The persistence of the San people

This is from the BBC series 'The life of mammals'. My god, the persistence hunt, how incredible. Think about this, chasing an elk through the woods this way.






More about the San people...

Reading and writing

First off, I've been shooting about once a week, which won't really do it. I've found that the shop in Queens is cheaper for target practice but takes longer to get to. I need to find a spot somewhere in northern Riverside Park, but that's easier said than done. This is NYC, and finding an out of the way place is tough. I play tennis near there and there are lots of illegal day laborers hanging out in there. Anyway, maybe tomorrow I get up early and try. I'm going to create a small target out of cardboard and foam and hang it with twine. Hopefully this will allow me to get an hour or two extra of shooting a week, and in a semi-relative environment (outdoors, wooded, etc)

The real problem is getting the bow in there without attracting too much attention. The bag I have now is camo and would sort of scream 'hunting gear'. Something sporty or black would go a long way towards making it easier.


Just a list of some of the things I've read and seen that have interested me on this trip.


Nature article

http://www.archive.org/stream/1987montanaarche00montrich/1987montanaarche00montrich_djvu.txt
When I started bow hunting nearly 20 years ago bow hunters were
looked upon with respect. They were generally good woodsmen with
high ethics. Success rates were quite low and it normally took a
few years for a new bow hunter to be successful. Success was
considered secondary to personal challenge and the enjoyment of
the hunt. All hunting was strictly fair chase with basic
equipment. All competition was between the hunter and the game.
It brings me great sadness to see the state of bow hunting
today. Many of todays bowhunters (fortunately not all) will stop
at nothing to kill an animal. Fair chase, sportsmanship, ethics
and challenge seem to be old fashioned words with little or no
meaning to many modern bowhunters. Success is measured in terms
of how many animals con be taken with as little effort as
possible.


http://www.archive.org/details/Bowhunting_right_in_town


A Hunter's Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport

Traditional Bow Hunter

Livability By Jon Raymond

finally, a quick story.... so i'm on the subway platform at the bedford ave. L stop. people in front of me as i walk in are scurrying out of the way. A rat has gotten caught on the platform and is running with a mouth full of something. he's clearly figured out that people will run out of his way if he runs at them. when he takes a bead on me i slide my size 11 right boot out to the side and, with my insole just like they taught back in peewee soccer, catch the rat square on the side. he rockets off my foot and slams into the far wall of the track. the food in his mouth explodes into crumbs as his body falls just outside the third rail.

Deep thoughts and shallow judgements...

There are some really odd and interesting things out there on the internet. Things that tell you all about a time and a place and the culture of the people who were there when it happened. The exploding whale comes to mind. So does Bow Hunting for Squirrels by Big Lake Boy Productions. Fine examples both of the odd, amazing, nuckin-futz world we live in. Little cultural signposts on the road to oblivion. As Brian Bedre says "let's go get another one".

One in particular that I'm beginning to wonder about is the hunt story. This seems to be something of a journalistic standard in the hunting and fishing genre. It's basically the story of a hunt, that a person or persons went on, sometimes to end-of-the-earth-exotica, sometimes right in the proverbial back yard. It tells the "amazing" or "exhilarating" or (my favorite) "heart pounding" story of what they did, how they did it, and how they felt when they were done. If I may be so bold - blah blah blah... Who cares!?! Really, if you've read one, you've pretty much read them all. I think that it is time to retire them, in favor of something better, and I've got a few thoughts on that that I will share later.

Now, at the same time, there are lots of people from the hunting world talking about the problems of the hunting world. Youth involvement is down, the so called anti-hunting mob is on the march , and maybe worst of all, society at large ignores hunting as a useless anachronism. An irrelevant artifact of a lesser past that if some yahoos still care to pursue, so what. Don't take my word for it, some of the best minds in the hunting world have said so, including Dwight Schuh, Editor of Bowhunter in this interview and (maybe) also in this article .

Many are of course suggesting to fix it. Allow me to throw my hat in that ring. I believe in many ways our problem is one of narrative, and specifically a problem that is reflected in the cadences of the hunt story. This may seem like an odd answer at first I know, but I believe it to be true, and I'll tell you why.

