At twelve years old I became a regular Terminator with a 12 gauge pump shotgun purchased with savings from my $6/day farm work. So much so that I experienced a guilt-feelings blood-sport epiphany.
But realizing my hunting instincts too strong to forsake, I began introducing, exploring, and emphasizing less efficient killing tools; at times taken to such extremes as hunting dangerous game with longbows of my own making.
In my subsequent obsessive reading about hunting challenges taken to what contemporary hunters would consider extremes, I not only learned a lot about many things those same contemporary hunters would find boring, useless or silly, but to revere nature, how to still-hunt, stalk game, be patient enough to wait for the right shot presentation, appreciate actual hunting experience(s) and hunting pioneers, much about hunting ethics, how to build bows, and reading and writing beyond an eigth-grade level.
I recall some pertinent quotes; some not read (or re-read) in decades. Hence, I plagiarize them now with the disclaimer my memory is not photographic enough to be verbatim correct. However I can only hope to quote closely enough to pass on enough of the wisdom and passion in them to instill some of the hunting ethics from which they were born. Mind you, some go back as far as the Civil War era.
"In the early dawn of life Man took up weapons against the beasts about him. With the implements of the chase he has won his way in the world. The love of the chase still thrills us..." (In ascending to the top of the food chain Man has continually developed more efficient killing tools, losing most of his hunting ethics in the process.)
"After all, it is not the killing that brings satisfaction, it is the contest of skill and cunning. The true hunter counts his achievement in proportion to the effort involved and the fairness of the sport." (Not nearly so much nowadays in most 'hunters'. However, some of my most gratifying hunting experiences are magnified greatly by the great efforts, trials and tribulations involved in securing success.)
"Why men should kill deer ia a moot question, but it is a habit of the brute. For so many hundreds of years we have been at it, that we can hardly be expected to reform immediately. Undoubtedly, it is a sign of undeveloped ethnic consciousness. We are depraved animals." Inarguably!
"No one can know how I have loved the woods, the streams, the trails of the wild, the ways of the things of slender limbs, of fine nose, of great eager ears, of mild way eyes, and of vague, half-revealed forms and colors. I have been their friend and mortal enemy. I have so loved them that I longed to kill them. But I gave them far more than a fair chance." (I was so moved by that quote that I ripped it off to name my custom-built line of longbows and recurves
.)
"The first buck I ever landed with the bow thrilled me to such an extent that every detail is memorable. It was the sweetest venison we ever tasted." (For me,
MUCH more-so the only buck I ever landed with a longbow of my own making.)
"Ishi always said that a white man smelled like a horse, and in hunting made a noise like one, but apparently he doesn't always have horse sense." (FWIW, I now use Old Spice 'Fresh' deodorant.)
"It is not about the size of the bag, but the magnitude of the challenge." Meaning
game bag;
NOT nut-bag!
