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| Title: | The Hunting Notesfile |
| Notice: | Registry #7, For Sale #15, Success #270 |
| Moderator: | SALEM::PAPPALARDO |
|
| Created: | Wed Sep 02 1987 |
| Last Modified: | Tue Jun 03 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1561 |
| Total number of notes: | 17784 |
940.0. "A Book To Read" by WFOV12::DRUMM (it's still all up hill!!) Thu Apr 04 1991 16:38
I suggest this be extracted to your account then
printed for reading, in the interest of system tie-up.
Following are three excerpts from a book I am
reading. They so stirred me that I felt compelled to
share them with all of you. The book is titled:
A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC by Aldo Leopold.
I think that each and every one of us should read
this wonderful book. And let you S.O. read this paper, they
may start to understand what it is that drives us to hunt
and fish as we do. The book does not deal with hunting as
you might think from the following excerpts but has
become a established environmental classic.
Aldo Leopold died in 1948 before the book was
published. His son Luna edited the material and saw it
through to publication.
I have not acquired permission to reprint these
excerpts but in the light of the Books value I do not
feel Aldo or his family descendants would mind a few
pages being extracted. After all, I think most of you
would purchase the book to read it in it's entirety now
that I have exposed you to parts there of.
Please remember that Leopold wrote this in the
1930-40s and some of the hunting facts may no longer
hold true as in the section on Wisconsin deer hunters.
And now the short excerpts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
WildLife in American Culture
The culture of primitive peoples is often based on
wildlife. Thus the plains Indians not only ate buffalo,
but buffalo largely determined his architecture, dress,
language, arts, and religion.
In civilized peoples the culture base shifts
elsewhere, but the culture nevertheless retains part of
its wild roots. I here discuss the value of this wild
rootage.
No one can weigh on measure culture, hence I shall
waste no time trying to do so. Suffice it to say that by
common consent of thinking people, there are cultural
values in the sports, customs, and experiences that
renew contacts with wild things. I venture the opinion
that these values are of three kinds.
First there is value in any experience that reminds
us of our distinctive national origins and evolution,
i.e. that stimulates awareness of history. Such awareness
is `nationalism' in its best sense. For lack of any other
short name, I shall call this, in our case, the
`split-rail value.' For example: A boy scout has tanned
a coonskin cap, and goes Daniel-Booning in the willow
thicket below the tracks. He is reenacting American
history. He is, to that extent, culturally prepared to
face the dark and bloody realities of the present.
Again: a farmer boy arrives in the schoolroom reeking of
muskrat; he has tended his traps before breakfast. He is
reenacting the romance of the fur trade. Ontogeny
repeats phylogeny in society as well as in the
individual.
Second, there is value in any experience that reminds
us of our dependency on the soil-plant-animal-man food
chain, and of the fundamental organization of the biota.
Civilization has so cluttered this element man-earth
relation with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it
is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us,
forgetting what supports industry. Time was when
education moved toward soil, not away from it. The
nursery jingle about bringing home a rabbit skin to wrap
the baby bunting in is one of many reminders in
folk-lore that man once hunted to feed and clothe his
family.
A particular virtue in wildlife ethics is that the
hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or
disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are
dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of
onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance
of this fact.
Voluntary adherence to an ethical code elevates the
self-respect of the sportsman, but it should not be
forgotten that voluntary disregard of the code
degenerates and deprives him. For example, a common
denominator of all sporting codes is not to waste good
meat. Yet it is now a demonstrated fact that Wisconsin
deer-hunters, in their pursuit of a legal buck, kill and
abandon in the woods at least one doe, fawn, or spike
buck for every two legal bucks taken out. In other
words, approximately half the hunters shoot any deer
until a legal deer is killed. The illegal carcasses are
left without social value, but constitutes actual
training for ethical depravity elsewhere.
It seems, then, that the split-rail and man-earth
experiences have zero or plus values, but that ethical
experiences may have minus values as well.
This, then, defines roughly three kinds of cultural
nutriment available to our outdoor roots. It does not
follow that culture is fed. The extraction of value is
never automatic; only a healthy culture can feed and
grow. Is culture fed by our present forms of outdoor
recreation?
The pioneer period gave birth to two ideas that are
the essence of split-rail value in outdoor sports. One
is the `go-light' idea, the other the
`one-bullet-one-buck' idea. The pioneer went light of
necessity. He shot with economy and precision because he
lacked the transport, the cash, and the weapons
requisite for machine-gun tactics. Let it be clear, then,
that in their exception, both of these ideas were forced
on us; we made virtue of necessity.
In their later evolution, however, they became a code
of sportsmanship, a self-imposed limitation on sport. On
them is based a distinctively American tradition of
self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, and marksmanship.
These are intangibles, but they are not abstraction.
