Conservation Force
A Force for Wildlife Conservation
Why We Hunt - A Collection of Articles
Why We Hunt: Two Important Perspectives
By Dr. Randall Eaton & Shane Mahoney
(Editor Note: You need to know why you hunt to protect your right to hunt. This is because the general public misperceives the motivation of hunters and the anti-hunters misrepresent it. At Conservation Force, we are focusing on this important issue worldwide. I am the President of the Pro-Chasse Task Force of the International Council of Game Conservation (CIC). Conservation Force brought America's two leading speakers to address "Why We Hunt" to the CIC Conference in Slovenia. The philosophical perspective and insight of either man would have been enough by itself. Combined, it was a dynamic and inspiring presentation. I cannot duplicate here that lengthy program, but I did ask both speakers to put part of their message in article form. Their articles follow. - John J. Jackson, III.)
Why We Hunt - Article 1
Randall L. Eaton, Ph.D.
We hunt because we love it, but why do we love it so?
As an inherited instinct, hunting is deeply rooted in human nature. Around the world in all cultures the urge to hunt awakens in boys. They use rocks, make weapons or sneak an air gun out of the house to kill a bird or small mammal. In many cases the predatory instinct appears spontaneously without previous experience or coaching, and in the civilized world boys often hunt despite attempts to suppress their instinct.
The fundamental instinct to hunt may link up with the spiritual. An analogy is falling in love, in which eros, the sexual instinct, connects with agape or spiritual love, a vertical convergence of lower with higher. Initiation on the path of love changes our life irreversibly. Henceforth, we shall know the meaning of authentic love experienced with the totality of our being.
Hunting is how we fall in love with nature. The basic instinct links up with the spiritual, and the result is that we become married to nature. Among outdoor pursuits, hunting and fishing connect us most profoundly with animals and nature. As Robert Bly said in his best-selling book, Iron John, only hunting expands us sideways, "into the glory of oaks, mountains, glaciers, horses, lions, grasses, waterfalls, deer."
Hunting is a basic aspect of a boy's initiation into manhood. It teaches him the intelligence, beauty and power of nature. The young man also learns at a deep emotional level his inseparable relationship with nature as well as his responsibility to fiercely defend it.
Essentially, hunting is a spiritual experience precisely because it submerges us in nature, and that experience teaches us that we are participants in something far greater than ourselves. Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher, described the hunter as the alert man. He could not have said it better. When we hunt we experience extreme alertness to the point of an altered state of consciousness. For the hunter everything is alive, and he is one with the animal and its environment.
Though the hunter may appear from the outside to be a staunch egotist dominating nature, on the inside he is exactly the opposite. He identifies with the animal as his kin, and he feels, as Ortega said, tied through the earth to it. The conscious and deliberate humbling of the hunter to the level of the animal is virtually a religious rite.
While the hunt is exhilarating and unsurpassed in intrinsic rewards and emotional satisfactions, no hunter revels in the death of the animal. Hunters know from first-hand experience that "life lives on lives," as mythologist Joseph Campbell said. The hunter participates directly in the most fundamental processes of life, which is why the food chain is for him a love chain. And that is why hunters have been and still are, by far, the foremost conservationists of wildlife and wild places, to the benefit of everyone.
The power of the hunter’s mystical bond with the wild animal is measured by his unparalleled achievements in environmental conservation. For example, the 700,000 members of Ducks Unlimited have conserved over 12,000,000 acres of wetlands to the benefit of the entire living community of North America. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has conserved over four million acres and successfully reestablished elk in the northeast and midwest U.S. There are more wild turkeys and deer in the U.S. than at any time in history. While other environmentalists are waging rear-guard actions, the hunting community is on the offensive.
Today, as for countless millennia, proper initiation to hunting engenders respect for all life, responsibility to society, even social authority, and spiritual empowerment. It develops authentic self-esteem, self-control, patience and personal knowledge of our place in the food chain. According to Dr. Don T. Jacobs, author of Teaching Virtues, "hunting is the ideal way to teach universal virtues," including humility, generosity, courage and fortitude. As I said in The Sacred Hunt, "Hunting teaches a person to think with his heart instead of his head. That is the secret of hunting."
