Carmine on Bloodlust and Hunting Vs. Conservation.

Remember this: Everything has its dark side.

In a passage from James Carmine’s book, Hunting Philosophy for Everyone: In Search of the Wildlife, Carmine poses the argument of hunting not being conservation.  This is the following except:

“Hunting is not conservation. No hunter goes off into the woods to thin the herd. That is a lie hunters tell to mollify those who don’t hunt, and perhaps to themselves to qualm their fears about their own bloodlust. If hunting were really for the sake of conservation then early each spring we would simply use our tax dollars to pay a small army of lab technicians to go about the forests and fields with the most advanced satellite-enhanced equipment and, with relative ease, find the most fragile fawns and other animals scientifically deemed unbeneficial to the ecosystem, and euthanize then efficiently, painlessly, and silently. “(Carmine 242)

It could be said that to employ plans of conservation the hunters function in a utilitarian way. Hunters are used to address issues that conservationists may not have the man power to meet. This practice also offsets the cost of alleviating a problem though wage by relying on hunters need to track, stalk, and kill.

In the previous article I related to called Preventing the Establishment of a Wildlife Disease Reservoir: A Case Study of Bovine Tuberculosis in Wild Deer in Minnesota by M. Cartensen and M.W. DonCarlos, I surmised the necessity of the MNDNR to use sharpshooters to kill deer suspected of infection. Even though this practice was not well received over a period of time as the result of disease began to diminish people were not so against it. In the Minnesota example we do not have lab technicians going in the woods kindly putting sick animals down. Its shoot to kill without any predetermined test to prove sickness. It’s the old ‘shoot first ask questions later’ mentality. The hope here was maybe they could eradicate disease with a mass death killing. Was this hunter mentality? No. Was it conservation? You bet. Conservation has a dark side just like hunting with its good, bad, and sometimes right down distasteful but necessary.

In order to have a healthy sustainable population of deer the population had to be semi-eradicated in order for the Bovine TB to be hindered in its spread. This activity on the part of the MNDNR helped to keep Bovine TB from forming a stronghold in deer populations which would spread to others and domesticated livestock.

Once again I thought of Carmine’s excerpt and the Missouri Moose problem. Were DNR workers not fitting moose with high tech gadgetry to monitor body temperature and other pertinent data of moose physiology? It has been known that wolf populations have the random $4000 GPS and monitoring devices around their neck as well as bear.

I then thought of what Carmine said about hunters not going into the woods to thin the herd. If a hunter were to practice intentional culling that deviated from hunt-stalk activities this would imply some sort of ownership. The only way one would have ownership of wild game in America is if they ran or worked a fenced game farm where domesticated wild stock were evaluated for benefits and losses financially. This isn’t hunting. It is farming hands down. Call a spade a spade I say.

Yes hunters may see the random wounded animal whereby putting the animal out of its misery. Hunting is based on opportunity and then you pick your target if you have more than one option.

Hunting and Conservation are two different skill sets that comingle depending on the overlap of need and the situation the two ideas are applied to.

If a hunter is using conservation as his springboard platform for argument and evidence of validating the details of the hunting act then maybe they need to sit in a deer stand and get their priorities straight. Hunting and conservation can be integrated into another entity as a whole but they tend to be separate concepts with different definitions and requirements. Conservation tends to walk the line of monitoring and sustaining wildlife where hunting rides the fence as partaking of.

As for hunters ideals of bloodlust not all hunters are created equal, have the same mindset, come from the same culture, or even have the same views of death. Subtracting the fact they actuallyl do hunt one could ponder whether they have any respect for others, themselves, or decorum in general.

Blood is blood. There are several schools of thought on blood and gore in the hunting realm. Some are very adamant about being comfortable with their bloodletting while not understanding or ridiculing a fellow man for weakness and inability to perceive certain violent acts as “normal acts of nature”. Violence again each other has become so prevalent and sensationalized in the media we cringe at seeing animals doing it to one another but on the other hand some sit in front of the TV during shark week glorying in the sight of Sharks tossing seals.  Other hunters do care about not forcing visual aids off on people that would not want to see them because when it comes to social media you never know when the random boob shot is coming. I have found after actually having an intelligent conversation with non-hunting buddies that I am actually okay with not showing them my personal photos of hunting outings. My aspect of hunting is to promote life more because death is eventual and not pretty. It’s not that I ignore death. Being enamored with death and shoving it in people’s faces is almost like assault to me. There are people that get off on other people being repulsed by blood, gore, and death. It gives them an ego boost I guess that they can handle it and someone else is too fragile. This behavior doesn’t make a hunter or person is strong by no means. It just means death is on that person to the point the air he breathes is death with its sickly sweet smell. These types court death with the false illusion of adventure. If something directly threatens your life as an endeavor, it is not adventure, that my friend is a death wish.

Sometimes ideals have to be tested as to their relevance. What seems distasteful might have a far reaching benefit if no other workable option exists to resolve problems. I enjoyed getting this pot load of gold out of a small excerpt.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth
~Courtesy of the AOFH~
 

Sources Cited:
Carmine, James. Hunting Philosophies for Everyone: In Search of Wildlife. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons (2010). pp 242. Print.

