This was presented at the 2000 Premier's
Symposium on North America's Hunting Heritage. I really don't know what the
"Primier's Symposium" is.
BRINGING THE SACRED GAME HOME:
Florence R. Shepard
In the writing of the late Paul Shepard, the hunting/gathering way of life,
which he called The Sacred Game, carries a four-fold meaning. Life itself is
a Sacred Game as an enactment of our philosophical and biological union with
Nature in its ever-returning cycles of birth and death. Hunting, which he
also called "sacred trophism," that is, killing and eating in order to
live, is also a Sacred Game in which we participate with animals as
co-players. Animals are the Sacred Game as well. They are the ones who by
their instinctual, self-willed knowledge have taught us how to live on this
Earth: how to hunt, escape death, dance, play, sing, care for our young,
and kill And, finally, our union in love and devotion to each other, the
pursuing and being caught, the commitment and attention love asks of us, is
a Sacred Game. Each of these four meanings ties us spiritually to the Earth
and our primal origins.
Through his research in human ecology-the relationship between humans and
the Earth and its creatures-Paul held that our foraging forbears were a
template for living ecologically on this Earth. He maintained that our most
valued human attributes cannot be credited to the influences of civilization
but rather to our hunting/gathering heritage where they were honed. An
abiding concern of his was how we had strayed away from this ancient wisdom,
and he spent most of his lifetime speculating on the course we had taken.
Paul's ideas on human development were based on evolutionary theory, and he
would have relished the debate circling around this topic today. When the
cloud of controversy clears, we see on our family tree some 20 hominids. We
Homo sapiens are the last of this congeries of hominids who have been
wandering the Earth for millions of years. Changes over the millennia, a
fine interplay of divergence, mutation, adaptation, natural selection,
survival, and chance events, made us what we are. The realignment of femur
and pelvis made walking on two legs possible and freed our hands to
manipulate and monkey around with things. As our faces flattened, our snouts
shortened, and our eyes moved into the same plane, we gained bifocal vision
and depth perception necessary for hunting and throwing and launching
projectiles. When we finally left our tree homes, we retained that unique
primate manner of perceiving the world that makes us critical and curious,
suspicious and introspective. With fire and tools and hands, we no longer
needed the large canine teeth to grasp and tear meat; we evolved large
molars to grind the grains and variety of foods we gathered as well as the
meat of dead animals we scavenged long before we learned to hunt and kill
them. Our two legs were no match for the svelte four-legged predators that
hunted us nor for the swift grazers that evaded us. In order to outwit both,
we had to excel at the game. With our flat faces and bifocal eyes we now
stood face to face and looked into each others eyes, and this encouraged
socialization, empathy, communication, bonding of the sexes, and,
eventually, collaboration in hunting and survival.
During our two million year development as the genus Homo, our brain grew at
an unprecedented rate. The use of tools, the demands of hunting prey and
escaping predators, and the development of language may have combined to
contribute to this phenomenal growth. Because it would be impossible for a
woman to birth a child with a head that would accommodate the large brain we
had grown into, a splendid plan emerged coincidentally in which the child
was born still an undeveloped fetus with its head growing to about ninety
percent of full size in about three years after its birth. But due to its
fetal condition during its early childhood, it would not be precocious like
a little duck; it would, instead, have to be carried and cared for during
those early years while it's brain and skull were growing. Out of this
necessity, bonding of the sexes became ever more crucial since both males
and females were needed to provide food and care for the young. The Sacred
Game developed as a fine art during the Pleistocene. As the glaciers
receded, the habitat was prime for large grazing animals and for a hunting/
gathering way of life described beautifully by Valerius Geist in his
remarkably informed book, Life Strategies, Human Evolution, and
Environmental Design. All aspects of life were synchronized to the
phenology of the seasons: the hunting of animals, the preparation of skins
for clothing, the gathering of seasonal plants, seeds, and roots, and the
preparation and preservation of food.
A typical family group of twelve consisted of about seven adults plus
children of various ages, just the right number to sit around a campfire.
Children were born every three of four years. The mixed family group
provided an appropriate nurturing and mentoring environment. With a high
mortality among the very young and the old, the population remained stable.