Consequently, the most successful programs ever conducted for delinquent boys have focused on hunting. The taking of a life that sustains us is a transformative experience. It's not a video game. Hunting is good medicine for bad kids because it is good medicine for all kids.
Hunting is a model for living. When we hunt, we discover that we are more than the ego. That our life consists of our ego in a mutually interdependent and transcendent relationship with nature. We keep returning to the field because for us hunting is a dynamic ritual that honors the animals and the earth on which we depend both physically and spiritually.
While interviewing Felix Ike, a Western Shoshone elder, I asked him, "What kind of country would this be if the majority of men in it had been properly initiated into hunting?" He replied, "It would be a totally different world."
In a world imperiled by egoism and disrespect for nature, hunting is morally good for men and women, boys and girls. Hunters understand the meaning in Lao Tzu's statement,
The Earth is perfect,
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it,
You will ruin it.
If you try to hold it,
You will lose it.
Some aboriginal peoples believe that the Creator made us perfect, too, and that He made us to be hunters, dependent on nature and close to the earth. Like Narcissus, civilized humanity has fallen in love with itself and turned its back on its hunting companions and its animal kin. Beware the teaching of the ages summarized in this admonition from Loren Eiseley, "Do not forget your brethren, nor the green wood from which you sprang. To do so is to invite disaster."
We are the tribe of wild men and women whose hearts hold the promise for recovery of proper relationship to the animals and earth. If we should lose hunting a far greater disaster will befall nature, society and the human spirit.
Randall L. Eaton may be contacted at 513-244-2826, E-mail: reaton@eoni.com. Website: www.randalleaton.com
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Why We Hunt - Article 2
"Hunting For Truth -
Why Rationalizing The Ritual Must Fail"
Shane Mahoney
(Special Note: The following article is reprinted with permission from Outdoor Canada. Note that Shane suggests that the "why" issue be more correctly characterized as the "relevance" of hunting today.)
Across the wide belt of the North American continent a profound debate surges. It is a collision of worldviews; a refinement of man's view of himself; a reinterpretation of Eden; a great contemplation of the future of mankind. Yet, despite this profound nature, the debate in question is delivered to the public as a clash of soft sentimentality and rigorous rationalism, the central theme portrayed by both sides as something so far removed from its essential self that it is at worst belittled, at best trivialized. The evisceration of man's greatest achievement, naturalness, is the work of two opposing forces, each wrapped in the cloak of conservation, striving for supremacy in a tournament of frauds and follies. The problem for hunting today is that nobody will tell the truth.
On the one side, there are those who are opposed to hunting, who obviously do not hunt, and who portray the activity as barbaric, unnecessary, and inappropriate to today's society, and mankind's future. They concentrate on the suffering of the individual animal and upon the behavior of persons who might inflict it. They portray nature as more benign, more right, without man than with him; and hunters as fermented juveniles who enjoy killing as a diversionary sport and who see animals as targets for their violence. To persons who argue for animal rights, hunting is a cruel wastefulness and the hunt an anachronism, something we should have put behind us, as we have bear baiting and cock fighting. Hunting is empty of merit, devoid of value and without deep meaning. Its adherents are therefore the same. The activity is personified and therein lies the target. The concept, the rich idea, of hunting, becomes displaced. For the public, the gruel is watered down until it can be bottle-fed. The question is asked: "why (do you) hunt?"
On the other side, stand those who support hunting, primarily hunters themselves, but not exclusively so. They fall for the trap. Their arguments in support of hunting are that it helps manage wildlife populations, it provides healthful recreation, physically and socially, it provides meat, and it generates wealth, especially in rural economies. Supporters argue it is their right, and not the animal's rights, that are to prevail, and because their activity harms no one, but benefits many, they should not be interfered with. Hunters don't discuss animal suffering, but concentrate on the health of populations. They rightfully point out the contributions, financially and politically, hunters have made to conservation, often when other voices of support were not being raised. They trot out the balance of nature, without ever defining natural balance. They portray anti-hunters as misguided extremists whose views would have mankind being overrun with tick-infested deer, drowning in goose macaroni, or starving so other predators might thrive. Hunters argue simply, or simply don't argue. They too keep the debate easy ...to digest.... or dismiss. One thing they conscientiously avoid however: they never, ever answer the question "why (do I) hunt".
