Hunting- By Messor- Part Four

[Messor]

Hunting- By Messor- Part Four

The Reason

Lets deviate from the other 3 articles a bit, change is like a holiday, we can always go back home later. Let’s forget the how just a tad and focus on the why. I like to discuss the reason why some people hunt, the reason why some people think they should hunt, and the reason why some people don’t understand hunting.

The best way to start this topic is to move straight to the crux, killing. It’s what makes hunting controversial, to enjoy the sport of hunting sooner or later you have to kill something, hopefully. Now the killing of the animal amounts to less than 1% of the hunt, much less, if you take one of the smarter guys and ask them to crunch the numbers then if you take all the time hunting and compare it to the split second you pull the trigger there is a very large difference between hunting and killing. Now I’m not one of those smarter guys so I’ll be simple, let’s say you hunt for 5 hours and pull the trigger only once then that one second is lost in a sea of time. Or compare it physically then you used 1 second for pulling the trigger and 17 999 other seconds for hunting. That’s a huge difference don’t you think? So what’s up with killing then, is there something wrong with killing, why are the greenies all up in arms about taking the life of an innocent critter. More importantly what is an innocent critter?

Well, unfortunately if you are a greenie and this is your first encounter with myself, then this article will be a hard pill to swallow, that said only if logic drives your thoughts and not emotion, otherwise cloud cuckoo land will still elect you as a mayor. I am a logical man, one that grew up in the veldt, I can only speak from my knowledge matrix, which unfortunately involves the act of hunting, so I’m not thumb sucking, just speaking experience.

Critters, aka living things, aka food. Yes some are ugly and some are pretty, some are cuddly and some are prickly, yet despite many different configurations all animals on this planet are linked to the human food chain in some way or another. Sounds stupid, I know, how can a praying mantis have anything to do with my food? Well the problem is all life on earth is linked to the eco system, every organism part of a food chain, everything used within the food chain to sustain life, all critters oblivious to this fact…….except man. Man is the only creature who’s got a problem with killing, not because it doesn’t kill for food, no every day man kills billions of things to sustain mankind, no we have a problem because we evolved past our animal brethren. There must be many clever words but the only one I can think off now is man have a “conscience”. It basically means to know right from wrong. For example to know when killing is right or wrong, you need a conscience, not a skewed perception of one, an educated one, and here the problem starts.

Is it wrong to kill an animal, if the answer is yes, why, do you not think a tree wants to live too, do you not think the big grasslands are emitting the same life force? If you think animals are different because their brains makes them somehow more alive than a plant then…………well………you’re wrong. We are all made of stardust, we all have the same atoms, just different configurations of different materials. The things is, and this is the part that mankind still struggles with, what is the purpose of life, call it the meaning of life? Well then if you force me to give you an answer, and this answer in my extremely humble opinion is the best one you’ll ever hear, the meaning of life…….insert classical drum roll here………….is to live.

Now at his point I guess many a folk goes “ Good Lord, where does this fit into hunting, Messor is more mad than usual”, well you must stick with me a bit, it will make sense in the end. There is a reason why some animals are good for eating, and some are good at hunting. It’s a balance created to sustain life, listen again, killing is a process to sustain life, not end it. The tiny sardine surrounded by a sea of monsters cares little about its demise, he might die but the species will survive. The wildebeest in the jaws of a crocodile cares little about death, it’s just death, nothing more, no matter how foul the predator nothing foul with the process, it’s a circle of life, that song sung so nicely in that lion king movie. If something don’t eat the grass and fertilize it again it won’t grow, if something don’t kill the thing that eats the grass then the grass will also die, if the numbers of the something that kills the something that eats the grass is not in balance then………well figure it out.

Ok, that was a mouthful, but we are getting there. Now luckily scientists do not really know how old the human species really is, every now and then they dig up a bone and that throws their whole timeline out gain, just when they thought specimen A was the prelude to man they dig up specimen B. I say luckily because that adds to the mysticism of it all. Regardless of when, make no mistake if you evolve on this planet you are either food or something that eats food, or both. For a long time man was both, it hunted animals, killed them and ate them, and when the hunter went to the bush for a toilet break the sabre would jump him, depending of course if the man was busy with nr 1 or 2 :) That’s just the way is was, and still is, no getting past or denying it, it simply is the truth, killing is as second nature to man as breathing. But does it them imply that killing does not come with consequences, hardly ?

Mankind have for much of its existence been a nomad, travelling from one place to another, and it’s because of a very straight forward reason, consume the natural resources in the area and you have to move to another. Kill all the animals and you have to find new hunting grounds. That was until a few thousand years ago when suddenly farming made it easier to stay in one place, producing enough sustainable food in one place to make an existence. That is of course based on the theory that numbers would be held in check, which in case of man is not always so, and every now and then war, famine and disease would control the numbers of mankind, that holds true to this very day.

Ok, so now skip forward a couple of thousand years to the present day, modern man, apples you talk with, jaquar’s you drive, and castle’s you drink. What have changed you asked…………..nothing. Modern man still consumes a lot of meat, bred with the purpose to eat, killed with the purpose to eat, still no emotion attached to the process. BUT, out of sight, out of mind, that is how feeble man is, always were. Once you become English lord (only an example), the hardship of being a peasant becomes a memory, once you yourself never have to cut the throat of your dinner you quickly forget that someone still does. Once the biltong are nicely vacuum packed in a Woolworths store, which appeals nicely to the normal city slicker, it’s quickly forgotten that somewhere a wild animal was shot and killed, processed and packaged, and you only see the end result. Do you vilify the person who did that for you, or are you blinded to that truth because you need the end product, are you pointing fingers at someone else who kill, do you even know why?