And post-reproductive elders were important in caring for and instructing
children as well as serving as archives for stories and mythic lore,
knowledge of herbal and plant uses, survival strategies in times of
emergency, and animal/human interrelationships-and for keeping fires going
at night. According to Paul this vestige of the past is why, as we get
older, we still wake up in the middle of the night.
Out of this venatic way of life ultimately came our magnificent
Cro-Magnon forebears, probably more physically fit, more intelligent,
and more artistic than we are today. But out of this hunting life, we
also came. Paul insisted that genetically we are essentially the same
creatures who walked out of the last ice age ten thousand years ago
By looking more carefully at the knowledge and skills used in hunting by our
Pleistocene ancestors, we can gain more insight into how we think and act
today. Successful hunters had to become expert at observation, the hallmark
of our intellect. As they watched and studied the animals and their habits,
habitats, and seasonal and daily variations in behavior, hunter/gatherers
became expert interpreters of indirect evidence, scent, sound, and signs,
such as tracks, scat, and grazing, out of which they developed abstract
reasoning. Through tracking, stalking, ambushing, driving, mimicry, and
decoy, hunters tried to outsmart the animals by formulating strategies. They
learned to collaborate and share labor in killing, pursuing, intercepting,
and signaling and in the use of tools. Following the kill, especially of a
large animal, the same physical and social skills were needed for
butchering, packing, and sharing the meat.
Ritualizing the hunt in post-hunt celebrations and feasts was a part of
bringing home the Sacred Game and is still the way to give thanks. Such
celebrations were held immediately after a kill when certain parts of the
animal were shared and eaten by the hunters. This sort of ceremony around a
camp fire is still an ideal place to show gratitude, but the dinner table at
home will also serve. This is where stories are told and adventures shared,
when the very young and old participate vicariously. In reiterating what we
have learned from hunting, we must not forget the primary actors in this
Sacred Game, the animals. Even now they provide the categories by which we
first differentiate our being from the things around us. Like us, yet
uniquely different, they are the supreme Others who nurture our identity
formation as well as our intellect. But more so, Paul postulated, animals
made us human. We emerged as a species, he said, enacting, dreaming, and
thinking animals and we cannot be fully human without them. Through hunting
them we satisfied our curious nature and developed acumen in observation,
analysis, and prediction, and most importantly, in metaphorical thinking. In
turn joint efforts among us in the hunt challenged and forged our skills,
knowledge, and intuitive drives. All of this holds even today and makes
hunting a challenging and deeply satisfying human venture, one that, Ortega
y Gassett said, brings us the deepest kind of happiness.
The same preoccupation and attention that is a part of hunting is also the
way we love each other. Venery, a term which means to hunt, also means to
love or venerate. When we love others deeply, we become completely
preoccupied with them; they are always on our minds. Given a choice we would
rather be in their presence than anywhere else. We love to watch them and
are interested in their way of being in world. No matter how much their ways
frustrate and mystify us, they always remain new and fascinating to us. This
describes our relationship to the animals we hunt as well as how we love
each other.
If hunting is filled with deep feeling similar to human love, why then do we
kill the animals? Hunting that includes killing, Paul explained, is neither
a sacrifice nor an act of violence; it is a sacrament. In its full meaning
it is a communion, a rebirth that brings new life to our bodies and spirits.
It is a blessing bestowed upon us by the animals we hunt and kill. A
bestowal is not just a gift but much more. It is the gifting of the precious
source of life and with it comes the obligation to show not only
thanksgiving but responsibility. It carries the hope, not of immortality,
but of the numinous ambiguity between the joy of life and mystery of death,
and it draws these opposites together. Death is something we must face and
understand in hunting and in our own lives. In the end, when all hope of
recovery had vanished for Paul, he welcomed death in his own home in a
peaceful and accepting way. He repeatedly said that we should let people die
when they were ready. When babies are born with defects that will prevent
them from living normal lives, he said, we should not keep them alive by
extraordinary means. The same rule applies to any person at any age who has
reached his or her end. But in every ending there is a new beginning and our
life is enriched each day by the lives of others who have gone before us.