What is the hunt story, really? It is often, and almost always in my experience, simply bragging. The hunt stories I've read are banal, vainglorious, self-aggrandizing, piece of crap that offers no real value to anyone. What is the mistake? They mistake the kill for the hunt, when really, it is the quest that is the hunt.

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

Hunt \Hunt\ (h[u^]nt), v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Hunted}; p. pr. &
vb. n. {Hunting}.] [AS. huntian to hunt; cf. hentan to
follow, pursue, Goth. hin?an (in comp.) to seize. [root]36.
Cf. {Hent}.]
1. To search for or follow after, as game or wild animals; to
chase; to pursue for the purpose of catching or killing;
to follow with dogs or guns for sport or exercise; as, to
hunt a deer.
[1913 Webster]

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams. --Tennyson.
[1913 Webster]

2. To search diligently after; to seek; to pursue; to follow;
-- often with out or up; as, to hunt up the facts; to hunt
out evidence.
[1913 Webster]

Evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him.
--Ps. cxl. 11.
[1913 Webster]

To hunt is to quest, and the great quest stories, such as The Illiad and The Oddesy taught people values and virtues. Perseverance, patience, internal fortitude against the odds, and reverence for the effort itself. There is little to no recognition of this in any of the hunt stories I have found. Instead, the generally focus on the kill, which is I understand the moment of truth as it were, but is the least surprising aspect of any hunt. By that I mean, of course we can kill animals, we're highly technological beings with opposable thumbs and brains the size of grapefruits. There is no glory in the kill only the hunt, and the hunt story imparts no inkling of understanding that.

Notice that this speaks directly to one of the specific complaints listed above, that hunting is a "useless anachronism". To this our answer should be - "Well, yes, it is...but." We should acknowledge up front that there is no *need* for mankind to hunt any longer (at least in well developed societies) and by need I mean we are able to farm and husband just about any sort of beast we could possibly consume. But, here we tack the argument, and note that there is a real *value* in hunting. Hunting provides a person with a different, and more intimate relationship to the food they consume. (If you don't eat what you kill you probably shouldn't be hunting it) An understanding of the life and trials of a beast in the web of life, and therefore a greater perspective of man's place in nature. I don't know how many burgers I've had in life, but I think I will look at them differently after my first deer - assuming I do. I'll understand that someone, somewhere, killed an animal, so I could eat, and that is in itself an incredibly reverent notion. That understanding changes everything.

I realize this augers against sport hunting as an activity unto itself. If you are after trophy for trophy sake, I'm must tell you, at the time of this writing, I find it hard to defend that activity. Standing in a man made blind over a man made waterhole or bait, that really isn't hunting to me. If there is a conservation motive then perhaps I could understand, but if glory of the kill is all you are after, well, I'm not going to be terribly impressed.

But I digress. Let's return to the real argument.

So how to remedy this and there by save(1) hunting? Simple, talk about the things that really do matter.

Talk about the personal quest. Talk about the return to nature. Talk about the Why is the anit-hunting movement on the march? Because societies values have changed. Because we don't *need* to kill any more I'm planning on hunting for the first time in over twenty years this coming fall. Over the last few weeks it has been just an incredible, incredible journey for me. Getting a bow, learning how to shoot, trying to put in the hours of practice, trying to secure fertile hunting grounds.

Second, stress the role of the hunter as provider, and a provider working in balance with nature. Don't underestimate the regard people have for someone who provides them ten pounds of choice meat. This is a true gift, and one which all omnivores will recognize, that of highly prized protein. Even in contemporary times, the sustenance especially in conjunction with the story that will inevitably accompany it, will earn the respect for those whom it provides.

Lastly, there needs to be a real emphasis on the conservation role in hunting that I haven't found often espoused. The goal of hunters should be to provide nature with an aide-d-camp. Where we serve it, not the other way around. Our job is to make sure it has at the very least, a chance to maintain a balance.

Thank you if you've gotten this far, I'm hope it has been of some value.




1 - Note to self, get over yourself!

