New ideas | Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces

Hunting season

Posted on August 30, 2009 by Leslie

Yesterday I enjoyed a great day with Women in the Outdoors. It was an all day affair where you choose in advance what events you wanted to participate in. I chose fly fishing in the morning, and archery in the afternoon.

The instructors for Fly Fishing were fantastic. They provided all the gear, took us to a stocked lake on private land, and coached us step-by-step starting with the parts of the rod and reel, how to tie the knots, and the basic form for casting. What I love about fly fishermen is that they have an in-depth knowledge of entomology. I once took a college course on ‘Pond and Stream’. We went on field trips and looked at river health and bugs. Fly fishermen can identify the different insects in their various stages of development and what the fish are feeding on at any moment. They are magnificent conservationists, because only healthy streams and ponds will have the diversity of insects necessary to support fish life.

After lunch and door prizes for all, archery was on the list. As a kid I did archery with a traditional bow. I remembered it as great fun and hard to pull. The instructors had compound and regular bows for us to try.

Compound bow used for hunting

Using a compound bow with sight guides, it was pretty easy to hit a bull’s eye. Using a traditional bow, they call it ‘instinctive aim’ and requires much more skill. The woman instructor told me she’d been an avid archer for over 17 years. She competes with a traditional bow, but hunts with a compound bow. She showed me her hunting bow. It was so heavy I couldn’t straighten my arm out.

I asked her how she killed game with a bow in a way that was humane and didn’t let them suffer. She said she was careful, took her time to aim, and most always could bring down her game with one shot. She practiced a lot and consistently to stay that good, she said.

Hunting season is beginning this month and usually starts with archery. All this made me reflect on my feelings about hunting.

Personally, I have nothing against hunting. Men (and women) have been hunting since time began. We are predators by nature. And I suppose it’s in our DNA. But I do have some problems with the whole nature of hunting in the 21st century.

Here are some of my issues with hunting: much of our wild game has been confined to tiny, fragmented islands we call ecosystems but they are not whole nor complete; we don’t have the numbers of wildlife that we used to when we hunted for survival; many of the weapons used by hunters give them an unfair advantage, such as a high powered rifle way beyond the range that a deer or elk can even smell; many hunters are too lazy to actually walk into the back country, use real skills, and they hunt from the road; too many hunters go for the trophy, rather than hunting for their winter meat, and discard the meat or give it to the outfitter. In fact, many outfitters say that they actually do all the work–find the game, set up the camp, maybe even point the gun!

Deer and turkeys

Osborne Russell, the famous trapper who went through Yellowstone in 1835 wrote “an eye could scarcely be cast in any direction around, above or below without seeing the fat [Bighorn] sheep gazing at us with anxious curiosity or lazily feeding among the rocks and scrubby pines.”

That is the norm for this ecosystem. Now, in the 21st century, you have to take your binoculars and hope to catch a glimpse of a Bighorn sheep. And if you do, maybe you’ll see 2, or 3. If you’re lucky in the dead of winter, you’ll see 25 grazing together. Now those numbers have become ‘the norm’ on which to issue hunting tags and judge a healthy population.

Lastly, and maybe the most important in my mind, hunting is no longer a sacred ritual. There is not an acknowledgment of the sacrifice involved in the taking of life. In the hunt, animals are seen as ‘things’ without consciousness. It is a ‘sport’, right up there with other types of consumerism and recreation, and thus not placed in its proper context–the sacrifice of one life to give life to another.

Most of us eat meat, fowl, or fish which is farmed then slaughtered and we have no relationship to what we are eating. Hunting gives us that connection to our food. Hunting in the 21st century, unfortunately, has become a caricature of what it once was. For our ancestors, the hunt was a sacred event, shared by the entire community, deepening our awareness of the sacrificial nature of all existence.

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: Hunting in Wyoming | 5 Comments »

My Friend

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Leslie

I have been pondering some seriously deep mysteries; like why the heck I need to spend 1/2 hour getting dressed to go hiking in 7 degree weather, when Koda can just dash outside stark ‘naked’, from 70 degrees inside. Maybe we humans just weren’t made for cold. I’m learning though: about how the cold can freeze up the deep drifts so I can walk on top of them instead of struggling with each sinking footstep; or how the elk and deer make rutted trails making it easy to hike through the woods; or when the deep cold settles on the landscape, an icy silence settles my soul; or if I feel a bit lonely, I can walk outside and see the evidence of the nights activities as footprints in the snow.

Following an elk trail

Its been cold though for a California girl. Yesterday the mercury didn’t get above 10 during the day. In the late afternoon, my 84, going on 85, year old neighbor came to ‘check on me’. He walked in from down the road, told me he had planned to work on his fence that day but the wind was blowing too hard. So instead, he got the hay set out for his horses. He’s pretty hard of hearing, but he likes to talk and his stories are fun, so I just listen mostly. He was born in this valley. His family came here around 1915 to homestead. Considering Wyoming didn’t become a state till 1890, and that the first homesteaders in my valley came about 1903, and that the road from Cody to this area wasn’t paved until 1993, that’s a long time ago.

Last year he said to me “I’ve got an elk tag and I’m going hunting. You wanna come?” I sure did and figured that not only does he know this country like I knew my old neighborhood back in California, but his hunting speed was probably about ‘my speed’.

Going hunting

We saddled up the horses and left about 10:30 am. I always ride his wild horse, Wiley. Wiley is such a great big guy, really sweet and follows you around like a dog. My dog, Koda, and him nuzzle each other. It was October and there’d been a snow a few days before, so we were looking for tracks. We went up to the next valley and up to the ridgeline. All the way J___ was pointing out tracks–of black bears, turkeys, moose. After an hour and a half, we finally got to the ridgeline. “Let’s rest and have lunch.” Yep, my kind of hunting for sure.

We sat for an hour and talked. J___ told me a story about an old timer, who, when J___was six years old, he asked him when he first came to this country. The old- timer replied “When I got here the mountains were flat!” We both cracked up.

After lunch J___found some bull elk tracks. Although all the hunters had gone west along the ridgeline, following the well worn trail, J___ whispered “There’s a little meadow no one knows about on the east beyond those trees. I bet they went there.” The snow was thin, and there was bare ground in most places so it wasn’t easy to track those elk. We slowly made our way through the timber, and sure enough, there were the elk tracks again, heading down a steep wooded ravine. J___ said we could get rimrocked that way.

“If I didn’t have the horses, I’d go down there on foot. But it might be too hard on the horses or get them rimrocked.” I thought of him hiking downhill. Yikes! Glad we had those horses or that old codger might have gone down there. J___ told me his rifle, which to me just looks like a 22, (As you might have guessed, I know nothing about guns) was a WWI rifle for sniper fire. He uses sights only. The thing is heavy. I kept wondering how close he’d have to be to get a good shot.

We circled around for a few hours, on foot and on horse. Finally he said “I want to watch this country for a while.” For a moment I took him to mean “I want to live a bit longer to enjoy this place.” but he meant what he said and we hobbled the horses in an open area and walked back up to a view spot where he could see meadows to the east and west through the timber and just ‘watch this country’. The view was breathtaking, but after a while I laid down and fell asleep, still tired from the night before, dreaming of all sorts of junk in that maddeningly beautiful country. It was like the space of all that openness on top of the world was squeezing all the detritus out of me to allow room inside for its’ space.

"I want to look at this country for a while"