Beyond the Reach

[katqanna]

I saw this movie preview on my feed about a guy hunting a bighorn sheep, so I went to IMDB to see what it was about and the trailer.

If y'all were upset by Wild with the bowhunters and how they were portrayed, this whole movie appears to be about "hunters" in a bad light. You have a wealthy 1%er, bribing a sheriff to hunt a bighorn out of season, hiring a guide. Then he accidentally shoots a man, tries to cover it up by framing and trying to kill the guide, like anyone that would hunt animals cant tell the line.

 

[James Riley]

I have not seen "Beyond the Reach."

Anyone old enough to remember "Bless the Beasts and Children"? Early 70s movies, misfit "troubled" kids upset about a penned slaughter of bison. Definitely NOT hunting, and such acts did/do occur, but the movie fails to distinguish idiots from hunters, thus making it seem like all hunters are idiots.

I'm trying to think of a mainstream movie about modern day hunters shown in a good light. Comin' up blank. "Deer Hunter" has some deer hunting and "American Sniper" kills a deer, but it's a small part of a war/soldier movie, thus again making an inferential connection that should not be there.

 

[katqanna]

This one sounds like a modern adaptation of a book I read decades ago, The Most Dangerous Game.

As to a modern movie with hunters in a good light, I loved the Ghost and the Darkness. But, that is not set in modern times.

 

[James Riley]

This one sounds like a modern adaptation of a book I read decades ago, The Most Dangerous Game.

As to a modern movie with hunters in a good light, I loved the Ghost and the Darkness. But, that is not set in modern times.

I think the reason it's "safe" to show hunting in a positive light in the old days (Last of the Mohicans, Dances With Wolves, etc.) is because "they didn't know any better back then" or "it was necessary back then" or "they weren't as evolved as we are so they had an excuse".

We don't have that excuse so we must be blood thirsty, pin-headed idiots who haven't seen the light.

Personally, for me, it is not a sport; it is a sacred rite; a spiritual thing. But the two things wrong with that is: 1. It can't and should not have to be defended; and 2. Even that is "religious" in nature and thus for the ignorant. :W:

 

[katqanna]

James, I agree with your perspective of the time periods. That is a good point.

Over a year ago I read an article written by David Petersen and loved it. Looked him up online and found a number of his books. I think the first was Elkheart, which may have been the excerpt the article was on, if I remember correctly. I loved the book and bought several more of his.

Not really having a budget for books that I research, those that I know I will want to keep, I purchase used on Amazon, which means that I frequently see notes from previous owners. In the Heartsblood book, there were quite a number of notes, comments questions. The notes stop just before the halfway point. And based on the comments, which are more anti-hunting, with sprinklings of "patriarchal" and such, I think the reader was a woman. Petersen is quoting Paul Shepard, another author I have enjoyed. "Beyond animal alertness, Shepherd adds, 'the hunt brings into play intense emotions and a sense of the mysteries of our existence, a cathartic and mediating transformation.' Just so: In wild nature, I find spiritual solace and a cathartic reaffirmation of cosmic sanity that I find nowhere in the made world. To the contrary precisely: Nature is the only antidote to civilization. And where shall our spirits dwell when wild nature dies?"

"She" ends her comments, at the end of Chapter 6 writing, "In a world with difficulties and hardships - but not impossibilities, is it fair to humanity for you to shut yourself off from it? To ignore the complexities of society and culture for simplistic hunting? In ignorance of oppression and difference, you privileged, white, heterosexual, middle class, educated man."

At the end of Chapter 7, Petersen writes, "In the end, we find sacredness only where we seek it. And only if we seek it. Authentic hunters, nature hunters, spiritual hunters, seek and find sacredness in aspen grove and piney wood: in mountain meadow and brushy bottom; in cold clear water and stinking elk wallow; and ultimately - necessarily, naturally - in bloodstained blood. This is the spirituality, the poetry, of hunting. There is no oxymoron here."

I just had a friend call this morning. She went to see the showing of "Cowspiracy" last night, that showed here in Bozeman. I am familiar with a number of the issues of commercial agriculture and the effects on the land, especially the large scale practices. One of the reasons I hunt, I feel it is more sustainable. She mentioned at the end that there was an advocacy for vegetarianism, that there was information available for local vegetarian/vegan groups and that there was a pot luck today for people to get to meet and learn about recipes for complete vegetarian proteins. Mind you, her husband hunts, they eat wild game, so it is not like she and her husband are anti-hunting. She is dropping off a copy of the DVD so I will be able to see what all they are actually promoting, but what I know archaeologically, biologically, nutritionally, I will never give up wild game and fishing.

