Public Health Awareness: A Fox Parasite.

Remember This: Parasites are like computer hackers. They get in, get what they want and really work you over before they are done. Some you can treat; others stay like family come to visit that don't know how to leave.

After roaming the woods, working in an animal hospital and the extreme sport of getting myself into trouble, my doctor is treating me now with medication directed at would be interlopers into my system. I wondered after years of beating my head into the brick wall of medicine,  given my previous animal related history, no one listened? Finally, someone did and he's a pretty smart MD. I bring this up to merely remind you not to scare you.

I got to thinking,  as a stab at public awareness for all those that hunt, to spotlight a nasty bugger.

Enter Echinoccoccs multilocularis.

Personal story #1:

Two different clients came to the office I was employed at. The first client exhibited a sickly cat. Out of it fell this thick fleshed, white tightly segmented parasite. For all intents and purposes,  looked like a monster tapeworm. It was placed in a red-topped blood tube with formalin and placed in the refrigerator. At this time, the veterinarian who saw this in the litter pan,  stepped back and looked like he had smelled the worst pile of manure ever dropped out an animal. "That is a fox tapeworm." By his actions, I determined this was like nuclear waste. A massive cleaning in the spirit of OCD proportions was carried out by staff.  We didn't want that parasite. Said parasite was shipped off to the State laboratory for testing and confirmed as a fox parasite.

Second client came in with a dog and a stool sample in a clear plastic bag with a UFO (unidentified fecal object). The same reaction followed of intensive cleaning. We were happy that both animals did not get a chance to defecate on our lawn, thereby transmitting this little gremlin.

Hopefully no one got infected through cross contamination.

I got to thinking about all the times I have seen people dressing out animals. Some rupture the gut through misplaced shots, the dogs ripping the animal (fox) open, or pick through a carcass, found dead or scraped off the road for that night's dinner. Let's face it,  there are people with morbid curiosity and ghoulish ways when crossing the path of a situation where they may not get the chance again, will poke around into the unknown, contrary to personal harm. We all do it. Reminded me of Chunk of Goonies fame when he yells to Mikey, "Dead things, Mikey. Dead things!"

These same hunters/huntresses will half-heartedly wipe their faces while dressing out to scratch an unconscious itch, remove sweat, or finger around in the body cavity. This unconscious action moves closer and closer to the eyes and the mouth, which are oral entry ways for parasites and disease. I don't even want to go there thinking about bloody fingers and someone eating uncooked meat, safe or not. It's human nature, I guess.

On the other hand, lets consider those hunters that keep scat collections. Hopefully,  you had someone put that literal crap in a autoclave after it petrified to kill whatever was in it or at least a plastic container lined with 60 cc syringes and filled minutely with Formalin and closed for several days. (Trust me on this. Make sure you get someone to test a sample to see if you left it in long enough.)
Otherwise every time you handle the scat you are at risk,  if you're not already repeatedly infecting yourself. 

If the Fox defecates on the ground, then a wild boar comes rooting through, there you go: up the ole pie hole.  Now the wild boar has it. At another time and incident, you could have a person walking through the woods eating off the land: berries, dandelions, and root tubers. Oooops. Infestation. On another occasion, you could have a family pet playing with their food and eating a rat. Gotcha again, then the cat uses the litter pan, which you clean. I can't recall Haz-mat suits being sold at Wal-mart because a lot of time the OB-GYN will only tell you about Trichomonas possibly infecting pregnant women. Another scenario is the hunter picking up scat for closer inspection while saying, "It looks like fox crap to me."

Think of all the ways this could come visit you at your door.

Personal Story #2:

Had a co-worker come down sick at the animal hospital. We will call her June.  June went to her doctor only to find that she had this case of Pseudomonas which had lodged itself in her sinus. 

June was a poor example of washing her hands and she was always snotting and wiping her nose. After coming back from her doctor with a confirmation, she thought to test all her animals. She had 3-4 horses, ~5 dogs, and a house cat. All of them were positive. All were administered a medicinal regime including Old June. June couldn't take time off because of the demands of her boss and job. She had to come to work sick, potentially infecting us all, and wearing a Picc line, which is a peripheral inserted central catheter that fed her medicine. It was like someone walking around pushing an IV pole except she could hide it on her person. This was what I called 'extreme fucking over of your employee'. I hated it for June; her personal problems aside. I was also considering the erroneous attitude the doctor had at bullying June into potentially infecting the other patients, clients, and staff. She touched everything. In the above personal story June was no longer with us.

Personal story 3#:
A well meaning citizen brought in a sick red fox. When I got to work, the other worker applied an intravenous catherter while medicating and giving fluids to this sick fox. I walked in and thought, "Oh Shit. Tapeworms/rabies? Take your pick." The doctor finally showed up and found out about the fox.  He directed them to euthanize it. While declaring stupidity among those few that had done such works, the doctor himself did not feel the need to have the head tested by DHEC, which is done at no cost as a public service.  This service caters to any animal found to be suspicous of carrying the Rabies disease.