Why is this? What is it about this short little question that is so ponderous, so daunting? What is it that hunters fear; what is it they do not comprehend? And, if they do comprehend, why won't they offer an explanation? Why so quick to identify the benefits of hunting but so reticent to at least try and describe their true motivation for engaging it? This is a conceptual divide that must be breached. We have been treating the two as though they were the same. They are not. Explaining the benefits of hunting does not in any way explain why we hunt, and why we hunt is the question, really, that society is asking. We confuse and avoid the issue...but we will either answer it, or we will be dismissed. The one thing we must protect and define for hunting is its relevance; notoriety and debate will not kill it. Fabrication and irrelevance will. Once deemed irrelevant, hunting will no longer be debated; nor will it be engaged in. If we want continuity and recruitment, if we want respect and tolerance for what we do, then we best get busy earning it...by explaining to the reasonable majority what hunting really is.
Hunting is not simple. It is the generator of our human condition, the crucible of intellect, and the fire of creativity. It is our mirror of the world, the image-maker of wild creation; it has defined how we see, literally and figuratively. It is the only absolute rediscovery mechanism available to human beings; the mind-body fusion of all meditative, spiritual experience is derived from its pasturage. Those who return there know full well the sense of universal intimacy it gives over. Explaining this odyssey is our greatest challenge; but succeeding will be our greatest achievement. The world remains perpetually absorbed by this search, yet hunters know the way. Why not celebrate the truth for a change? Hunting is a deliberate journey to the union of birth and death; it cannot but create a deeper perspective and appreciation for the glorious importance of both. What society does not dream for such citizens?
Like it or not, we have to search deep within ourselves, journey to the place where the mind is floating free. We have to voice what is silent; capture what is shadow. The hunt is a universe of emotion that overwhelms, scatters all notions of other preoccupations and delivers the persona complete. Hunting is a love affair; turbulent, gnawing, and all possessing. It is composed of lives, but has a life of its own; a life held precious by the participant who, in part, creates it. But then there is the "other", unpredictable, honored. Yes! An affair of the heart; and like all such affairs it drags the mind along, a great force subjugated by the senses engaged to their fullest; but alive just the same, and capturing memories and creating fantasies that are nearly one and the same. Hunting is an immersion; a drowning in connectedness that squanders pride and privilege; the true hunter is the humble man, the enthralled child and the knowing prince. All is ready, nothing is restive; all is rhythm, nothing is in friction. Hunting knows why the senses were made! It displaces both the practical and the excess. It represents evenness, oneness and the knowledge of self. Hunting is a cataclysm of inward progress. We hunt for spiritual reasons; we hunt to find inner peace; we hunt to understand the world. Hunting is our first great myth! The true hunter is both the alert and the meditative man. Thought and action combined in purpose; a hymn for the unity of world and self. Hunting is a search for all.
Truth makes a great message; not an easy one! But saving the preciousness of life is never simple. We need remember, however, that if hunters are viewed as dopes, hunting is viewed as a pastime for the dim-witted; if hunters are viewed as slobs, hunting is a wasteful debauchery; if hunters are viewed as juvenile, hunting is deemed delinquent. Only hunters can change such stereotypes. The task at hand is to articulate the relevance of hunting; not its correctness, nor its practical service to human kind. Rationalizing the mythology is both a tactical error and a diminishment of pride. Lies and excuses usually are. - Shane Mahoney.
Who Is Dr. Randall Eaton
Dr. Randall Eaton is the foremost psychologist of hunting. He has taught Jose Ortega y Gassette's Meditations on Hunting in universities, written books and made documentaries on "Why We Hunt" and its extraordinary importance to mankind for itself. He has devoted his professional life to this important subject. He is also a member of Conservation Force's professional team trying to save hunting around the world. He is the author of The Sacred Hunt, I and II, and he produced The Sacred Hunt, an award-winning documentary.
