for a replacement.

Granted some men like beautiful things but women are not things or objects. Neither are men but women are learning from men as well. They can objectify a man in the blink of an eye or should I say an eye for an eye? This objectifying of men and women causes a chasm between their unities.

Men want women and women want men but the disconnect is so unbearable to watch you have to turn away from its ugliness at times. Of course, to limit my treatise I exclude same sex relationships for other posts.  I do not feel that same-sex relationships are any different than heterosexual relationships.

I also wanted to limit my mulish blinders on the prospect of objectified women. Truth be told, there are women looking to support themselves financially that have no other goal but to buy dinner and pay the rent with those checks. You can't hate an independent woman even if she's not on the band-wagon of feminism. I am sure there are feminists out there that wouldn't give a dollar to these ladies, so every woman for herself I guess.

I thought in terms of what it was to be a feminist. My understanding of feminism was a concept to promote equality of women within the realm of society. As far I as I know it didn't indicate that women were any better than men. It has long been held that even individuals are better at certain tasks than others but that is not so much a gender issue.

First, I would like to take a more magnified look at current feminists from a different perspective.

I really didn’t find a lot of information on feminism in terms of hunting. Hunting is a sport you chose to do that is open to everyone. It’s not like you’re going to the DNR to buy a hunting license and they are going to say no because you are a woman. No one is stopping a woman from hunting her dinner. The only complaint is objectified pictures or maybe not having prominent female role models representing women on the television or the news. I say don’t look at the man porn and move on: some woman is paying the rent off of a stupid man.

I was reading commentary on a young female hunter who wrote from the perspective of feminism as she saw it. Her stance was to be self-sufficient and take the attitude of doing it yourself. When you’re young you think you are a superhero but as you age and your body fails you. You begin to realize you can’t do everything for yourself.

I saw something else.

For a person to be self-sufficient they are living under the pressure to achieve without help from others. That person may also feel they can’t depend on another individual because of past experiences. Disappointment in humans came to mind.  People today are in such competition they no longer help others, for any kind of benefit, because it would take away or horn in on their goals.

People might help you if they see they are going to benefit in some way, other than that they will not bother with you. Hence the death of friendship exists. I question that friendship only exists when a relationship of mutual materialist exchange is present. There is no such thing as friendship anymore, only associations and symbiotic relationships that end eventually.

I also took into consideration the absenteeism of men in the lives of women or vice versa. I am not a man. I can't speak for them only assume or try to construct some explanation.

Women are finding themselves more alone than ever. For every man there is X amount of women. Woman and man are not really looking for the love of their life anymore just people to spend time with for the moment. If they are looking, it is with an inflated sense of what the other person should look and act like.

Could it be women are moving more into what is considered men's territory merely to be with them? To relate? To share?

Biology would explain that. It is in a man and a woman’s hard-wiring to breed. If you considered women posting pictures of themselves in alluring hunting gear to lure men and men post pictures of women in seductive photos, they are merely tell the other what they want. If you are not that perfect ideal do not apply. It's reproduction and sex simply put.

You know someone is serious about you when they don’t think of you in terms of sex all the time. They are geared toward something more meaningful. They are in it for the long haul, not a quick truck-stop fix. Let me say again, men and women are guilty of this.

How is that for equality?

Could the sexes be so far removed that this behavior is more like a symptom to a deeper problem?

It can be looked at from the terms of the 50s housewife sitting at home cooking. She waits for her husband to come home to spend time with her, but he's in the woods. What is she to do? Go to the woods.  It makes perfectly sense. If the story behind that, to make it more believable, is to be equal she can do that by herself. No, that woman wants to be with a man.

It just blows my mind. Men don't get this concept. This could be a reason women want the man to be with them that makes the difference. If a woman gets a whiff of the man just wanting her there for selfish reasons and not honestly wanting to share time with her, you are probably going to have a falling out. Disconnect ensues.

I will also make the statement as individuals, men and women both do have problems with intimacy in relationships at time. Could a man going out to hunt, not want to be intimate in that way with a woman? Does the man only want it limited to a bedroom?

I do take into consideration of family in hunting. I will save that for another commentary.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of at arm’s length and its destructive force in male/female relationships.

To cry feminism is really to project a sense of equality with the goal merely to share the same space with a man and to be with them physically and emotional. Unless the man is violent, women do like feeling secure even when there is no threat. That is our excuse to be with men at times. Not all the time.

Maybe I am incorrect with my assumptions? I do love to speculate.

I can honestly say, I limit things I see online when it comes to hunting. It puts me in a bad mood.

I do see a lot of problems within the hunting community. These problems between people are born from misunderstandings, misconceptions, and a quick unintelligent response in a reactive way that is negative. Think before you react or keep your mouth closed.

