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| 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~