Who Is Shane Mahoney
Shane Mahoney is the Head of Research for the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador. He is considered the foremost philosopher of hunting today. He has been the keynote speaker at virtually every important conference in North America over the past several years, including the Outdoor Writers Association of America, The North American Wildlife Conference and the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Conference. He was the moderator of the Premier's "Hunting Heritage Symposium" held in Ontario. Most recently, he led a two-day program on "Why We Hunt" at the North American Wildlife Conference in Washington, D.C., which was the first such program in decades. Shane serves on the CIC's Pro-Chasse Task Force as a professional member. He is also a member of Conservation Force's Think Tank and Board of Directors.
Why We Hunt - An Ancient Activity
Hunting is an ancient human activity. As such it means experiencing an original way of life in unspoiled nature. Hunting can be the purest form of eco-tourism.
And yes, of course we enjoy hunting.
Of course we enjoy the thrill of a stalk. Yes, of course we enjoy the adrenalin rush when facing a wild un-collared lion. There is nothing wrong with that, these are inherent components of our own nature. City people seem to have forgotten that man can and should be part of nature. And above all, the laws of hunter and hunted are the very foundation on which nature rests.
If we still want nature – and that is the principle decision mankind has to take – we have to understand and accept it as it is; and true, honest hunting is the very school of life....
Please forgive me, if I here state that the same wild fire that some boring anti-hunters instinctively and unknowingly admire in the eyes of a lion, before it was man-handled and collared, is still alive in a hunters heart.
But we don’t enjoy killing. We have to kill to have hunted. And when at times we have to kill, we try to do so clean and quick and painless. At the same time death is part of life – it is not always easy to accept this, and this is the very difficult part of hunting, but it also is part of nature.
We hunters want and need nature.
The principle of sustainable use ensures large-scale nature conservation outside of National Parks – and that is what every nature lover should support free of irrational ideological agendas.
Africa is unique in the diversity of its wildlife and the stark beauty and silent grandeur of its landscapes.
Like all other continents, Africa will run its course to catch up with the first world. Nature lovers from the developed countries of the north cannot expect that African Governments will neglect their people in favour of wildlife.
But it appears logical that African countries protect some of their natural beauty not only for its own sake, but also to the best advantage of the national wellbeing. And the principle of sustainable use is the proven concept to combine these two important aspects.
President Kai Uwe Denker, NAPHA's 40th Anniversary AGM, 2013
To Understand Why We Hunt, You Must Know it
By John J Jackson III
When called upon to explain why you hunt, is there a magic formula or “elevator statement” to answer the question? What does it mean in human terms to those that do it as distinguished from the conservation and ecosystem services provided by hunters which are far easier to define and express (conservation infrastructure, management budget revenue, law enforcement, research, habitat acquisition, etc.) No nonsense, the user-pay system works!
The extraordinary force it holds over us is not simple and does not lend itself to easy description. This article briefly explores the heartfelt expressions of genuine hunters and hunting community leaders rather than statisticians and surveyors. Hunting holds a higher-order cultural, spiritual and emotional appeal that is too complex and extraordinary to lend itself to a simple explanation. It is a genuine, intense, complex, relationship with the natural world and the game that forever holds us captive. It is as genuine as life, but how can we make others understand? How can the “call of the wild” be described, the euphoria one feels on a clear, blue sky spring day high on a mountainside, the exultation from having all your God-given senses really focused, the preparation and pushing yourself to new physical heights, the self-discovery and self-actualization when immersed in nature?
The above title phrase, “know it,” is quoted from Aldo Leopold. He is considered the “Father of Wildlife Management” and authored key works such as Wildlife Management, still a fundamental textbook, and Sand County Almanac, the foundation of the land ethic and the entire environmental movement. He advised, “I suppose it is IMPOSSIBLE to explain this to those who do not KNOW IT.” (Emphasis added). In short, it can not be explained to non-hunters. They have to “know it.” I have come to accept this as axiomatic. Why we hunt defies explanation unless you know it.