Now while I can do some vegetarian dishes for short bits, mostly in summer, never in winter and know the protein combinations to get a complete proteins, there is more to meat than just protein. I pointed this out to her. We need the fatty acids. With my head trauma healing, I have had to up my fatty acid intake tremendously to help it heal. Aside from flax seeds, the highest source for that is cold water fish, then your venisons. Petersen even spoke to that in Heartsblood. Nutritionists state that wild game contains five times the essential fatty acids found in domestic meat. "In a nut: Had our deep-time ancestors been vegetarians, we wouldnt be human today. In two direct and providential ways then - by offering an impetus for the development of lithic technology, or stone tool making, and by providing the right nutritional stuff for dynamic brain growth - meat eating presaged and facilitated our becoming human. The stage was now set for the third crucial contribution of carnivory to human evolution: hunting."

James, I agree, that the sacredness/spirituality cant and shouldnt have to be defended. But if it is not attempted to be defended, a perspective shared, then you stand to lose the opportunity, not only for others awareness of a different perspective on the situation, but of losing the physical opportunities to the more aggressive agendas that would seek to strip you of that landscape and legal right. While I feel it is more of a private, intimate experience, I have felt no choice in these last couple years, but to become more open about such things, try to figure out a number of ways to communicate this, in order to secure these hunting rights while we still have them. Perhaps the machinery is already too big, too widespread for me to have any affect, but my personality type is not such, to let someone come in and take things from me and others, without a fight.

 

[James Riley]

katqanna: You nailed it.

I used to think I was the only one but then read some articles in Bugle back in 80s, realizing I was not alone. Some of the authors would get flack for struggling to express a view beyond the gear, and the kill, and the comradeship, and the "look at me", but their writing did provide some solace to me, just to know they were out there.

I read "Meditations on Hunting" (Jose Ortega E'Gasset (sp?)) and that too helped, bridging a miss-perceived gap between Leopold, Abbey, others writers, and the hunt. That's when I got active.

So you are correct that sharing deeply-held beliefs about the hunt and what it means to life is something that can do good work in any open mind, even beyond those of the choir. Sometimes you just have to be brave and spit it out, knowing that some stud is going to be rolling his eyes and coughing with his bros. As we used to say in the Corps: "F them."

As to meat, I used to have a rant about that too. Basically we are what we eat:

Deer, elk, moose, bison and other large prey animals of North America breath the cleanest air, drink the cleanest water, and eat clean, healthy food. They climb mountains and swim lakes and rivers. They live their entire lives out of doors, during all seasons, and in the harshest of weather.

Domesticated livestock on the other hand, are thrown, castrated, branded, the ears are cut and then tattooed. Some we baby sit on public lands until they are ready to be fattened. They are injected with steroids, growth hormones, vaccines, antibiotics and other drugs. They are covered with, and stand around on three feet of their own feces and urine, shoulder to shoulder, all day and night. They breath their own flatulence, drinking from shared, filthy troughs, and they eat fermented silage with flies buzzing up their noses and in their eyes. Domesticated animals cannot survive the seasons of North America on their own. And they suffer all of this without the benefit of shock.

Domestic animals conclude their lives behind closed doors, spiked in the brain, bled, butchered, and packed in solidified petroleum hydrocarbons. There is no dignity, respect or reverence in such a death.

We are what we eat. When I read the foregoing and then look at us, I often see in us what I see in our food.

Ignoring our kills merely illustrates our shame. Distancing ourselves from death is just a fig leaf, covering up another way in which our food has chosen to honor and bless us. This embarrassment cannot be atoned by merely reciting grace at a table, head hung low, with a napkin in our lap. Rather, we should actually live in grace with what we kill and eat. But alas, an apex predator should not exist in our numbers. Wild game cannot sustain it. So we must except domestic meat or really scale back our population. I am all for the latter.

But I am definitely a meat eater. I once hiked up the Selway to Bear Creek, then Cub Creek, then Tin Cup Creek (or Fry Pan, can't remember) and ate nothing but plants and a few trout over a couple of weeks. I reached a tiny flat and realized I could not get out, especially by going up, as I was too weak. I shot a little squeaky with my bow and got about a dove's amount of meat from it. After eating that, I donned my pack and scampered right up to the top of Gardiner Peak like it was my first day out. It made all the difference in the world. I was honored by that little rodent. Big time.

A few years ago I tried going without meat because I felt uncomfortable with domestic meat and I hadn't killed anything in a while. I made it two years but there was a lot of cheese involved. I couldn't do it. I'm back to eating pigs and cattle when there is no bison or elk on the table. I'm also growing more comfortable with my hypocrisy. Mainly because I can't cure our domestication alone.

 

[tjones]

Sounds like a remake of an early 70's movie with Andy Griffith as the hunter.

Thinking it was called Savage, or Savages,,maybe.

 

[tjones]

Yep.