The Mystery of Missouri Mooswa, Disappearances of the Twig Eater.

Remember this: In mysteries there is always a pattern, if not a pattern, a subtle nuance that almost goes undetected if not for the astute investigator; otherwise you are screwed Sherlock. Besides its fun to play Nancy Drew sometimes.

 

First off let me say I was a little disappointed by the lack thereof literature on moose physiology, function, body systems such as digestion and its deviations due to disease, reproduction, and environmental factors, etc. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places? I felt like I was walking through a horrible moose Sahara where the moose was in the witness protection program. What does the moose have to hide?

Missouri knew that the moose population was declining but since last year it was a drastic 35 % which caused them to wake up on that I guess. Some days I swear these states are trying to ruin hunting to some degree by screwing around until things look dire or is it just me?

I recently came across an article (everywhere on the internet) that stated the moose in Missouri were disappearing. It was a great dumbfounding mystery. I soon read the general consensus was climate warming, ticks, and the unknown were to blame.

In response to this mystery the state of Missouri has decided to shell out 1.2 million dollars to start an investigation. I wanted to inspect this situation much closer to see what I could surmise. Believe it or not this is probably not the first time this kind of behavior or result has happened to the moose. Referencing data from previous scientific inquests can help build a case as to why. Even if it is pure assumption on my part why can’t I play the investigator in what is now Moose Forensics 101? It’s not going to hurt anything. I did see it mentioned that this was not an applicable CSI case because of what I guessed to be the helplessness of smart people to solve a moose death problem. I bet that made a lot of important people feel more than inadequate. I argue that point because there is mystery, dead bodies with DNR chalk lines and no explanations. For fun I decide what a huntress might be thinking if she were trying to play Nancy Drew under a tree in a boreal forest while hunting moose and googling on her cell phone to find the same animal she is after may not be there in the woods. Going on what we know about moose let us look at the known evidence be it fractured.The only thing that sticks out is more than one moose dying in the same place. Whether this is at the same time I do not know.

 

Building the Case Part 1: The Evidence.

Evidence #1:

Diet: Moose are ruminants that eat a variety of plant material. Their diet consists of wood foliage, aquatic plants, lichen, grasses, and roots.

Here I would like to say that lichen, fungi, and algae are present in the hindgut of a moose. The moose eats bark. Lichen occupy bark in large numbers if the light is favorable along with other conditions. Lichen is made of algae and fungi. The moose is eating bark because the moose needs the lichen that is growing on the tree? The algae, fungi, and protozoa perform many functions in the hindgut. Sometimes it’s the little things that are crucial. If this staple is missing in bulk from the moose diet there may be problems with digestion or even absorption/production of Vitamin K and Vitamin B. This is one of the limited articles I found on ruminant digestion.

http://physrev.physiology.org/content/78/2/393.full

Personal story: Had a client once that came in with a sick dog who had eaten rat poison. It was mostly too late to make the dog vomit then administer activated charcoal but upon inspection and the fact she didn’t really know when the dog ate the rat poison we tested the pack cell volume to find the dog was anemic. We ensued a blood transfusion with a subsequent treatment of Vitamin K. (I say this because if a moose in Missouri can have 50,000 ticks sucking it dry, be infected with a tick-borne disease have anemia and show some data that its Vitamin K levels are low then I would say ~let’s consider it in the name of scientific investigation). Besides the more parasites you have the more nutrition is lost.

Personal story: Once saw a cat almost suck dry by a flea infestation. I itched for two weeks.

Evidence #2:

Physiology: Moose have a four compartment stomach consisting of the rumen, omasum, abomasum, and the reticulum. Being foregut fermenters, the moose forces the regurgitated food back up from the stomach into the mouth so they can chew for up to seven hours to digest properly. Moose have bacteria in their gut that helps absorb these nutrients and synthesize essential amino acids, vitamin B, Vitamin K, and volatile fatty acids. These bacteria produce acetic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid from the cellulose of plant material that are broken down into energy. In my reading ruminants completely depend upon the microbial flora present in the rumen or hindgut for cellulose digestion. The rumen contains various bacteria, protozoa, yeast and fungi. Ruminants produce large amounts of saliva that help with fermentation and act as a buffering agent. Fermentation from these processes produces organic acids and maintains the pH of the rumen fluids.

I was reading on the Moose in Minnesota website that there is a known trend for moose to move from one location to another because I go by their phraseology, “In the 1980’s moose began appearing in the Pembina Hills area of northeast North Dakota, and expanded to the south. In the early years of the 2000’s moose began appearing further west and further south.” There was also the note of warmer temperatures having some influence on mortality rates but there was a discrepancy in the fluctuation of temperature from one location to another.

 

There was a previous GPS collar project from 2000-2007 performed by the University of North Dakota led by Rick Sweitzer and James Maskey.  The dissertation done by Maskey was not moving. I wouldn’t suggest bothering to read it. This project admitted the moose were recently colonizing the area which implied movement yet again. They ruled out river flukes but there was a mention of brainworm. This brainworm is a small parasitic nematode that infects ungulates. Its choice host is the white tail deer that doesn’t suffer from the brainworm but other species do that involve neurologic damage that lead to death which is affectionately known as “moose sickness”.