Others have verbalized the frustration of explaining why we hunt. Theodore Roosevelt wrote in The Wilderness Hunter that “No one, but he who has partaken thereof, can understand the keen delight of hunting in lonely lands.” He also wrote, “But there are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm.” A more contemporary hunter, Charley Dickey, in The Hunter’s Call (1983) wrote, “I breathe because my body needs oxygen. I eat because my body must have energy. I hunt because I am a hunter. These are simple things which I accept, and perhaps no explanation is possible.” Expressed differently, Ernest Hemingway in An African Journal (1972) wrote, “There is much mystic nonsense written about hunting but it is something that is much older than religion. Some are hunters and some are not.” In short, get used to it.
Ron Spomer wrote that “Hunting is one of those pleasures that you won’t understand if you have to have it explained, which is good because folks who enjoy it can’t fully explain why.”
Professor James Teer, one of Conservation Force’s own founding board members, agreed. “I decided long ago that the joys and societal values of hunting cannot be described adequately to non-hunters...” in It’s a Long Way from Llano, an autobiography, 2008.
Perhaps a quote from Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame is a good sum up the point. Until she hunted, really hunted, she did not understand though she was surrounded by hunters and certainly had an inquiring and capable mind. After returning from a hunting safari she wrote to her aunt in Europe, “I owe an honest apology to hunters whose ecstasy over hunting I have never before understood. There is nothing in all the world quite like it.”
The confounding difficulty when explaining why one hunts is compounded by the divergence of game species, conditions, methods and skills, preparation, places, obstacles and scenery, and even the elements. A small collection of hunter quotations proves the point while also partially expressing the rich diversity of hunting.
Any claim by the uninitiated non-hunter that hunting does not have deeply rooted importance to those who hunt would be disingenuous. Aldo Leopold was not making it up. The tens of millions of hunters speak loudly of its hold on hunters. That should be respected and fostered. Its importance is as real and valuable to the human condition and quality of life as other higher order relationships that defy description like the love between men and women. It is so important to those that do it that it would be immoral to deprive us of it particularly when it has been proven to be such an essential tool of wildlife and habitat conservation. Hunters are an indispensable army, perhaps the largest in the world, of citizen conservationist and heroes. The growing human population and competition for survival space is making hunting even more relevant.
Do not apologize for not being able to express the indescribable joys of the hunt to the uninitiated. Many of the best people in the world are and have been hunters and hunters are pillars of wildlife and habitat conservation, like it or not.
But there is much more reason to examine why we hunt than explaining hunting to non-hunters. Certainly, we can heighten our own enjoyment and happiness from hunting by expressing what we can in words as well as all forms of art be that paintings, photography, sculpture, taxidermy, etc. ( Yes, taxidermy is an art form as well as a monument in celebration of the hunt and respect for the animal). We hunters are fortunate to know hunting and intimately know nature through the eyes of a hunter but we can always gain by knowing it even better.
Aldo Leopold succeeded in partially expressing why he hunted waterfowl when he wrote that he would go to his blind an hour early to hear the goose music. He also explained,
A deer hunter habitually watches the next bend; the duck hunter watches the skyline; the bird hunter watches the dog; the non-hunter does not watch. I must add that knowing it does not mean watching it on TV and having Disney-stuffed animal-like toys among your possession or beloved pets in or outside of your home. Nor is photographic voyeurism remotely like the excitement and game changer of la Chasse.
Karen Blixen, In Shadows on the Grass, resorted to analogies when she wrote, “Hunting is ever a love affair. The hunter is in love with the game, real hunters are true animal lovers.
“The person who can take delight in a sweet tune without wanting to learn it, in a beautiful woman without wanting to possess her, or in a magnificent head of game without wanting to shoot it, has not got a human heart.”
Jack O’Connor expressed the “magic on the mountain” in The Bighorn (1960). “The wild ram embodies the mystery and magic of the mountains, the rocky canyons, the snowy peaks, the fragrant alpine meadows, the gray slide rock, the icy, dancing rills fed by snowbank and glaciers, the sweet, clean air of the high places, and the sense of being alone on the top of the world with the eagles, the marmots, and the wild sheep themselves.”