"We go back," Paul said, "with each day along an ellipse with the rising and
setting of the sun, each turning of the globe. Every new generation 'goes
back' to forms of earlier generations, from which the individual comes
forward in his singular [development]. We cannot run the life cycle
backward, but we cannot avoid the inherent and essential demands of an
ancient, repetitive pattern?[We can] single out those many things, large and
small that characterized the social and cultural life of our ancestors-the
terms under which our genome itself was shaped?and [create] a modern life
around them."
We have the power and know how to make our modern life more meaningful by
bringing the Sacred Game home into every aspect of our cultural and
biological existence. Going back through remembrance does not mean that we
must regress. We have all that is needed right here in our present lives, in
our genes, in our ecosystems, and in our cultures to bring forth a more
harmonious life on Earth in keeping with our ancient traditions. It will
take spiritual commitment and self discipline to do this. In Paul's often
repeated words, "what is needed is a change in our sense of our place in the
world."
First and foremost, Paul advised, we can bring the Sacred Game home by
educating our children properly in nature. Play in natural settings for
young children under ten is essential. Earth-based rites of adolescent
passage and initiation in youth ages ten to fifteen, essential for
transition into adulthood, are made to order in hunting experiences. We must
mentor and teach our children properly if we are to avoid a world filled
with self-possessed adults lost in a kind of "ecological madness,"
thoughtless of their impact upon the planet and its limited
resources-immature adults who cannot take responsibility for their own
actions, do not understand limits, and are incapable of truly loving each
other or this wonderful planet.
Just as a single class in hunter safety will not suffice; the road to
maturity is a long course. Proven methods of instruction and mentoring found
in good parenting include keeping novices at our sides where they can
observe right techniques and skills, coaching and giving them instruction
continuously, providing opportunities for participation and practice, and
observing and critiquing carefully over an extended period of time. Such
mentoring requires years of commitment by adults. There are many youths in
our society in need of skilled and knowledgeable adults who can be their
friends and mentors. In a talk given this spring in Jackson, Wyoming, Ted
Kerasote, an ethical and knowledgeable hunter and writer, said that each
hunting season he takes an interested novice into the field with him. Think
of the model he must be for a young aspiring hunter.
Though we are trying to redefine the rules of the hunting, eithics is not a
modern invention. Paul steadfastly insisted that for the millennia when we
were full-fledged hunter/gatherers, we were also right-minded about our
relationship to the animals, and so closely tied to our habitat that we
neither over-extended our environment nor caused the extinction of animals.
During interglacial periods, extinctions, which also erased many animals
that were not hunted, occurred because of changing climate. A complex set of
circumstances, yet to be fully understood, interacted to upset long-standing
ecological and social patterns and led to the demise of hunting/gathering.
Pastoralism and agriculture replaced an organic and earth-centered life with
one focused on domestication of plants and animals and accumulation of
wealth and goods, leading to centralized power and stratified culture as
well as exploitation of resources, despoiling of the natural environment,
and, finally, to competition and war. Children were needed as help-mates in
this new way of life, and the need to identify them as one's own, in turn,
necessitated the control of women. Patriarchy removed women from the
egalitarian partnership they had enjoyed in hunting and gathering and made
them the producers of children, a trend that has since led to the
exponential growth that has so tragically over-populated our planet.
With the advent of civilization we lost the mythic view of life extending
into the past and future in never-ending cycles. Instead we accepted a
historical view, not an account of what actually happened, but a mind-set
that maintains that we are on a non-repeatable, unreturning arc of time with
a predetermined beginning and an ending that will lead to a more perfect
life beyond this one. With this view, Paul said, we lost respect for the
Earth and became insensitive to its blessings and limitations here and now.
This loss resulted in a desacralizing of the Sacred Game, the demise of the
hunting way of life, and an abhorrence of wildness.
Wildness is the unfettered gene combinations in living organisms that have
evolved in nature uncontrolled and untamed by humans. Domestication, on the
other hand, is the manipulation of plants and animals for the benefit of
humans and is a product of culture. Paul insisted that the opposite of
wildness is not civilization but is domestication. Accordingly, if we are
interested in sustaining the Sacred Game, we must do all in our power to
preserve the status of wild animals and these animals cannot be separated
from Wild Nature where they developed free-roaming and uncontained. Game
management is necessary to mitigate our destruction of animal habitat. We
can do much to restore wildlife habitat. But no matter how good our
intentions and methods, none of our efforts replicate Wild Nature. We must
protect such lands wherever they exist not only for the animals but for our
own sanity and survival as well.