The Canadian biologist Roy Anderson identified brainworms in 1963. The brainworm female lays eggs in the blood vessels and venous sinuses and subdural space of the white tail deer’s brain. Here is the difference in non-deer ungulates. The adult worm does not produce eggs and the animal become ill. This makes the moose an aberrant host. The way the moose could get infected is the white-tail deer, after gestating the brainworm larvae and its subsequent infection into slugs and snails could be eaten by the moose where the food is retained for up to seven hours in mastication marathon. The brainworm has plenty of time to migrate to brain parts unknown before defecation occurs.

I was also reading an article entitled, Maple Syrup, Moose and the Local Impacts of Climate Change points out climate yet again. In this article it stated that climate change was causing milder winters which in turn lead to better foraging in places reduced snow pack would usually cover making pathogens and pests.  Of course there was the point in this article of doing long term studies for real-life complexities. It was bizarre that moose were found in maple syrup production problems. That would be a concern if the brainworm is able to reproduce itself faster due to the availability of ground cover so it can continue its life cycle during mild winters where foraging is not hindered. I wondered what the likely suspects were:

Building the Case Part 1: The Suspects.

Suspect #1:

Climate: If the moose is use to a colder climate and had problem with thermoregulation in warmer climate I could see where this would bother it but would it kill the moose just on its own? (I am thinking pig here because they don’t do well in hot weather unless they have mud). It’s got something to do with pigs not being able to sweat.

I suspected climate change was an initiator of a series of biological events based around food, parasites, disease, weather, stress, migration, poison, DNA disturbance/interference.

 

Suspect #2:

Parasite: Here we have the brainworm that the moose gets from the White-tail deer/slug/snail hosts. Could this infection and subsequent inability to help the brainworm thrive cause the moose to die via illness?

There is also the tick to be considered. Ticks during the summer usually pick a spot in wooded areas where they go through their life cycle. If it’s warm enough there is a tick explosion where offspring might fall on you like a sky diver or as you walk through grass or brush jump on you. Once on and attached they have all kinds of cooties they can transmit to you that cause arthritis like symptoms, flu-like symptoms, malaise, and sometimes death. I mention cows here because Moose inhabit areas with cows and white-tail deer that have been known to transfer disease.

There is also Setaria spp. which is a filaroid nematoide that lives in cattle inside of the abdominal cavity. It has a microfilaria stage where the parasite swims around in the blood. The Mosquito is the bug of choice to transmit the disease by taking a blood meal from a cow. (This is so like heartworms in a dog.)These parasites migrate to the head and mouthparts of a cow. Upon necropsy the worms are found in the peritoneal cavity. These are supposed to be nonpathogenic parasites but if it looks guilty be suspicious. I have seen a ball of migrating or dying worms block up the heart and digestive track pretty much killing the animal.

Suspect #3:

Hunting: This is not the case it would seem but it would pose the question if the State of Missouri already knew there was a problem with its moose why did they not freeze the hunting season a while ago? Was it monetarily based because they already knew moose numbers were limited and people wanting the meat would take the chance at losing money on a wild goose (moose) chase?

Suspect #4:

Predation: This was also ruled out. Why? Because the State of Missouri already knew moose numbers were down. Low food might cause the predators to migrate away to find better prey. Also Missouri is no fan to wolves. Unless Missouri is going to put a great big fence up to keep the immigrant wolves out I don’t think they can stop them from migrating back in unless they have Wolf Border Patrol. Lions? Coyotes?

Nope. The powers that be decided they didn’t think predation was the culprit but I am not ruling them out just yet.

Suspect #5:

Spontaneous abortion: This could be due to disease in the infected mother. Spontaneous abortions have been known in deer, caribou, and elk when they are menaced to great levels by humans and predators. Brucellosis has been known to spontaneously abort Elk calves.

Suspect #6:

Sterility: When you have low numbers of moose living in one area that are not migrating out the gene pool becomes smaller which make the moose ripe for disease to take advantage of their systems because they have not developed disease resistance strategies through natural selection.

Personal story: This reminds me of the commentary on early Americans meeting the Spaniards. They didn’t know what smallpox was or STD but one hand shake and well placed rug killed a whole lot of people.

Suspect #7:

Migration: Maybe the moose decided things sucked in Missouri and walked over to North Dakota? It could happen!

Suspect #8

Disease: Here we could list all the disease of the tick from Lyme disease, Erhlichia, Spotted Rocky Mountain Fever, etc.

Personal story: I worked as an office manager for a mixed animal practice for ten years. This Rottweiler breeder came in with a litter of three month old puppies. The veterinarian orders some tests but the breeder was too cheap to get the needed ones. It was proven the Parvo virus was not in the puppies. The breeder ordered all pups to be euthanized because he didn’t pay for failure. The veterinarian lied (very illegal practice for one to do but he got away with it) and kept one pup alive which he wasn’t supposed to do. He then after treating the pup for free turned the pup over to the breeder who immediately had it euthanized by another doctor because he was afraid of spreading something to his other litters. Per another veterinarian checking additional pups they found out it was nothing more than E. coli because the guy had treated lumber for kennel flooring. He wasn’t properly cleaning or disinfecting the wood so the pups made themselves sick from unsanitary conditions. All it would have took was better communication and looking at the environment instead of just the symptoms.