When I review what I have wrote, I think in terms of decoys. When you take topics and look at them you begin to see a pattern of decoy-ism. There is an issue that when you look closer, it is not the issue you considered being the main problem. As a huntress or hunter, spotting the decoy in the issues you purport to fight against or support should really be assessed. 

You don’t want to be foolish in the bush chasing a ghostly deer that doesn’t exist.

When you view someone as feminist take a closer look. Listen to them. The true issue may rise to the surface if you are willing to understand another person’s perspective. Who knows? Maybe one day someone will extend that same courtesy to you.

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~



Imagining Wildlife Abundance.

Remember this:  Always keep this in mind. We are always competing with wildlife. We are always competing with each other.

I like to compare and contrast.  I also like to read old books because no harm ever came from reading a book. This gives me a better sense of the topics and subtopics I tend to meditate on.  Various points in time especially because you can evaluate the specifically different events on a timeline and see just how much in denial or ‘the dark’ you possibly could be living.

I have recently become enamored with this mental vision of life on the North American continent before immigrants started their Exodus from Europe and other places, even if it was based on general curiosity, greed, religious persecution, or being exiled based on law-breaking.

Most of the books I have been reading are accounts from the 1700s or the 1800s. My readings are filled with articulated journalists that wrote honest non-biased (?) accounts of that particular moment in time.

In the current century, much of these honest commentaries are tossed to the wayside because certain ethnic groups complained competing ethnic group were writing a history for them that wasn’t true. What are people to do? Say we know nothing then make a story/history up for the sake of using another fabrication to uplift a group? A lie is a lie no matter who tells it or for what reason.

You are probably wondering what exactly does this have to do with hunting. If you have done any online observation of the coverage on hunter’s guilt in regards to old timers shooting buffalo or over-killing species to the point of decimation: it’s kind of along those lines.

My curiosity is the amount of game that was actually available because I can’t seem to picture this number in my head based on the reports in old documentation. Really it is mind-blowing when you compare it to recent numbers and the wordage on explaining the current population of species as ‘healthy’.

I was reading an account on the passenger pigeon from Charles Mann’s book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.  After reading the passages on the passenger pigeon you could easily visualize a snippet from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds. In summary it stated how the passenger pigeon was so plentiful the people living at the time would hold hunting parties to kill them and feast.  To quote Mann’s text it is stated, “In Haudenosaunee lore, the birds represented nature’s generosity, a species literally selected by the spirit world to nourish humankind.” (Mann p. 355) Given there could have been some revolving environment or ecological disturbance that made the conditions right for the passenger pigeon to populate in large numbers it does make one think. If the passenger pigeon could grow in number with lack of human habitation encroaching on their environment, what about the other species of huntable animal? 

I read on where it was stated the number of passenger pigeons actually exploded after the immigrants came. I then thought, maybe it was because there were a wider variety of agricultural goods such as whole grains like wheat, barley, oats, and other vegetables. Hence the change in the passenger pigeon diet and the readily available seeds increased the numbers excluding breeding season trends. I looked for accounts of a passenger pigeon ‘mass extinction’. Something to the magnitude of bird littering the ground dead would make even the discerning Pilgrim carving his Thanksgiving turkey take notice. I found none unless my researching skills are lacking or the information is locked away in some weathered disintegrating journal.

The passenger pigeon’s story ends with that bird species becoming extinct. There lingers a very questionable belief that indigenous people and immigrants didn’t hunt them to extinction. The last bird died in 1941. Here you have a huntable bird that went from being bountiful to being a poster child (as is the bison) for generational hunting guilt that happened many years ago.

I was still imagining ‘wilderness abundance’ as it was called. In the ongoing drama of life, where does man stand on the stage of the natural world versus his fellow players?

That place man stands is one of subtle competition even from the employ of managers of limited aspects of Nature. Man cannot control a hurricane or a tornado but man can control X amount of acres and what lives or grows on that acreage.

In times past, indigenous people or immigrants competed for food (both plant and animal) on the natural landscape with wild game. One would have to imagine the Scales of Life. Man hunted wildlife to eat them but lowered the number of competitors for natural growing food. There was also agricultural based food.

Agriculture was in the New World. Corn was one of the main cash crops for ancient man. Indigenous farmers probably practiced the same habit of discouraging wildlife from eating the crops they hoped to store for the winter.

I see this now where farmers will kill off a herd of deer to safeguard their harvest with the mentality that there are deer elsewhere for people to hunt.

With this view of human competition with wildlife for food, because space was not an issue, it would seem how did it play in with my visualization of wildlife abundance?