Paul opposed the practice of enclosing wild animals in hunting preserves.
Caging animals eventually leads to their domestication, just as surely as
the taming of the auroch led to the docile and codependent cow. We must let
wild animals and wild lands coexist wherever they are still found. But good
conservation practices on private, public, restored, and preserved lands are
also important. And we must reconsider seriously the role of predators in
this mix. As Ted Williams has pointed out recently, sportsmen and
environmentalists comprise sixty-five percent of the population in the
United States, and this, he says, produces an "absolutely irresistible
coalition" for protecting wild lands and animals. These numbers are probably
comparable throughout most of North America. Such groups should forget their
differences and unite in the name of wildness.
In his new book, Heartsblood, David Petersen says: "It is the immutable
moral duty of every person whose life is in any way enriched by wild animate
life, via hunting or otherwise, to give something in return for all that is
taken. The only real and meaningful way I can truly 'become one' with the
gloriously untamed creatures I so love and depend upon, in so many ways, is
by fighting to protect and preserve the natural places that sustain natural
wildness in us all-human and beast, predator and prey; he and she; thee, me
and we."
In the writing of hunters like Petersen and Kerasote, we find the words
heart and blood used frequently and I think this is so for a very good
reason. Heart and blood are deeply symbolic. Without killing, there is no
authentic hunt. When we kill an animal, it bleeds and its heart stops
beating. Heartbeat is synonymous with life. Blood is a sign of death. When
an animal such as a moose is killed, the first thing hunters do is remove
the steaming, massive gut pile. They then reach up into the body cavity,
open the diaphragm, and pull out the heart which is enormous and still warm.
Holding the heart in their hands is an emotional moment charged with
meaning: the difference between the life they have and the life they have
taken is laid out. Blood is a stark reminder of death. But it also
accompanies birth.
Men may find a different meaning in hunting than do women. From the maiden's
first sign that her menses has begun, she is aware that something is
happening in her body that is outside of her control and synchronized with
greater forces. And whether or not the woman chooses to birth a child, she
understands deeply the possibilities and responsibilities of bringing life
into the world. These experiences, more remote for men, are brought full
force to them in hunting when blood flows or they follow a blood trail. The
new born baby , blood-drenched, crying, coming into life. The heart,
faltering, giving it up. Life and death held in our hands.
Paul would, I believe, congratulate you on your ethical bent and dedication
to fairness and skill. He would urge you to set aside the seduction of
gadgetry and technology and choose simple and direct hunting methods-methods
that draw out the wildness that is in each of you and renews your sentience
and connection with Nature. He would ask you to keep the game sacred and, in
so doing, become the best hunters and humans this good planet has ever
sheltered.
* My thanks to David Petersen who read and offered helpful suggestions
on early drafts of this essay.
REFERENCES
David Petersen. Heartsblood, Hunting, Spirituality, and Wildness in
America . Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000.
David Petersen, ed. A Hunter's Heart, Honest Essays on Blood Sport.
New York: Henry Hot & Company, 1996.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset. Meditations on Hunting. New York: Scribner's,
1978.
Valerius Geist. Life strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental
Design.
New York: Springner-Verlag, 1978.
Ted Kerasote, Heart of Home, People, Wildlife, Place. New York:
Villard, 1997.
Paul Shepard. Coming Home to the Pleistocene. Washington, D.C.:
Island Press/Shearwater Books, 1998.
___________The Others: How Animals Made Us Human. Washington, D.C.:
Island Press, 1995.
___________The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game. Athens,
Georgia:
The University of Georgia Press, 1998. (New York: Scriber's, 1973.)
___________Thinking Animals, Animals and the Development of Human
Intelligence. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. (New
York: Viking, 1978.)
__________. Nature and Madness. Athens. Georgia: The University of
Georgia Press, 1998. (Sierra Club Books, 1982.