Theodore Roosevelt was a great sportsman, not because he
hung up many trophies, but because he expressed this
intangible American tradition in words any schoolboy
could understand. A more subtle and accurate expression
is found in the early writings of Stewart Edward White.
It is not far amiss to say that such men created
cultural value by being aware of it, and by creating a
pattern for its growth.
Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise know as the
sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American
outdoorsman with an infinity of contraptions, all
offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft,
or marksmanship, but too often functioning as
substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they
dangle from the neck and belt. The overflow fills the
auto-trunk, and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor
equipment grows lighter and often better, but the
aggregate poundage becomes tonnage. The traffic in
gadgets adds up to astronomical sums, which are soberly
published as respecting `the economic value of
wildlife.' But what of cultural values?
As an end-case consider the duck hunter, sitting in a
steel boat behind composition decoys. A put-put motor
has brought him to the blind without exercise. Canned
heat stands by to warm him in case of a chilling wind.
He talks to a passing flock on a factory caller, in what
he hopes are seductive tones; home lessons from a
phonograph record have taught him how. The decoys work,
despite the caller; a flock circles in. It must be shot
at before it circles twice, for the marsh bristles with
other sportsmen, similarly accounted, who might shoot
first. He opens up at 70 yards, for his polychoke is
set for infinity, and the advertisements have told him
that Super-Z shells, and plenty of them, have a long
reach. The flock flairs. A couple cripples sale off to
die elsewhere. Is this sportsman absorbing cultural
value? Or is he just feeding the minks? The next blind
opens up at 75 yards; how else is a fellow to get some
shooting? This is duck shooting, current model. It is
typical on all public grounds, and of many clubs. Where
is the go-light idea, the one-bullet tradition?
The answer is not a simple one. Roosevelt did not
disdain the modern rifle; White used freely the aluminum
pot, the silk tent, dehydrated foods. Somehow they used
mechanical aids, in moderation, without being used by
them.
I do not pretend to know what is moderation, or
where the line is between legitimate and illegitimate
gadgets. It seems clear, though, that the origin of
gadgets has much to do with their cultural effects.
Home-made aids to sport or outdoor life often enhance,
rather than destroy, the man-earth drama; he who kills a
trout with his own fly has scored tow coups, not one. I
used many factory-made gadgets myself. Yet there must be
some limit beyond which money-bought aids to sport
destroy the cultural value of sport.
Not all sport has degenerated to the same extent as
duck-hunting. ......
***** The chapter continues but I chose not to continue my
typing of it. It goes on to talk of the value of sport.
Good reading but lengthly to type in. I have entered the
parts I feel most appealing. *****************
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The Deer Swath
One hot afternoon in August I sat under the elm,
idling, when I saw a deer pass across a small opening a
quarter mile east. A deer trail crosses our farm, and at
this point any deer traveling is briefly visible from
the shack.
I then realized that half an hour before I had moved
my chair to the best spot for watching the deer trail;
that I had done this habitually for years, without being
clearly conscious of it. This led to the thought that by
cutting some brush I could widen the zone of visibility.
Before night the swath was cleared, and within the month
I detected several deer which otherwise could likely
have passed unseen.
The new deer swath was pointed out to a series of
weekend guests for the purpose of watching their
reactions to it. It was soon clear that most of them
forgot it quickly, while others watched it, as I did,
whenever chance allowed. The upshot was the realization
that there are four categories of outdoorsman: deer
hunters, duck hunters, bird hunters, and non-hunters.
These categories have nothing to do with sex or age, or
accountrements; they represent four diverse habits of
the human eye. The deer hunter watches the next bend;
the duck hunter watches the skyline; the bird hunter
watches the dog; the non-hunter does not watch.
When the deer hunter sits down he sits where he can
see ahead, and with his back to something. The duck
hunter sits where he can see overhead, and behind
something. The non-hunter sits where he is comfortable.
None of these watch the dog. The bird hunter watches
only the dog, and always knows where the dog is, whether
or not visible at the moment. The dog's nose is the
birds hunter's eye. Many hunters who carry a shotgun in
season have never learned to watch the dog, or to
interpret his reactions to scent.
There are good outdoors men who do not conform to
these categories. There is the ornithologist who hunts
by ear, and uses the eye only to follow up on what his
ear has detected. There is the botanist who hunts by
eye, but at much closer range; he is a marvel at finding
plants, but seldom sees birds or mammals. There is the
forester who sees only trees; and the insects and fungi
that prey upon trees; he is oblivious to all else. And
finally there is the sportsman who sees only game, and
regards all else of little interest or value.
There is one illusive mode of hunting that I cannot
associate exclusively with any of these groups: the
search for scats, tracks, feathers, dens, roostings,
rubbings, dustings, diggings, feedings, fightings, or
preyings collectively known to woodsmen as `reading
sign' This skill is rare, and too often seems to be
inverse to book learning.