Friday at Targeteers

So I took Friday Feb. 6th off. It was a rough Thursday as my company let go about ten percent of the staff. I'm lucky enough to have not been among them but it was bad start to a weekend that I thought would be all about snowboarding and shooting. The layoffs served to further reinforce my decision to go back to hunting. As absurd as it seems I have to believe the it is not only an ecologically sound thing to do, but an economically wise decision as well. I wonder what the cost/benefit ratio is for hunting? Say over the period of a year you get a deer and some amount of small game as well. What's the cost per pound with tags, gear, and travel included? Here is an interesting chart of the value of meat. Anyway, I bet permit numbers go up this year.



Anyway, I ran some errands early and then made my way into New Jersey to a great shop called Targeteers. It's a short car ride from northern Manhatttan and is focused on the bow hunter. Joe, an older Italian guy who loves the musical stylings of Cher and says "forgettaboutit" without a hint of irony helped me out. First he looked over my existing bow. I knew it would need work, and I'm not exactly sure what I had in mind price wise, but I wanted a working rig for something under $200 in addition to my initial investment of $125. So, like any good salesman, Joe showed me a few new models from their racks (a not too subtle, or unwelcome, attempt at up-sell). Starting price for a bare-bones bow was $250 and that didn't get me arrows or anything else so I decided that we would update my existing bow and I would go from there. So Joe walked me through a number of things. First, we shortened the draw and lowered the weight. Pulling 70# was just a bit too much for me, and once reset to 60# peak draw weight, I was able to get it back. Joe said I'd have to "gonna have'ta workout for that one". It wasn't too bad. Then he reset the peep-site, and added a whisker biscuit rest, removing the old overdraw. He then took me to a short range, and we adjusted the sighting and rest. Finally, he custom cut me a half dozen new carbon arrows and fitted them with 100 grain field tips. I asked for a new quiver and in about an hour of work, the bow was ready to shoot. The final bill was about $260 so basically the cost of the lowest end bare bones new bow. They tossed in some free range time and I shot for about half an hour, quitting when I sank five of six arrows within a six inch diameter circle at thirty yards. That's the other reason I always liked shooting a bow. I was something of a natural.

Also, there were some aesthetics involved in my decision to go with my older bow. This is odd but true, the newest compound bows barely resemble what I think of as a "bow". In your mind take a moment and think of a bow as just the object. What is it? What does it consist of? In the mind of most people it's an image of a taut arch, a tense open parenthetical, "(", with arms that perhaps curve slightly forward at the tips. A hand grip in the middle, an arrow rests perhaps. The arrows, at least in my mind, are white, with feather fletching and suction cups for tips. To this day you say "bow and arrow" and I think of that set that I used to terrorize my cousin Paula and break a few windows with.

This, however, is not the contemporary compound bow. When you first look at the thing, your eye goes to the wheels. There are cam systems and cables, wrapping back and forth. At full draw the weight of the pull lets off almost 50%, so pulling a fifty pound bow, suddenly feels like twenty-five pounds, allowing the hunter to hold the ready position for an extended period. This is a considerable advantage especially when taking aim on a cautious members of the cervids family. Next, the arms of the bow themselves of are almost parallel to the ground when in use, leaving it looking more like an "E" than a parenthesis. This gives it a compact design that makes moving through the brush or shooting in constrained positions easier. Finally there are the "add ons": Peep sights, string silencers, "whisker biscuit" arrow rest, the ballast stabilizer, and quick quiver. It's construction to the thousandth of an inch, it's material, space age polymers and carbon compounds... If it wasn't for the limited range, it would be just another name for a gun. So, the bow for me though still holds some romance. It was mankind's first great missile. It was the first expression of our complete technological advantage. Proto-humans showed an understanding of the jawbone of the ass, and the edge of the broken flint, but it took the homo sapien brain to put together the many parts of the bow. Otzi is my favorite early archer. With the bow, the control we could now express tripled that of the spear or sling in both distance and accuracy. 5300 years ago and now one man could suddenly fell much larger beasts at much greater range of intersection. This was a massive advance for all mankind. And here, at Targeteers Archery of Saddel Brook, NJ, I was looking over it's latest morphology.