Here I report,  Veterinary medicine is filled with true professionals, given the quality of the practice. Which at times is not perfect,  but then there are places that make you question the belief in God, the Anti-Christ and the fact someone in Psychology missed their calling to study the mentality of people working in this particular field.


Here you have two incidences, where you could have contamination or infestation. Think about it.This is just examples that can happen at a job. Imagine if you are at leisure.

My understanding it is worse in Europe but researchers cry foul with lack of money, so who knows for sure at any given place just how prevalent things are.

As an example I jumped in the Scientific Time Machine and visited a poster presentation written in 2008 entitled, Wild life surveillance on Echinococcus multilocularis in Sweden written by Birgitta Andersson, Bodil Christensson, Susanne Johasson, Eva O Lind, and Göran  Zakrisson.
Here is the link:
www.actavetscand.com/content/pdf/1751-0147-52-S1-S10.pdf

There are several good examples of information here:
http://www.actavetscand.com/search/results?terms=Echinococcus%20multilocularis

Here this poster is saying the Swedish government is paying for investigations into the existance of this parasite.

The facts:

2007

• 245 red foxes shot by local hunters from different parts of Sweden. (Potential contamination/infestation). These harvests are not done in a localized area.
• Carcasses are placed in -80 degrees Celsius/week before sampling using coproantigen ELISA testing.
• 48 positive Fox and 28 additional specimens randonly selected were examined by sedimentation technique.

Results:

• 48 Foxes out of 245 were positive for Echinococcus sp. by the coproantigen Elisa.
• The Sedimentation technique was negative. (Using both positive and randomly selected individuals).

When ever a sedimentation procedure was done in our office we, used free feces. Older feces is not embraced because parasites have an odd way of migrating into soil around the area where the feces is deposited. You could think of dropping a stone in water. Once the stone hits the water there is an outerward wake. This wake is equal to the migration of parasites larvae from the feces.  That could go for some distance and it's hard to kill them even with burning,  depending on what parasite, nematode, or X factor you have.

When I was reading this, I saw where the sedimentation was not positive. That might have something to do with treatment of the carcass. What is in the bowel may die versus the samples needed for the ELISA, which is two different procedural tests. Sedimentation studies also depend on solute to solution percents and if they are mixed properly or you would have non-flotation or rupture of the eggs.

At this point, you can agree, always be careful with what you are handling.

Ways to avoid:

• Research and Read. Libraries give out library cards at low rates with free computer access.
• Don't touch it.  Cat's only have nine lives. You may not be a cat.
• Learn how to wash your hands like a professional.
• Get a professional to remove the carcass for testing or removal.
• In the South, people would  put gas on it and strike a match to watch the pretty colors of the flames.
• Wash all your fruit, vegetables, and berries.
• Don't eat and browse in the woods because it looks clean and uninfested. Your eyes are not electron microsopes or even 50X microscopes. Birds poop from the sky all the time; a statue can vouch for that.
• Buy surgical gloves or dish washing gloves. Use these when cleaning litter pans, dog poop, or gardening. (I have known clients to wash their cat pan right in their house sink and put the cat pan on the counter where their dinner is displayed. I can confirm: I don't eat anything they cook or stay long.)
• Take your prized pet/hunting dog to the Veterinarian for a yearly, semi-yearly check, vaccinations, diagnostic tests, and deworming/treatment.
• Go to the doctor when you show signs or feel you may have picked up a parasite. Don't wait for it to breed in your entrails like the Alien baby, to burst out your chest or float by in your eyeball juices (i. e. loa loa).
• Educate yourself.

Now when you read your hunting dog a bed time story before you go to bed at night ask yourself this:    
Have I done enough to keep my prized hunting dog parasite free?
Have I took precautions to keep myself parasite free?

Always be on guard and don't touch that shit.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Google these links for further reading :

(read on page 295-298:)
http://books.google.com/books?id=g_tBWVBevM0C&pg=PA297&lpg=PA297&dq=fecal+sedimentation+techniques&source=bl&ots=V6OeSumg5v&sig=k_PhiFKYVHkEHDrl9ZtMeGYYJwE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fSxRUdm6MIfi0gHe-YC4DQ&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=fecal%20sedimentation%20techniques&f=false

http://www.mabtech.com/Main/Page.asp?PageId=26

http://www.biobest.co.uk/diagnostics/techniques/elisa-how-does-the-test-work.html

Interesting links to Scientific Research and General facts:
http://www.actavetscand.com/content/52/S1/S10
http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/disease/diseaserisks.html

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~

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~