The counterpart of reading animal sign exist in the
plant field, but skill is equally rare in occurrence and
illusive in distribution. To prove this I cite African
explorer who detected the scratchings of a lion on the
bark of a tree 20 feet up. The scratchings, he said, had
been made when the tree was young.
The biological jack-of-all-trades called ecologist
tries to be and do all these things. Needless to say, he
does not succeed.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Goose Music
Some years ago the game of golf was commonly regarded
in this country as a kind of social ornament, a petty
diversion for the idle rich, but hardly worthy of the
curiosity, much less of the serious interest, of men of
affairs. Today scores of cities are building municipal
golf courses to make golf available to the rank and file
of their citizens.
The same change in point of view has occurred towards
most other outdoor sports-the frivolities of fifty years
ago have become the social necessities of today. But
strangely enough, this change is only just beginning to
permeate our attitude toward the oldest and most
universal of all sports, hunting and fishing.
We have realized dimly, of course, that a day afield
was good for the tired businessman. We have also
realized that the destruction of wildlife removed the
incentive for days afield. But we have not yet learned
to express the value of wildlife in terms of social
welfare. Some have attempted to justify wildlife
conservation in terms of meat, others in terms of
personal pleasure, others in terms of cash, still others
in the interest if science, education, agriculture, art,
public health, and even military preparedness. But few
have so far clearly realized and expressed the whole
truth, namely, that all these things are but factors in
a broad social value, and that wildlife, like golf, is
a social asset.
But to those whose hearts are stirred by the
sound of whistling wings and quacking mallards, wildlife
is something even more than this. It is not merely an
acquired taste; the instinct that finds delight in the
sight and pursuit of game is bred into every fiber of
the race. Golf is sophisticated exercise, but the love
of hunting is almost a physiological characteristic. A
man my not care for golf and still be human, but the man
who does not like to see, hunt, photograph, or otherwise
outwit birds and animals is hardly normal. He is
supercivilized, and I for one do not know how to deal
with him. Babes do not tremble when they are shown a
golf ball, but I should not like to own a boy whose hair
does not lift his hat when he sees his first deer. We
are dealing, therefore, with something that lies very
deep. Some can live without opportunity for exercise and
control of the hunting instinct, just as I suppose some
can live without work, play, love, business, or other
vital adventure. But in these days we regard such
deprivations an unsocial. Opportunity for the exercise
of all the normal instincts has come to be regarded more
and more as an inalienable right. The men who are
destroying our wildlife are alienating oen of these
rights, and doing a thorough job of it. More than that,
they are doing a permanent job of it. When the last
corner lot is covered with tenements we can still make a
playground by tearing them down, but when the last
antelope goes by the board, not all the playground
associations in christendom can do aught to replace the
loss.
If wild birds and animals are a social asset, how
much of an asset are they? It is easy to say that some
of us, affected with hereditary hunting fever, cannot
live satisfactory lives without them. But this does not
establish any comparative value, and in these days it is
sometimes necessary to choose between necessities. In
short, what is a wild goose worth? I have a ticket to
the symphony. It was not cheap. The dollars were well
spent, but I would forgo the experience for the sight of
the big gander that sailed honking into my decoys at
daybreak this morning. It was bitter cold and I was all
thumbs, so I blithely missed him. But miss or no miss, I
saw him, I heard the wind whistle through his set wings
as he came honking out of the gray west, and felt him so
that even now I tingle at the recollection. I doubt
not that this very gander has given ten other men a
symphony ticket's worth of thrills.
My notes tell me I have seen a thousand geese this
fall. Every on of these in the course of their epic
journey from the arctic to the gulf has on one occasion or
another probably served man in some equivalent of paid
entertainment. One flock perhaps has thrilled a score of
schoolboys, and sent them scurrying home with tales of
high adventure.. Another, passing overhead of a dark night,
has serenaded a whole city with goose music, and
awakened who knows what questions and memories and
hopes. A third perhaps has given pause to some farmer
at his plow, and brought new thoughts of far lands and
journeyings and peoples, where before was only drudgery,
barren of any thought at all. I am sure those thousand
geese are paying human dividends on a dollar value.
Worth in dollars is only an exchange value, like the
sale value of a painting or the copyright of a poem.
What about the replacement value? Supposing there were
no longer any painting, or poetry, or goose music? In
the black thought to dwell upon, but it must be
answered. In dire necessity somebody might write another
Iliad, or paint an `Angelus,' but fashion a goose? `I
the Lord, will answer them. The hand of the Lord hath
done this, and the Holy One of Israel created it.'