As to my original obsession with herd numbers I read that the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton tossed out these estimated numbers:

·         60,000,000 Bison

·         40,000,000 Pronghorn

·         10,000,000 Elk

·         10,000,000 Mule Deer

·         2,000,000 Mountain Sheep

Can you imagine standing on a slope glassing for something respectable to shoot at and seeing that many of one species in one place? How would you feel if you didn’t have to walk around for a whole week, then go home empty handed with no luck, no money, and no meat to eat? Could you imagine what a hunter, from back then, would do or say if he were to come to the present time and have to live the way we do? He would probably have a nervous breakdown and think he was in a hell that didn’t exist yet. What would this hunter of old say if he were forced to watch a hunting show on television?  I can only laugh with the thought he would sit on a rock to cry, then kill himself from disappointment and grief but that is being dramatic.

If a hunter from today went back in time, I am sure they would have to take a diaper. If that hunter saw 40,000,000 pronghorn, he would lose all bodily function and make a mess of himself where he stood.

I watch the Sportsman Channel for one show, otherwise I am not watching. You can surf the channel there to peruse a pronghorn show. I watched one where the hunter sat in an outbuilding near a watering hole. He only saw 2-3 pronghorns but finally killed one returning to drink. How do you think that hunter would feel if he were sitting in his little outhouse with 10,000 pronghorn running around him? That would probably kill the fun of it because you would think which one do I chose. Again you could be thinking, “Oh my God. There are so many I can kill a bushel and a peck. It wouldn’t matter.”

Mann throughout his book, lobbies the fact the early North American continent was a series of manipulated landscapes by indigenous people for the management of wildlife habitat with respect to their mutual benefit. Even though agriculture was somewhat different from European farming, the management of wildlife away from farming locations seemed to be a trend by archaeological data.

Here you might have specific wild game the indigenous people would hunt locally to discourage competition with wild game that would eat their crops. They would kill off local populations and encourage those same populations further away to propagate. Given the concept of space and time, these wildlife populations would not be very far away due to the concern of meat waste, time or effort. When a person is trying to survive you take all aspects into consideration.

I then tried to wrap my mind around the concept of human populations, industry, and civilization.

Everyone knows prior to Columbus and his sailing ship of jollies, other people had indeed traveled to North America. DeSoto and his merry men documents vast amounts of indigenous people, cities, but not vast herds of animals. A different explorer documents large numbers of wild game but no people.

Both spread European diseases. I read in one account that the indigenous people held mass burnings to stop the spread by eliminating the dead body instead of performing ritual burial or rite.

If the indigenous hunter was no longer on the landscape then the prey he chased would explode in mass numbers such as the bison. The concept here is because of much earlier European contact, the spread of disease, and the effect of indigenous death on hunting herds made them increase. When the following wave of immigrants boated over viola: you have epic populations to stand in awe of because there was no one to curtail them.

Comparing the introduction of European agriculture that possibly made the passenger pigeon populations explode, killing off the indigenous culture made other huntable species increase as well. Life is always a delicate balance and you never know what is going to turn the tide or tip the scale. Truly Life does hang in a delicate balance.

Throughout reading the passages the writer reiterates the idea that because of the lack of wild game bone remnants left in indigenous homestead the actually number of specie populations were questionable. Where there really that many? If so where was the evidence?

Back to the concept of human populations, industry, and civilization, hunters look back on these events as reminders on what not to do.

In respect to governmental agencies reporting herd numbers as healthy, if you went by previous herd numbers or observations documented in history you would think current information to be anorexic if not misleading as a positive thing. Given this information is based on space and division of limited numbers across that space with regard to competition.

I also took into consideration how much of the information documented from antiquity could be a good salesmen spreading the word to inspire adventurous travel for the contemplation of making a fortune. If the antiquated adventurer who is really in the business of making money, finds a spot to start a fabulous new life for all at his behest, would he not spin that story with the most positive description he could muster? Later when people show up in droves then have to eat their friends/family on the Donner Pass that would-be instigator is long gone. I have read many accounts of non-descript historical women, who thought they were coming to a new life only to become depressed because it wasn’t what it was made out to be.

In closing, my thoughts linger in my mind on a place that is void of man-made structures, property lines, human ownership and vast landscapes with wildlife inhabiting places yet unburdened by man’s footstep, presence, or influence in number.

Can you imagine that kind of wilderness abundance?

Could North America ever return to that ideal? The lone archaic hunter standing on a slope high above a massive herd wondering where was he going to start and not worrying about his impact in the greater scheme of things.

As I reflect it would be nice to be just a regular person with that same hope.

Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore

~Courtesy of AOFH~

Sources Cited:
Mann, Charles. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York, NY: Random House LLC, (2006).pp. 355. Print.