There is also the worry of Bovine Tuberculosis but a necropsy of lung tissue could rule that out. This disease was also being spread as published in a research article in Veterinary Medicine International Vol. 2011 entitled, Preventing the establishment of a Wildlife Disease Reservoir: A Case Study of Bovine Tuberculosis in Wild Deer in Minnesota, USA by M. Carstensen and M. W. DonCarlos (what a name?!)

The way this was discovered was a beef cow at slaughter in Wisconsin had thoracic lesions upon processing. It was traced back to a herd in Minnesota where more of the cows were positive. A deer 1 mile away was collected then tested only to find it was positive too. The powers that be decided the deer got infected by spillover from the infected cattle. I did glean that a total of 9.783 deer from surveillance methods were tested in northwest Minnesota for bTB and yielded 27 infected deer. These lesions would be exhibited on the ribcage, lungs, diaphragm, or lymph nodes. Once again if the moose is sensitive maybe its symptoms aren’t the same? If this isn’t the guilty party at least you got an education on Bovine TB. It’s real and it’s out there like Mad Cow. The only problem with conditions like these is sometimes you don’t really get to find out where Pathogen Zero comes from or who germinates it first. Moose are like big cows but not really quite the same. Just look at it. It’s the alien of the ruminant family.

Suspect #9

Invasive species: The Foxtail (Setaria) Species. I would think either eating it or someone trying to poison it out of cattle grass whereby the Moose eats it second hand. That might account for multiple moose in one area dying. Contamination of foodstuffs or poisoned by nefarious weeds/plants. I wonder at this because most animals kind of know what to avoid but when you’re hungry a moose could be like that guy living in the bus on the movie, Into the Wild. He dies from dysentery after eating the forbidden berries.

S. Faberii has spread through parts of North America. It would seem that low temperatures keep the seed dormant but once those temperatures change the seed may begin to grow prematurely in these unstable climate times. I wonder what a forest fire would do to that if the temperature were high enough.

Suspect #10

Startling: Scaring Female Moose into abandoning young.

Suspect #11:

Drowning: Self-Explanatory.

Suspect #12:

Agriculture: Farmers using Monsanto corn or products that have been engineered to kill or ward off pest/insects. Once again what if the GMO’ness of the corn or its altered DNA does not agree with the DNA or even the four compartmental stomachs of the moose? This could literally be poisoning the moose.

Personal Story: My mother recounts back in the day when people actually got away with knife fights, farmers used agricultural soda. If a farmer put it out on grass to make it grow, he would be required to keep the cows off until there was a rain storm to wash it in the ground. She noted there were several deaths upon licking at such ground treatments. We know people still stock pile that kind of crap.

Suspect #13:

Human Development: Pretty much this causes habitat loss, startling, and fluctuations in moose economies.

Suspect #14:

Nutritional Stress: See Digestion. I also would note here that White-tail deer do eat birds. Birds are known to be reservoir for all kinds of nasty things from West Nile to Salmonella. What if a moose started eating birds? Or something else when it couldn’t find something else or was just bored?

Suspect #15

Monsanto corn or other GMO crops: It could happen.

Suspect #16:

Reproduction rates for non-sterile moose: There might not be enough females to breed to and have calves.

Suspect #17:

Moose Calf Mortality: I have found published papers from the Alaskan Department of Wildlife entitled, Unusual Moose Morbidity and Mortality in Alaska where in 2005 a study indicated that calves were indeed dying from bacterial peritonitis and septicemia. Whether the calves got this from a tick borne disease or virus (bacterial or otherwise) remains to be seen. A lot of them got eaten by bears during calving but there was note of lethargic periods before becoming recumbent the dying due to extreme cold temperatures.

Suspect #18:

Industry: Factory waste sites active and abandoned; fracking, or mining activities that cause second hand pollution and stress.

Suspect #19:

Lack of consistent predation: This is pretty straight forward stuff. If you don’t have the right amount of predators to pick off the sickly, odd or just bad DNA donors then poor specimens might be walking around in the form of what appears to be healthy moose. Natural selection did not get the chance to do its magic because of some unknown interference that allowed a Bad Bull or Female Cow to breed, have babies then pass on bad genes.

Suspect #20:

Bigfoot: Hey Bigfoot could have run them to death like hunter tribes did back in Africa. The only problem is before Bigfoot got a chance to gnaw off a piece humans showed up pointing fingers while yelling, “Look! It’s a dead moose. What happened?” I laugh at this because Matt Moneymaker and BoBo would probably theorize this is a possibility. I still love the show thought.

Suspect #21:

Aliens *hahaah*I had to it was funny. The mother ship has been coming to steal our food source.

 

After some limited research and what I know about the world at large on animals this is what I feel constitutes Angelia’s unofficial synopsis of Moose Death in Minnesota theory:

 

Due to climate changes, the moose who is problematic with thermoregulation and stress suffers from a lowered immune system.

