The Hunter's Way by Craig Raleigh

Author:Craig Raleigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

Part Three

The Hunt

One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted . . . if one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it.

—Jose Ortega y Gasset

9

The Most Difficult Game

All the jolly chase is here

With hawk and horse and hunting-spear,

Hounds are in their couples yelling,

Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling

—Sir Walter Scott, “Hunting Song”

I’ve seen at least a hundred beautiful trophy rooms full of the heads of wild game. It’s a dizzying sight to behold, a panoramic display for hunters who can’t travel the earth in search of game they would love to hunt, and a feather in the cap for those who can. In an unnatural arrangement, elk, moose, and mule deer hang side by side with warthog, leopard, and kudu. It’s surprisingly easy to get “lost” in someone else’s game room and forget that you are not on the Serengeti or the Kalahari but rather standing inside in the company of another hunter. I’ve spent hours admiring these immense bounties on display, imagining the hunt that transpired, only to be interrupted by the brazen voice of the hunter: Wanna know how I got that one?

Collectively, these trophy hunters’ stories melt into colorful tales in which the adventure of taking these difficult-to-hunt creatures is supplanted by boastful, self-congratulatory words. They seek to hide the fact that the skin on the floor or the head on the wall was just as beautiful before it was shot as it is after.

I’m the same as anyone who has seen the bounty on the wall and dreamed of trying his hand at defeating a trophy animal at its own game. I’ve gutted countless deer in the field by my own hand without anyone showing me how. I’ve field dressed ducks, geese, grouse, turkeys, rabbits, woodcock, and thousands of fish, but the fact remains that I won’t shoot an animal I’m not going to eat.

This is not a rebuke of big game hunters who routinely take animals that aren’t very good table fare. Any decent hunter worth his or her good name hunts for a variety of reasons, most of which have been explored in this book. But it does illustrate the paradox found among hunters who say they are conservationists but continue to go trophy hunting. The thrill of the hunt has its own merits, of course, and has been written about many times, in both literature and hunting manuals. But what compels one to pull the trigger, knowing that the animal’s fate will be resigned to staring down from a mantel? Is it the long shot, from cliff to cliff; the impossible skill to pull it off from a distance? Is it the dream of going far off the road, on unmarked trails, to find the stunning and unique creatures of which the hunter has only heard stories? Is it a part of defeating nature, a nature that can and will defeat the

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