Ted Williams. "The Cost of Division." Orion 19-3 (Summer 2000):
48-54.
BRINGING THE SACRED GAME HOME:
Florence R. Shepard
In the writing of the late Paul Shepard, the hunting/gathering way
of life, which he called The Sacred Game, carries a four-fold meaning. Life
itself is a Sacred Game as an enactment of our philosophical and biological
union with Nature in its ever-returning cycles of birth and death. Hunting,
which he also called "sacred trophism," that is, killing and eating in
order to live, is also a Sacred Game in which we participate with animals as
co-players. Animals are the Sacred Game as well. They are the ones who by
their instinctual, self-willed knowledge have taught us how to live on this
Earth: how to hunt, escape death, dance, play, sing, care for our young,
and kill And, finally, our union in love and devotion to each other, the
pursuing and being caught, the commitment and attention love asks of us, is
a Sacred Game. Each of these four meanings ties us spiritually to the Earth
and our primal origins.
Through his research in human ecology-the relationship between
humans and the Earth and its creatures-Paul held that our foraging forbears
were a template for living ecologically on this Earth. He maintained that
our most valued human attributes cannot be credited to the influences of
civilization but rather to our hunting/gathering heritage where they were
honed. An abiding concern of his was how we had strayed away from this
ancient wisdom, and he spent most of his lifetime speculating on the course
we had taken.
Paul"s ideas on human development were based on evolutionary theory,
and he would have relished the debate circling around this topic today. When
the cloud of controversy clears, we see on our family tree some 20 hominids.
We Homo sapiens are the last of this congeries of hominids who have been
wandering the Earth for millions of years. Changes over the millennia, a
fine interplay of divergence, mutation, adaptation, natural selection,
survival, and chance events, made us what we are. The realignment of femur
and pelvis made walking on two legs possible and freed our hands to
manipulate and monkey around with things. As our faces flattened, our snouts
shortened, and our eyes moved into the same plane, we gained bifocal vision
and depth perception necessary for hunting and throwing and launching
projectiles. When we finally left our tree homes, we retained that unique
primate manner of perceiving the world that makes us critical and curious,
suspicious and introspective. With fire and tools and hands, we no longer
needed the large canine teeth to grasp and tear meat; we evolved large
molars to grind the grains and variety of foods we gathered as well as the
meat of dead animals we scavenged long before we learned to hunt and kill
them. Our two legs were no match for the svelte four-legged predators that
hunted us nor for the swift grazers that evaded us. In order to outwit both,
we had to excel at the game. With our flat faces and bifocal eyes we now
stood face to face and looked into each others eyes, and this encouraged
socialization, empathy, communication, bonding of the sexes, and,
eventually, collaboration in hunting and survival. During our two million
year development as the genus Homo, our brain grew at an unprecedented rate.
The use of tools, the demands of hunting prey and escaping predators, and
the development of language may have combined to contribute to this
phenomenal growth. Because it would be impossible for a woman to birth a
child with a head that would accommodate the large brain we had grown into,
a splendid plan emerged coincidentally in which the child was born still an
undeveloped fetus with its head growing to about ninety percent of full size
in about three years after its birth. But due to its fetal condition during
its early childhood, it would not be precocious like a little duck; it
would, instead, have to be carried and cared for during those early years
while it's brain and skull were growing. Out of this necessity, bonding of
the sexes became ever more crucial since both males and females were needed
to provide food and care for the young. The Sacred Game developed as a fine
art during the Pleistocene. As the glaciers receded, the habitat was prime
for large grazing animals and for a hunting/ gathering way of life described
beautifully by Valerius Geist in his remarkably informed book, Life
Strategies, Human Evolution, and Environmental Design. All aspects of life
were synchronized to the phenology of the seasons: the hunting of animals,
the preparation of skins for clothing, the gathering of seasonal plants,
seeds, and roots, and the preparation and preservation of food. A typical
family group of twelve consisted of about seven adults plus children of
various ages, just the right number to sit around a campfire. Children were
born every three of four years. The mixed family group provided an
appropriate nurturing and mentoring environment. With a high mortality among
the very young and the old, the population remained stable. And
post-reproductive elders were important in caring for and instructing
children as well as serving as archives for stories and mythic lore,
knowledge of herbal and plant uses, survival strategies in times of
emergency, and animal/human interrelationships-and for keeping fires going
at night. According to Paul this vestige of the past is why, as we get
older, we still wake up in the middle of the night. Out of this venatic way
of life ultimately came our magnificent Cro-Magnon forebears, probably more
physically fit, more intelligent, and more artistic than we are today. But
out of this hunting life, we also came.