This immune system once faced with lack of necessary food sources like lichen from trees that harbor alga and fungi for hind gut process of digestion inhibits the necessary processes of digestion. Anemia caused by entering tick hotspots with subsequent tick-borne infections and carriage of essential molecules by moose blood cells would lower the threshold of the immune system also. Malabsorption of nutrition that provides Vitamin B as an energy source and Vitamin K for blood coagulation and metabolic pathways which occur in the hindgut could render the animal lethargic. Climate changes also make the conditions right for the life cycle of the brainworm which needs warmer temperatures to cycle through to settle in the moose brain where it isn’t well received due to not being able to reproduce eggs which compounds the already lowered immune system. Given that there were several moose carcasses in the same area the idea not to rule out something in the environment that could have contaminated or poisoned the moose should be considered. (Excluding vehicle collisions, predators, and hunting.) Rubbing off hair due to parasites should be considered but whether or not it’s a chemical or other contaminates should be ruled out. There is always the “unknown”.

With that being said if anyone would like to add to the list of suspects feel free to let me know and I'll add them.
The moose need our help.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

 

Antelope: Incantations of a Archaic Pygmy Woman.

 

 

Remember this: Women’s Place was not always allocated to a non-hunting role. Even if woman didn’t hunt she was important to be mediator between animal or the cosmos for the ‘good hunt’.

 

“During a 1905 African expedition, he met a hunting tribe of Pygmies that had been driven from the plateau and had taken refuge in the jungle of the Congo. The men and a woman from this tribe were recruited to guide the expedition and soon developed a friendly relationship with Frobenius and other members of the group. One day, when food supplies were depleted, Frobenius asked one of them to shoot an antelope. He and his comrades seemed astounded, and he then replied that it could not be done that day because no preparation had been made. After much discussion among themselves, the Pygmies conveyed their intention to make preparations at sunrise the next morning. They then went off, as though searching for an appropriate site, and eventually agreed on a high place on a nearby hill. Frobenius described the subsequent events.

As I was eager to learn what their preparations consisted of, I left camp before dawn and crept through the bush to the open place which they had sought out the night before. The Pygmies appeared in the twilight, the woman with them. The men crouched on the ground, plucked a small square free of weeds and smoothed it over with their hands. One of them drew something in the cleared spaces with his forefinger, while his companions murmured some kind of formula or incantation, then a waiting silence. The sun rose on the horizon. One of the men, an arrow on his bowstring, took his place beside the square. A few minutes later the rays of the sun fell on the drawing at his feet. In the same second the woman stretched out her arms to the sun, shouting words I did not understand, the man shot his arrow and the woman cried again. Then the three men bounded off through the bush while the woman stood for a few minutes and then went slowly towards our camp. As she disappeared I came forward and looking down at the smoothed square of sand, saw the drawing of an antelope four hands long. From the antelope’s neck protruded the Pygmies arrow. " (Grey  1993-9)

As I was reading this excerpt from Gary Gray’s book entitled, Wildlife and People: The Human Dimensions of Wildlife Ecology, I wanted to inspect my thoughts on the passages as read. Here were Pygmy men performing some kind of hunting ritual where the Pygmy woman was the center point over a drawing of the intended  antelope target. I could only imagine what the cosmology was here. I have also tried looking for information on Pygmy Hunting rituals where they concern women but the updated version fast forwarded to the 20^th century has most of them gathering fish or browse.  For the Pygmy men to hunt this antelope (or were they hunting something else?) it was important for them to do the ritual at a certain time of day, certain location, with graphics, incantations, the act of shooting an arrow into the antelope drawing and the woman.  All those things compromised the ritual and how this documentation from Frobenius indicated the shedding away of previous rituals that involved women as primary participants. Even though the Pygmy woman did not hunt but instead went back to camp, her role in the mental strategy of the men bolstered their ability to hope for a good expedition. I assume the antelope was the target. Whether this was some form of hunting ritual or witchcraft remains to be seen. Either way it could have been a way not to offend the animal itself.  Or the animal could have come back for its revenge? Again the Pygmies could have been calling on the spirits of the antelope to make them swift in the chase………

Shamanic ritual aside the hunting ritual could have been one of social behavior. I would wonder if women’s role in society began to slowly be phased out or become obsolete as roles began to change or take a new shape based on social or even ecological changes. A reoccurring theme I see in mentalities and writings is the exclusion of women from the hunting activity much like Hatshepsut being erased from walls in Egypt.

It’s the idea that women were once important in the hunt but maybe after a couple of bad hunts the Pygmy men felt the Gods or whomever were frowning down on them or women had just lost their mojo.

In conclusion this was a little gem to find but made me think on other things particularly my role in hunting, what I contribute and how other huntresses are perceived or challenged in the face of the changing world of hunting which has been a male activity. If it weren’t why would it be a big deal now to advertise women or encourage them in the sport?

 

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

 

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

 

 

 



Hunting Food: Luxury or Necessity? Does Air count?

Remember this:  Interpretation is 9/10ths of the law of reading anything. Always give each reading a careful inspection. Once you eat the food, the food is gone. You have to find more ad nausium.