It is impious to weigh goose music and art in the
same scales? I think not, because the true hunter is
merely a noncreative artist. Who painted the first picture
on bone in the caves of France? A hunter. Who alone in
our modern life so thrills to the sight of living beauty
that he will endure hunger and thirst and cold to feed
his eyes upon it? The hunter. Who wrote the great
hunters poem about the sheer wonder of the wind, the
hail, and the snow, the stars, the lightning, and the
clouds, the lion, the deer, and the wild goat, the
raven, the hawk, and the eagle, and above all the eulogy
of the horse? Job, one of the great dramatic artist of
all time. Poets sing and hunters scale the mountains
primarily for one in the same reason--the thrill to
beauty. Critics write and hunters outwit their game
primarily for the same reason--to reduce that beauty to
possession. The differences are largely a matter of
degree, consciousness, and that sly arbiter of the
classification of human activities, language. If, then,
we can live without goose music, we may well do away
with stars, or sunsets, or Iliads. But the point is
that we would be fools to do away with any of them.
What value has wildlife from the standpoint of morals
and religion? I heard a boy once who was brought up an
artist. He changed his mind when he saw there were a
hundred-odd species of warblers, each bedecked like to
the rainbow, and each performing yearly sundry thousands
of miles of migration about which scientist wrote wisely
but did not understand. No fortuitous concourse of
elements' working blindly through any number of
millions of years could quite account for why warblers
are so beautiful. No mechanistic theory, even bolstered
by mutations, has ever quite answered for the colors of
the cerulean warbler, or the vespers of the woodthrush,
or the swansong, or--goose music. I dare say this boy's
convictions would be harder to shake than those of many
inductive theologians. There are yet many boys to be
born who, like Isaiah, `may see, and know, and consider,
and understand together, that the land of the Lord hath
done this.' But where shall they see, know, and
consider? In museums?
What is the effect of hunting and fishing on
character as compared with other outdoor sports? I have
already pointed out that the desire lies deeper, that
its source is a matter on instinct as well as of
competition. A son of Robinson Crusoe, having never seen
a tennis racket, might get along nicely without one, but
he would be pretty sure to hunt and fish whether or not
he were taught to do so. But his does not establish any
superiority as to subjective benefits. Which helps the
more to build a man? This question (like the one we use
to debate in school about whether boys or girls are
better scholars) might be argued till doomsday. I shall
not attempt it. But there are two points about hunting
that deserve special emphasis. One is that the ethics of
sportsmanship is not a fixed code, but must be
formulated and practiced by the individual with no
referee but the almighty. The other is that hunting
generally involves hunting dogs and horses, and the
lack of this experience is one of the most serious
defects of our gasoline-driven civilization. There was
much truth in the old idea that any man ignorant of dogs
and horses was not a gentleman. In the West the abuse
of horses is still a universal blackball. This rule of
thumb was adopted in the cow country long before
`character analysis' was invented and, for all we know,
may yet outlive it.
But after all, it is a poor business to prove that
any one good thing is better than another. The point is
that some six or eight millions of Americans like to
hunt and fish, that the hunting fever is endemic in the
race, that the race is benefited by many incentive to
get out into the open, and is being injured by the
destruction of the incentive in this case. To combat
this destruction is therefore a social issue.
To conclude: I have congenital hunting fever and
three sons. As little tots, they spent their time
playing with my decoys and scouring vacant lots with
wooden guns. I hope to leave them good health, an
education, and possibly even competence. But what are
they going to do with these things if there be no more
deer in the hills, and no more quail in the coverts? No
more snipe whistling in the meadow, no more piping of
widgeons and chattering of teal as darkness covers the
marshes; no more whistling of swift wings when the
morning star pales in the east? And when the dawn-wind
stirs through the ancient cottonwoods, and the gray
light steals dawn from the hills over the old river
sliding softly past its wide brown sandbars--what if there
be no more goose music?
******************** END OF EXCERPTS ************************
Please read the book
Steve
| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 940.1 | | PERFCT::PAPPALARDO | A Pure Hunter | Thu Apr 04 1991 19:18 | 9 |
|
Steve,
Thanks for taking the time to input the excerpts. The reading was
grand, the more read, the more I wanted, it was captivating.
Rick
|
| 940.2 | A Wonderful Book... | AIMHI::KELLER | Wherever you go, there you are | Wed Apr 10 1991 12:08 | 7 |
| A Sand County Almanac. What a great book. It was required reading for one of
my classes in high school and I've read it several times since then. One of my
favorites.
Thanks for typing that in.
Geoff
|
| 940.3 | | SA1794::CHARBONND | You're hoping the sun won't rise | Wed Apr 10 1991 17:10 | 5 |
| Read it in January - great !!! book. This guy virtually invented
modern wildlife management. Anyone who thinks the environmentalists
and the outdoor sportsmen need be at odds should read this. His
insights into the connectedness of life, land, air and water will
cause you to walk with your eyes wide open to the world around you.
|