Paul insisted that genetically we are essentially the same creatures
who
walked out of the last ice age ten thousand years ago
By looking more carefully at the knowledge and skills used in
hunting by our Pleistocene ancestors, we can gain more insight into how we
think and act today. Successful hunters had to become expert at observation,
the hallmark of our intellect. As they watched and studied the animals and
their habits, habitats, and seasonal and daily variations in behavior,
hunter/gatherers became expert interpreters of indirect evidence, scent,
sound, and signs, such as tracks, scat, and grazing, out of which they
developed abstract reasoning. Through tracking, stalking, ambushing,
driving, mimicry, and decoy, hunters tried to outsmart the animals by
formulating strategies. They learned to collaborate and share labor in
killing, pursuing, intercepting, and signaling and in the use of tools.
Following the kill, especially of a large animal, the same physical and
social skills were needed for butchering, packing, and sharing the meat.
Ritualizing the hunt in post-hunt celebrations and feasts was a part of
bringing home the Sacred Game and is still the way to give thanks. Such
celebrations were held immediately after a kill when certain parts of the
animal were shared and eaten by the hunters. This sort of ceremony around a
camp fire is still an ideal place to show gratitude, but the dinner table at
home will also serve. This is where stories are told and adventures shared,
when the very young and old participate vicariously. In reiterating what we
have learned from hunting, we must not forget the primary actors in this
Sacred Game, the animals. Even now they provide the categories by which we
first differentiate our being from the things around us. Like us, yet
uniquely different, they are the supreme Others who nurture our identity
formation as well as our intellect. But more so, Paul postulated, animals
made us human. We emerged as a species, he said, enacting, dreaming, and
thinking animals and we cannot be fully human without them. Through hunting
them we satisfied our curious nature and developed acumen in observation,
analysis, and prediction, and most importantly, in metaphorical thinking.
In turn joint efforts among us in the hunt challenged and forged our skills,
knowledge, and intuitive drives. All of this holds even today and makes
hunting a challenging and deeply satisfying human venture, one that, Ortega
y Gassett said, brings us the deepest kind of happiness. The same
preoccupation and attention that is a part of hunting is also the way we
love each other. Venery, a term which means to hunt, also means to love or
venerate. When we love others deeply, we become completely preoccupied with
them; they are always on our minds. Given a choice we would rather be in
their presence than anywhere else. We love to watch them and are interested
in their way of being in world. No matter how much their ways frustrate and
mystify us, they always remain new and fascinating to us. This describes our
relationship to the animals we hunt as well as how we love each other. If
hunting is filled with deep feeling similar to human love, why then do we
kill the animals? Hunting that includes killing, Paul explained, is neither
a sacrifice nor an act of violence; it is a sacrament. In its full meaning
it is a communion, a rebirth that brings new life to our bodies and spirits.
It is a blessing bestowed upon us by the animals we hunt and kill. A
bestowal is not just a gift but much more. It is the gifting of the precious
source of life and with it comes the obligation to show not only
thanksgiving but responsibility. It carries the hope, not of immortality,
but of the numinous ambiguity between the joy of life and mystery of death,
and it draws these opposites together.
Death is something we must face and understand in hunting and in our
own lives. In the end, when all hope of recovery had vanished for Paul, he
welcomed death in his own home in a peaceful and accepting way. He
repeatedly said that we should let people die when they were ready. When
babies are born with defects that will prevent them from living normal
lives, he said, we should not keep them alive by extraordinary means. The
same rule applies to any person at any age who has reached his or her end.