It's not like my old bow was some rough hewed long bow, it was a compound bow, with most of the contemporary knickknacks. But at least it still had the arc and size that I expected. It will do just fine for now, until I am better, and ready to move to something purer.

Hunting with the Bow and Arrow - Saxton Pope

So reading "Hunting with the Bow and Arrow" by Saxton Pope has been incredible. Even if I didn't want to hunt, simply the stories and descriptions of his time with Ishi are amazing. The writing is clear and concise, perhaps even a bit dry when he details the semi-scientific testing of different cultural bow designs. Overall though, an amazing window into the habits and habitat of one of the last, true hunter gathers.

It makes me want to go into the wild and hunt bare but for a loin cloth. Only moccasins on my feet and move slow and quiet through the under brush. Hunting for meat, hunting for game small and large. A bow of my own making, shafts I have shaved down, heads I have flintknapped.

It's a ways off, all of that for me, but something to think about. Something to work towards.

An axe to grind

So my bow arrived today. I bought it on eBay. A fine older bow, a PSE Carroll Intruder. $125 for the whole kit and caboodle. The arrows are a motley lot, the trigger release looks a little worn but works, the bow itself draws smooth, but 70#'s is more than I thought it would be. If I draw correctly using my back muscles it is easier, so maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes you choose a tool that forces you to learn good form.

It's this huge box, twice the size needed, sitting in my office when I get in. The office mates all wonder "what the hell is that?" Their jaws drop, or they laugh when I tell them. "What the fuck for?" they ask. No one here hunts. Few even know any hunters. The word "hunter" sticks in their throats - mine too I must admit. I'm a freak. Crackpot survivalist or budding psychopath take my pick. (Crackpot survivalist if anyone asks...) Of course, this is a dot-com, located in Chelsea district of in New York city, and the only thing most of the folks here have ever shot is the video game gun attached to their Nintendo, so I guess that makes some sense.

I leave the arrows and broad heads at the office, and take the bow home on the subway. I figure I will probably get searched carrying the big camo bag on the train, and best not to have the arrows. (Large bags are subject to search on NYC subway lines as a post 9/11 security precaution.)

I'm still not used to camouflage, it irks me somehow. Here, ironically, it marks you, leaving me uncomfortably visible.

Shoot first, buy later

So to start this journey off, I shot at the local archery shop and range, Queen's Archery A nice establishment, if not terribly easy to get to from Manhattan. I'll go back soon I'm sure, but I am already thinking I will need to find a quite place in Riverside Park to setup a personal range. This could be difficult and maybe even illegal - though I don't think so.

Anyway, I wasn't sure what to expect on my way to the shop but the people were nice, if a bit cautious. There were a set of regulars there, using bows that ran the gamut from very simple recurves to high-tech target bows. All seemed highly skilled. I was not the lone novice either. A group of young Asian-American guys in their 20's were seemingly there for the fist time as well and who were clearly as much on the outside as I. While still within New York City proper, the atmosphere was distinctly country with a constant stream of Hank Williams Jr-esque tunes playing and the liberal use of camouflage as part of the decor. It reminded me of a bowling alley in a way, with shoddy plastic tables and dusty glass cases of unused gear. That antiquated feel of subculture that has a loyal and unyielding group of adherents. The archery culture I would expect is much the same as the hunting culture I knew growing up. I don't really have anything against it per se, though the underling anti-intellectualism was distressing at times. It might be different here in the northeast though, so I'll try and stay open and I hope to walk a middle path. I'm not, nor will I ever be, much like many of these folks. I want to hunt for my own, admittedly over intellectualized reasons, that are more about having a different relationship to nature and my food sources than about "scoring a kill". I need to be respectful though in my dealings and realize that at least for now, I'm the one who knows nothing and should shut up and listen.

As I watched the bowmen and looked over the requisite wall of trophy bucks, I tried to think about what I will do with a dead deer. There's something that bothers me about taxidermy. It's an artifice somehow and speaks of something vainglorious. I mean, of course we can kill animals, we're highly developed technological species! Assuming I score a buck, I think I'll hang up the skull to remind me of the act. The death. Other than that, I hope to find a way to use almost all of the deer. Eat it of course, but also, carve the bone and antlers into usable forms. Suggestions welcome on that one.