Jezebel Magazine posted an article by Jeanna Sauers entitled, What Does It Mean For Food To Be A Luxury?   In which the reporter explores a fashion spread that appears in I Love You magazine’s Diet issue by Elle Muliarchyk . Sauer says that this article by I Love You magazine explores the idea of food as a luxury. Given the interpretation that Elle Muliarchyk translates from her ideals into photography and the requirements of the people commissioning the work there are always underlying themes with critical world views, personal sentiment, and negative visions that could broaden the horizons of magazine readers while initating the existance of old outdated ideals of food that aren't helpful.
Think it through. Think it through long and hard.

I perused both Sauer’s article and I Love You magazine’s spread to investigate what a female who hunts would think about this two way street of opinions. I will also admit in the realm of art you can get away with creative murder and come out unscathed. Art can also be your bouncing board to solve emotional, social, or psychological problems if not deal with them. Art can be a platform to bring much deeper issues to the forefront  in a roundabout way when different groups do not want or will outcast those not of the same mindset. That is what I like about art. Art is revolution in your face while you’re trying to figure it out.

My previous posting was one of hunter’s living in a tough economy on limited meat/food supplies but yet here I stare at my monitor. I also want to interject that looking at this from a realist Hunteress’s view of hopefully non-biased opinions or observation that I can actually make sense of ‘what lays before me on my plate’.

Is food a luxury? Especially for a huntress/hunter?

I would ponder loosely but unrealistically, food is a luxury on one hand because it is readily available in unnumbered quantities where waste is not an issue. Is this a realistic thought? No. Food is a necessity. When food is treated as a luxury that would mean it is limited. Wild game meat could be considered a luxury because it is limited by law governed hunting seasons and biological ecosystem changes. There is not enough wild game meat to go around or sustain a huge population unless someone starts farming it. If they start farming wild game then it is not really wild over time domestication, hormones, and that special sauce they start adding will change the meat and animal itself. Wild game that is not up for the hunt but is outlawed because of low quantities are especially targeted by greedy thieves of peril.  That is why  the Black Market exists, which is not limited to food but covers a host of bear paws, gall bladders, human kidney transplants, or your mother’s sink if there is some value to it or if it’s not bolted down.

If food sources are limited the price tag goes up because of low availability given breeding or growing seasons and the charges that go with it for acquiring, processing, shipping, more processing, self-preparation or professional prepared to serve. I could consider the fact there are some food that you can't get unless you go across the Great Pond because shipping laws do not allow it to enter your country.

I looked at a couple of the photos. I do acknowledge that they are trying to be provocative.  I would hope that there is a fine line between provocative and sexual. Maybe Muliarchyk should have removed the sexual connotations from the photos but would the photos have had the same meaning? Maybe for that photo there was a sexual undertone for it? Sexual tones are in all sorts of media where the hidden meaning is washed out by the sex. Keep it in context I say. To be provocative would mean to incite some kind of emotional respond even if that one is of disgust, repulsion, or totally nirvana.  I would say that one photo of a bare breasted woman holding sausage has the reek of sex sales. “Gimme your salome” comes to mind and the photo where the model has an almost orgasmic face could be conveyed as this “totally disgusts me” or “let us go Google weird octopi sex on the internet”. The only one I saw that comes close to the theme of food being a luxury is the pose of the model with the hog head where she looks like she is going to sleep satisfied  which is usually what people do after eating: go to sleep. I am kind of put out the photographer left out the apple. That would have been so cliché.

In Sauer’s article she contends Muliarchyk ate a random sampling of odd foods over her life which gives us a sense of her food palette and the fact she ate her own shoes in a Soviet-style children’s camp. I wondered why someone would send a child out to learn to eat her own shoes if she needed to? Muliarchy even states she hunted for her food.

Her words and actions are also telling of a person who doesn’t have a constructed limit to what she feel is her personal identity as it pertains to food because of the influences much like social trends on eating behaviors.   Then again it could be a trick of the eye. She is telling us what she sees the public doing or the Fashion world. She is just now doing it so let us support her exploration of that. Think Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride when she couldn’t even commit to the kind of cooked egg she wanted. She just assimilated her male counterpart’s likes and dislikes. Muliarchyk might be trying to incite the readers into questioning their own beliefs and perceptions on food. I assume these things as part of my exploration of the theme of food and how it is presented by Elle Muliarchyk.

Maybe Muliarchyk is finally fighting against the stream of information that is coming at her to measure her food identity or relationship both emotionally and personally? Then again she could be trying to form the topic of trading starvation for a modeling career where the models are really meat sacks prostrated lovingly out on a spread where she once appeared? Or is that how she views models through the lens of her camera? As cattle or human meat being moved for consumption? I would wonder if there is some resentment and underlying anger in her for depriving herself or seeing others do it in erroneous ways which over time could cause all kinds of distortions where they related to different needs in life.

The photographer also contends that the relocation to the US changed her eating style based on her employ where it has been known in the modeling world to cause extremist attitudes and behaviors amongst models towards food. It’s the love/hate mentality. I love you, want to eat but if I do food will make me fat so I hate you because I deprive myself for a paycheck. This made me also ponder the notion of people living in our day and age working and getting a paycheck to watch it go to known non-food items such as rent where they hate the fact they don’t make enough money to buy food. I hate where I live because I am starving for food. It’s the resentment issue again. The model would have the financial access but the Regular Joe doesn’t have the financial access to eat either. Both are hungry but in different ways. Ways we tolerate in ourself and other people because they do the best they can or do they? Is it a fantasy to think we are not really limited?