But in every ending there is a new beginning and our life is enriched each
day by the lives of others who have gone before us. "We go back," Paul said,
"with each day along an ellipse with the rising and setting of the sun, each
turning of the globe. Every new generation 'goes back' to forms of earlier
generations, from which the individual comes forward in his singular
[development]. We cannot run the life cycle backward, but we cannot avoid
the inherent and essential demands of an ancient, repetitive pattern..[We
can] single out those many things, large and small that characterized the
social and cultural life of our ancestors-the terms under which our genome
itself was shaped..and [create] a modern life around them."
We have the power and know how to make our modern life more
meaningful by bringing the Sacred Game home into every aspect of our
cultural and biological existence. Going back through remembrance does not
mean that we must regress. We have all that is needed right here in our
present lives, in our genes, in our ecosystems, and in our cultures to bring
forth a more harmonious life on Earth in keeping with our ancient
traditions. It will take spiritual commitment and self discipline to do
this. In Paul's often repeated words, "what is needed is a change in our
sense of our place in the world."
First and foremost, Paul advised, we can bring the Sacred Game home
by
educating our children properly in nature. Play in natural settings
for
young children under ten is essential. Earth-based rites of
adolescent
passage and initiation in youth ages ten to fifteen, essential for
transition into adulthood, are made to order in hunting experiences.
We
must mentor and teach our children properly if we are to avoid a
world
filled with self-possessed adults lost in a kind of "ecological
madness,"
thoughtless of their impact upon the planet and its limited
resources
* immature adults who cannot take responsibility for their own
actions, do not understand limits, and are incapable of truly loving each
other or this wonderful planet.
Just as a single class in hunter safety will not suffice; the road
to maturity is a long course. Proven methods of instruction and mentoring
found in good parenting include keeping novices at our sides where they can
observe right techniques and skills, coaching and giving them instruction
continuously, providing opportunities for participation and practice, and
observing and critiquing carefully over an extended period of time. Such
mentoring requires years of commitment by adults. There are many youths in
our society in need of skilled and knowledgeable adults who can be their
friends and mentors. In a talk given this spring in Jackson, Wyoming, Ted
Kerasote, an ethical and knowledgeable hunter and writer, said that each
hunting season he takes an interested novice into the field with him. Think
of the model he must be for a young aspiring hunter.
Though we are trying to redefine the rules of the hunting, eithics
is not a modern invention. Paul steadfastly insisted that for the millennia
when we were full-fledged hunter/gatherers, we were also right-minded about
our relationship to the animals, and so closely tied to our habitat that we
neither over-extended our environment nor caused the extinction of animals.
During interglacial periods, extinctions, which also erased many animals
that were not hunted, occurred because of changing climate. A complex set of
circumstances, yet to be fully understood, interacted to upset long-standing
ecological and social patterns and led to the demise of hunting/gathering.
Pastoralism and agriculture replaced an organic and earth-centered life with
one focused on domestication of plants and animals and accumulation of
wealth and goods, leading to centralized power and stratified culture as
well as exploitation of resources, despoiling of the natural environment,
and, finally, to competition and war. Children were needed as help-mates in
this new way of life, and the need to identify them as one's own, in turn,
necessitated the control of women. Patriarchy removed women from the
egalitarian partnership they had enjoyed in hunting and gathering and made
them the producers of children, a trend that has since led to the
exponential growth that has so tragically over-populated our planet.
With the advent of civilization we lost the mythic view of life
extending into the past and future in never-ending cycles. Instead we
accepted a historical view, not an account of what actually happened, but a
mind-set that maintains that we are on a non-repeatable, unreturning arc of
time with a predetermined beginning and an ending that will lead to a more
perfect life beyond this one. With this view, Paul said, we lost respect for
the Earth and became insensitive to its blessings and limitations here and
now. This loss resulted in a desacralizing of the Sacred Game, the demise of
the hunting way of life, and an abhorrence of wildness. Wildness is the
unfettered gene combinations in living organisms that have evolved in nature
uncontrolled and untamed by humans. Domestication, on the other hand, is the
manipulation of plants and animals for the benefit of humans and is a
product of culture. Paul insisted that the opposite of wildness is not
civilization but is domestication. Accordingly, if we are interested in
sustaining the Sacred Game, we must do all in our power to preserve the
status of wild animals and these animals cannot be separated from Wild
Nature where they developed free-roaming and uncontained. Game management is
necessary to mitigate our destruction of animal habitat. We can do much to
restore wildlife habitat. But no matter how good our intentions and methods,
none of our efforts replicate Wild Nature. We must protect such lands
wherever they exist not only for the animals but for our own sanity and
survival as well.
