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~