I thought of what could these images convey because art is about personal interpretation but it has to be meaningful or else it is just another Crayola picture on the wall. By the way, there are no bad Crayola pictures in existence.

I perused the I Love You magazine’s web page where the photos are based around a center model  with her legs wide open, lace see through underwear while eating some article of food with hints of oral fixations. I almost was taken aback by the similar XXX images of women in prostrated sexual positions where bodily fluids are rendered while on Googling runs for images that are not sex related.  I was reading one part of an article introduction that read, “it’s not about surviving as much as it is about longevity. Not about the quantity but the quality.”

With this my personal belief is life is about survival. If you can’t survive you can forget about longevity. You can have quality food but it better be sustainable and in volume. If it’s not then once you eat food, the food is gone. You have to find more. Sometimes you can have quality food. You just have to have enough of a quantity to go around to feed the people until someone can grow, hunt, or forage a field be it city or country to provide.

There was also the wordage of “food is the new status symbol” on I Love You’s magazine page. If you have food then you must have money to burn or the EBT card. Which I have known a lot of EBT card holders that only get enough for about fifteen days of food if they are not rigorously measuring out portions, stealing ornamental cabbage from the bank flower bed, dumpster diving or begging for a hand out as working people would call it but that is for another article. You can’t really think about proper nutrition when you are hungry and have limited resources. You just need to feel satisfied until the next stomach growl or hunger pang.

To me there are a couple of mentalities but I am not ruling out ones I don’t know about where people are dissociated from food. The first one is a Regular Joe working or unemployed for the man trying to feed his family with limited resources.  This person is probably not going to be concerned with metabolic processes, the next self-help book, or even magazine articles where people rant about food like it’s a luxurious option to eating  air. This person is going to be out there working on his primitive hunter-gatherer mentality because that is what is going to feed the family: effort with results. Second there are the groups that look down their noses at food compromised individuals with contempt because they have all or some food that is available or feel they are entitled because they worked a little harder. I say you have food false security because poverty hasn’t hit you yet.  If you want to complain give that unemployed person your job. See how that feels.

In conclusion I enjoyed both articles because it opens up the exploration for how I feel about food and its issues from the perspective of a person who hunts. These magazines or 'worlds' being outside the swamps and rivers I burden with my presence. I do believe the issue is the same. How do I see my food? How do I feel about it? Is it wrong, right or neutral? Can I change my view? Can other people understand or tolerate my food ethic? These are the questions I asked myself.

I have to support Sauer and I Love You magazine because they are bringing an issue to light that we all should be thinking or better yet doing something about. Food is what keeps us going but the parameters that define our access to food from its sources such as economical or social, dictate how we view food accessiblity then we act accordingly.

Talking is only talking for so long if it doesn’t solve or alleviate a problem.  As a creative person I do not want to actively tear another’s views apart but only share my own to make sense of the bigger whole. As a person who hunts food is very important and may have a different meaning in terms of availability or even how I treat the meat. Either way it is definitely going in my stomach at some point. I can’t live without it or does air count?

Written By:  W Harley Bloodworth
~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Having Respect For Your Fellow Hunter

 

 

 

Remember this: Never judge a book by its cover. Fear will do great and odd things to a person's behavior. Question wisely not blindly.

Always show respect for your fellow hunter or huntress.  Lurking on social media like nefarious highwaymen will only get you one of two things: virtual buckshot in your rear end or exposure for what or who you really are.

A couple of days ago while making random conversation on social media I spied a post centered around killing X amount of a wild species. It was based as a contest. Of course this could be one of those fake contests but at the same time it could be have some merit, all be it misguided. I got into a very interesting discourse with three people I assume to be gentlemen. Specific conversation aside because I am not in the business of giving other people that much credit or advertisement for bad behaviour. I wanted to inspect it a little closer afterwards so my evaluation of it was not drenched in resentment that was mildly displaced temporarily.

When someone is good enough to share their opinion on something you should either agree or disagree. Its probably not a wise thing to do by calling out anyone person with the indication of there name.When you call the name of the devil, it could appear?

I also at some point wondered whether I was being influenced to avoid the intial person. There was a comment made to the point by one of them that the poster, "need not feel she should turn to me". I felt like that was a very strange thing to say.

If you can't get the 'other side' of what is actually "no side" to get back on topic you can bet they are not there for intelligent conversation.

Yes, you could be the better man or woman but if you are not reducing yourself to calling names such as "idiot" or "the weakest link in the chain" then by all means stand up for yourself. Do not back down.

Unfortunately for these persons they didn't have prior intelligence that I have been trained in the subtle art of managing aggressive types to go in the direction that I want them to or diffuse their anger by not giving in to their terrorism.

Another thing about comments on the internet is that there is no emotional inflection in the typed word. Yes, when someone types "F-U" after a nasty comment about a person that has died or such you could probably say that it is what it is.