Paul opposed the practice of enclosing wild animals in hunting
preserves. Caging animals eventually leads to their domestication, just as
surely as the taming of the auroch led to the docile and codependent cow. We
must let wild animals and wild lands coexist wherever they are still found.
But good conservation practices on private, public, restored, and preserved
lands are also important. And we must reconsider seriously the role of
predators in this mix. As Ted Williams has pointed out recently, sportsmen
and environmentalists comprise sixty-five percent of the population in the
United States, and this, he says, produces an "absolutely irresistible
coalition" for protecting wild lands and animals. These numbers are probably
comparable throughout most of North America. Such groups should forget their
differences and unite in the name of wildness. In his new book,
Heartsblood, David Petersen says: "It is the immutable moral duty of every
person whose life is in any way enriched by wild animate life, via hunting
or otherwise, to give something in return for all that is taken. The only
real and meaningful way I can truly 'become one' with the gloriously untamed
creatures I so love and depend upon, in so many ways, is by fighting to
protect and preserve the natural places that sustain natural wildness in us
all-human and beast, predator and prey; he and she; thee, me and we."
In the writing of hunters like Petersen and Kerasote, we find the
words heart and blood used frequently and I think this is so for a very good
reason. Heart and blood are deeply symbolic. Without killing, there is no
authentic hunt. When we kill an animal, it bleeds and its heart stops
beating. Heartbeat is synonymous with life. Blood is a sign of death.When an
animal such as a moose is killed, the first thing hunters do is remove the
steaming, massive gut pile. They then reach up into the body cavity, open
the diaphragm, and pull out the heart which is enormous and still warm.
Holding the heart in their hands is an emotional moment charged with
meaning: the difference between the life they have and the life they have
taken is laid out. Blood is a stark reminder of death. But it also
accompanies birth. Men may find a different meaning in hunting than do
women. From the maiden's first sign that her menses has begun, she is aware
that something is happening in her body that is outside of her control and
synchronized with greater forces. And whether or not the woman chooses to
birth a child, she understands deeply the possibilities and responsibilities
of bringing life into the world. These experiences, more remote for men, are
brought full force to them in hunting when blood flows or they follow a
blood trail. The new born baby, blood-drenched, crying, coming into life.
The heart, faltering, giving it up. Life and death held in our hands.
Paul would, I believe, congratulate you on your ethical bent and
dedication to fairness and skill. He would urge you to set aside the
seduction of gadgetry and technology and choose simple and direct hunting
methods- methods that draw out the wildness that is in each of you and
renews your sentience and connection with Nature. He would ask you to keep
the game sacred and, in so doing, become the best hunters and humans this
good planet has ever sheltered.
* My thanks to David Petersen who read and offered helpful suggestions
on early drafts of this essay.
REFERENCES
David Petersen. Heartsblood, Hunting, Spirituality, and Wildness in America
. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000.
David Petersen, ed. A Hunter's Heart, Honest Essays on Blood Sport.
NewYork: Henry Hot & Company, 1996.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset. Meditations on Hunting. New York: Scribner's,1978.
Valerius Geist. Life strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design.New
York: Springner-Verlag, 1978.
Ted Kerasote, Heart of Home, People, Wildlife, Place. New York:
Villard,1997.
Paul Shepard. Coming Home to the Pleistocene. Washington, D.C.:
IslandPress/Shearwater Books, 1998.
___________The Others: How Animals Made Us Human. Washington, D.C.:Island
Press, 1995.
___________The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game. Athens, Georgia:The
University of Georgia Press, 1998. (New York: Scriber's, 1973.)
___________Thinking Animals, Animals and the Development of Human
Intelligence. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. (New
York: Viking, 1978.)
__________. Nature and Madness. Athens. Georgia: The University of Georgia
Press, 1998. (Sierra Club Books, 1982).
Ted Williams. "The Cost of Division." Orion 19-3 (Summer 2000): 48-54.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, Eddie.
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