Ok, ok, after the lesson in something most already should know lets’ get back to the topic. I asked why do you hunt, well simply put, that is what you are designed to do, that’s what you were evolved to do, hard pill to swallow, still the truth. Yes modern man may wear a suite and a tie, eat veggie burgers and drink diet cola, that does not make him something else, you weren’t born a perfect human just yesterday, you evolved over a million years, but that hunger for protein, and more importantly the hunger for the hunt will remain. You can sugar candy coat the truth, you can dress it in wolf’s skin, you can wish it away or vilify the thought of it, yet it remains the truth. Humans hunt not because they are inhuman, they hunt because they are.

Now, let’s compare apples with apples, we have had debates where we asked why do you hunt, the very first thing people will say is to bring them closer, or into nature, I have also stated that somewhere along the line, that unfortunately, is not the truth. People don’t hunt because they want to be part of nature, people compare hunting to such simply because modern man spends precious time in nature, when they do go hunting the only thing their primitive brains can do is relate to BOTH experiences, meaning even while hunting your brain tells you man this thing called nature is not all bad, perhaps I must do more of it. When in fact you can go camping/hiking any time you want, be part of nature without killing any time you want, excuses – excuses . We’ll to be fair, wanting both is not illogical, but one must be able to differentiate between the 2, hunting is an activity you do in nature, being part of nature does not require hunting. Thus hunting itself must be a requirement in itself, and in reality, it is. I have asked this in another thread, I will ask it again, what do you think you are, human? Well in that case pal you are also a hunter, and a killer, you might suppress the fact but you can’t change it, you might feel like vilifying the fact but that would vilify life itself.

The thing is, modern man may be a killer, but one with norms and standards, far from the primitive cave man we left behind all those millenniums ago. We know that if you kill all the animals in the area you have to move, problem is we can’t, because we have no where left to move, and I hear the hunting on Mars is a bit overrated. So we look after our animal populations, or at least we are supposed to(government), interesting is that modern hunters contributes most to this process, as they know the penalty for not doing so. They are also the group taking the most heat, simply because of the act of killing, the process we have already discussed, the most natural process on the planet. So if we are the protectors of wildlife, doing what we have been doing literally since the dawn of man, why are we suddenly in the wrong? Well, I’ll tell you, the further you move away from nature the further you move away from reality. It’s very simple for a manager to lose focus on a process in one of his departments if he never actually visits his departments. His running of that department is then based on what, figures alone. Greenies sees the figures, but they don’t see that hunters are the ones producing that figure, makes sense? In Afrikaans we have a saying: Hoe verder jou goed ,hoe nader jou skade. It means the further you go from your possessions, the greater the damages. Modern man is moving so far away from nature, that the processes he puts in place is damaging, not managing. Hunting is no different, if you don’t know the topic you cannot make a correct decision around the subject. The further you go from nature the more you will harm it, that is an inherent truth.

Many of the people reading this article will be hunters, as I post it in a subsection of a hunting section, some will know why they hunt, many will not. Not because they are stupid but because they never really thought about it. Many reasons will be given why they hunt, many of those reasons will be given with the sole purpose of defending the choice itself. There is no need to defend the topic, I’ve done that, the clarity of the decision must come from within, and you yourself must decide why you hunt, without shame and fear of persecution. Now I am not going into ethics, not now, ethics is a debate all in itself, it will relate to how you treat the animal hunted, before and after death. Ethics is not the reason why you hunt, but unfortunately it does play a big role in how hunting is perceived. I trust by now most will now how to treat an animal with respect, not killing, you are not disrespecting the animal by killing it, I am talking about accepting its value in the circle of life, and acknowledging it.

Next time you are hunting, and the only noise you hear is a heart filled with adrenalin during the stalk. Or the crackling of the wood around the campfire that night, be it the birds giving away your location, the waves of the wind in the grasslands, the hooves of the approaching animal, the warning grunt of a gazelle, the whistle of a ribbok. Next time you pull the trigger and hear the familiar “thump”, next time you follow the blood trail with anticipation. Next time my friends when you put your hands on a fresh kill, the warmth leaving the animal, the eyes fading, be sure to think about my question, and you will have the answer for it at that specific moment, not a fabricated answer but a truthful one, the answer to……..

Why do you hunt!

[PistolBoy]

Thanks Messor, I appreciate your effort. I also enjoyed reading your post as usual.

[Epsilon]

A beautiful bit of writing. Well done Messor.

[Peter Brian]

Hi Messor. These deserve to be made into a sticky with all of them in one place ,one after the other. Great writing. Greatly enjoyed reading them. Thanks again.

[Maroelas]

As always very well written. Thought provoking stuff

[Messor]

Thanks Messor, I appreciate your effort. I also enjoyed reading your post as usual.

A beautiful bit of writing. Well done Messor.

Hi Messor. These deserve to be made into a sticky with all of them in one place ,one after the other. Great writing. Greatly enjoyed reading them. Thanks again.

As always very well written. Thought provoking stuff

Thanks guys

[Antlion]

Hi Messor. These deserve to be made into a sticky with all of them in one place ,one after the other. Great writing. Greatly enjoyed reading them. Thanks again.

+1

[TStone]

Interesting and thought provoking. Thanks.

[zakiwi]

Interesting and thought provoking. Thanks.

+1

[Messor]

Interesting and thought provoking. Thanks.

As long as you NEVER tell me you hunt just because it's your job.

Rather tell me I just explained why you chose your job :)