The bow rental came with a lesson and practice lane, only $18 bucks. The instructor walked me through the procedure. How to use the trigger release, basic parts of the bow, my stance. Then then some zen - "do one thing at a time": nock, draw, aim, exhale, shoot, repeat. Use the sites to adjust after each shot. Find a rhythm. Get comfortable with the rig. All in all, I did pretty well I felt. Though I would guess that laying one in the black at a well lit indoor lane is the lowest of prerequisites for dropping an arrow just behind the shoulder of wary buck at thirty yards in dawn's gray light, it was a first step I was happy I could accomplish. By the end of my hour I had moved from the starting distance of about ten yards (does anyone ever get that close to a deer?) back to the thirty yard line. Even at distance I was able to consistently put my shots on the target. The rental compound was a low weight, I would guess set to about 40lbs. I shot the hour, and because it wasn't very busy, they didn't kick me right out. It was a great first experience overall.

I'll try and find a bow on ebay now, and take it back to them to have it adjusted.

Also, I found Saxton Pope's "Hunting with the Bow and Arrow" is in the public domain at Project Gutenberg.

An explination in a very brief history.

"the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior" - about.com, Interview Tips - Behavior Based Interviewing

I took this from the Brooklyn waterfront about October of 2000

I am a city boy and proud of it. There are no two ways around that.

I have lived in New York City for over ten years. I travel regularly to Paris and London and other great metropolises of the world. My friends and family are of all ilk: white, black, gay, straight, communist, capitalist. Christian, Muslim, Jew, few of whom believe in any deity of any sort by the by. Many of us are just simply silly and eccentric. Our most constant quality as a group is an abundance of education and a certain unspoken snobbery about it. And I would say generally speaking, we're comfortable with that.

I define myself many ways. An artist, an athlete, a writer, a computer programmer, a filmmaker, a man about town, an epicure, a cad at times, a devoted dad at others. Am I an agnostic or an atheist? I vacillate on that one, but there more than likely is no god and anyone who thinks otherwise should be put on display at Conney Island if you ask me.

I happily take mass-transit everyday and extol it's virtues to all, riding to and fro, from my little office job working in my shared office/cube, for a big, liberal leaning, corporation.

I play tennis as if it's interstellar warfare and if I could afford it, I'd like to take up squash.

My apartment, is somewhere just north of four hundred square feet, somewhere just inside Harlem, and at only fifteen hundred a month a steal. This is where I am. And as far as I can tell, it is as far from the edge of a fallow cornfield with grazing whitetail at dawn as you're likely to get in this world. Packed like a sardine from morning to night, and as snug as a bug in a rug being it.

Like I said, a city boy.



I however did grow up in the country. In southern Illinois near the Mississippi river and the far edges of West County, St. Louis. I grew up catching frogs and minnows in streams. Chasing water bugs and climbing the bluffs along the Mississippi that run just north of Alton, Il. My earliest memory is from 1973, "The Great Flood of '73". The water had reached our doorstep.
I was there
watching it lap up with our German Shepperd, Pepper. A guy my family knew, a neighbor I've long forgotten, in a bass boat drives up. He has caught a three foot long alligator gar. It was taller than I was and I was petrified.

Later, in my early adolescence, I found myself drawn as many boys are to the martial arts. We were living deep into a wooded West County. I had a 35# recurve bow, one of the arms slightly twisted. I spent a year or two burying bolts in a hay bale. Sometimes hunting around for a squirrel and very occasionally going deer hunting with a cousin. Loud, smelly, and untrained, I of course get nowhere near any real game.

But this past Christmas I took my two year old daughter, Junia, back to my father's house.

He again lives in a wooded area and with little else to do, we spent hours walking on a carpet of fallen leaves, under bare limbed oak and elm. The surrounding area is an old farm slowly converting to ex-urbia so there were deer tracks everywhere. At the edge of the woods, feeling that old cold, that very particular early morning wet chill, and in the dark and alluring emptiness. I could feel it.

I wanted to hunt again.