There are always people that want there to be a winner-loser side in a battle that does not even exist. People online have become addicted to confrontation.

I have also noticed online comments where a hunter/huntress is really trying to say "This is not me. I don't agree with this one issue or how it is conveyed."  Does that mean they are turning turn-coat? No, they just form their own opinion which is healthy. Questioning is healthy. Backing down from it to lesser beings is not. The group that person is co-mingling with will literally try to drive them like one would drive a wayward sheep back into the fold. Of course they think the wolf is everywhere and are scared. I would suggest thinking on why that fear exists? Maybe they did or have been doing something they don't want to be found out for? As long as you're in the dark about it they can manipulate you all they want.

I have read that women through the centuries have gotten into the habit of trying to please others in the face of aggression because avoiding that behavior is better than getting into it with someone. The only problem with that is the behavior continues and puts upon the woman until she is frustrated. It stunts her growth.

I think hunters/ huntresses should be free thinkers of their own mind to evaluate for themselves what is going on. If they need to come to God on issues with their breathern let them do it at least in a manner where information flows back and forth. This way intelligent conversation or assessments can rule out the absurd and ridiculous.  Do they not do this when they walk out into the woods or a field to assess how things lay with the land or the game they chase? Why would I want them to be any less? That I think would be against a hunter's/huntress's nature. To idly go into trouble with their eyes closed. Rip them blinders off.

I hate no one.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of AOFH~
 

Hunting: The Procurement of Wild Game Meat.

Remember this: The Holy Trinity of Hunting is meat, life experiences, and pure guilty pleasure but poverty affects us all.

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization reported people are secure when there is access to proper, sufficient and nutritious food where the acquisition is through a socially accepted practice.

I will not dwell on the online debate that lurks in people’s hearts on the hunting methods of pig sticking, spearing, truck diving, cannon balling, bush jumping or shooting, etc. I will keep the focus off actual methods for procuring wild game meat for another topic.

Individuals who begin the journey of the hunt go for different reasons. The major goal I will focus on is the need for sustenance, food, or meat. Food procurement is one of the prime directives for Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Otherwise they come to the game starving.

In this economy, money earned is becoming an issue. Everyone is feeling the pinch. People throughout the world lack the necessary funds for basic nutrition. Accessing food with limited financial resources is tough and can bring out the worst or the best in an individual or group. Another issue that arises for the financially strapped hunter/huntress is allocating money for:

• Hunting license
• Hunting supplies
• Club dues
• Bait
• Gas
• Costly meat processing if done professionally
• Time
• Stress at being poor with a habit.
• Failure at coming home empty handed

In order for the hunter to work at optimal level there must be that crucial form of employment or income.

Hunters and huntresses come from all walks of life. They can be a complete family, a single parent home, singletons, or the elderly. Whatever their reason for taking up a tool of choice to enact the procurement of wild game the truth can be said for all of them: they like to eat and need it to maintain proper function of the body. Of course at any time due to the economy the stresses put on people who hunt must be evaluated for solutions. After all, we are in this together if not apart. Hunting is advertised as a family friendly activity. That same family should be your rock in times of poverty, recession, and general need for emotional support.

Another reason people who hunt take up the activity is the impact of poverty. Not all but a percentage participates for this reason. Participating is multi-faceted but our focus here is clear. People who hunt may be driven to acquire wild game meat due to past life experiences such as poverty induced starvation, anxiety over the next meal, acquiring food in unacceptable ways such as theft, no access to opportunities to hunt, and barely staying alive off what you can scratch up or dig out the dumpster.

This can be exhibited when a person who hunts has a bad season with no game to take home and pack away in the freezer, smoke, or can.

Families could have the cushion of two working parents that hunt. Single parents may hunt but perform other personal management strategies to reduce waste. The elderly may rely on other members of the community to provide for them if there is no family.

A hunter/huntress might be faced with a freeze on the hunting of a species due to a biological disturbance that causes low births or high deaths in a hunted species. There may be previous infarctions for crimes against wildlife that prevent a hunter/huntress from participating. Another occurrence might be the lack thereof quarry in the area you hunt due to over hunting.

Faced with these barriers what can the person who hunts do? Strategy is the name of the game.

The discerning hunter/huntress can sit down when meat stores are not low to evaluate the overall plan of action they initiate when things start going thin.

The following would be good practices in tough times:

· Keeping expenses down with a budget.

· Self-Managing strategy for food procurement and storage.

· Grow a garden in the summer to harvest, can, or freeze fruits and vegetables.

· Access food banks

· Stretch meals by measuring appropriate rations of protein portions per person per meal.

· Ask neighbors for help.

During times of financial stress people who hunt could be more prone to break laws in order to acquire necessary food. There may also be the aspect of isolation or even alienation from family, friends, or community. Helping out your fellow man should be on the list of life choices one would perform because it is a service to your community. You may be in that position one day to accept kindness from strangers. Meat is meat. If you know of someone who is down on their luck give what you can.

Its livable to be a poor hunter/huntress but you have to remember that the state of having nothing is only temporary. Be kind to your fellow man, your fellow hunter/huntress and feed others least not you feed yourself.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~