So how does hunting hold up against popular outdoor recreation? The golfer Sam Snead (1912-2002) wrote, “The only reason I ever played golf in the first place was so I could afford to hunt and fish.”
Of course, hunting is far more than mere recreation for real hunters. Barones Anne Mallalieu: “Hunting is our heritage, it is our poetry, it is our art, it is our pleasure. It is where many of our best friendships are made, it is our community. It is our whole way of life.”
Ernest Hemingway made no bones about his love of the chase: “The way to hunt is for as long as you live against as long as there is such and such an animal; just as the way to paint is as long as there is you and colors and canvas, and to write as long as you can live and there is pencil and paper or ink or any machine to do it with, or anything you care to write about, and you feel a fool, and are a fool, to do it any other way.”
Hunting is to be enjoyed over and over again. Perhaps the ultimate hunt is a safari in Africa, the pantheon of hunting experiences. Hemingway, in Green Hills of Africa, wrote, “I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke up and was not happy.” And he wrote, “All I wanted to do now was to get back to Africa. We had not left yet, but when I would wake in the night, I would lie listening, homesick for it already.”
Similarly, Robert C. Ruark in Horn of the Hunter wrote, “There was part of me, of us, back there on a hill in Tanganyika, in a swamp in Tanganyika, in a tent and on a river and by a mountain in Tanganyika. There was a part of me out there that would stay out there until I came back to ransom that part of me...”
Shortly before her death at the age of 77, Karen Blixen wrote, “If I should wish anything back of my life, it would be to go back on safari once again with Bror.”
Of course, no description of hunting can be complete without a quotation from Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting (1972): “When one is hunting, the air has another, more exquisite feel as it glides over the skin or enters the lungs, the rocks require a more expressive physiognomy, and the vegetation is loaded with meaning. But all this is due to the fact that the hunter, while he advances or waits crouching, feels tied to the earth through an animal he pursues, whether the animal is in view, hidden or absent.” He also wrote that “Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery and therefore contains something of a religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, in the laws of nature.”
Many hunters have expressed the total fascination and infatuation they have for the game they pursue. In sum, according to Hugh Fosburgh in One Man’s Pleasure, “The essence of being a real good hunter is, paradoxically, to love the particular species of game you’re after and have enormous respect and consideration for it.” Karen Blixen said it directly with, “One feels that lions are all that one lives for.” And indirectly when she wrote, “I have seen the royal lion, before sunrise, below a waning moon, crossing the grey plain on his way home from the kill, drawing a dark wake in the silvery grass.”
So I too suppose that why we hunt and what it means to us cannot be described. The elevator statement reply to those that ask might best be, “You have to know it to understand, but I would not want to live without it.” You are on good footing to add that you are a steward of the game you hunt, as, of course, hunters have to be, and you hunt and know the habitat as well as the game that you care so deeply about. Maybe add that like Aldo Leopold, you like the sound of goose music along with the smell of marsh grass before daylight, the bugle of a bull elk in a mountain meadow, the trumpet of a charging elephant, or hundreds of other experiences that one has to know to understand. Maybe tell them that because you are a hunter you have had hundreds if not thousands of to-die-for experiences emerged in nature. Tell them you can not explain a love relationship or the feeling of euphoria on a clear spring day, but it is some of the best life has to offer.
Thank you for asking.
Why We Hunt - "Tupa Nyuma Hunting "
Ian Parker
Editor’s Comments: We must differentiate between the hunt, deeply rooted in the evolutionary history of mankind, and the hunter. The hunt is not a bad thing because some hunters misbehave. And some hunters do misbehave (just like some lawyers, some doctors, some government members, some anti-hunters, some conservationists, in short, some of every conceivable group of people). The percentage of hunting misfits seems to be larger in Africa than in Europe or North America. The reason is simple – because the hunting laws and regulations are strictly enforced there and anyone breaking them suffers dire consequences. What we need in Africa are comprehensive modern game & hunting laws and their strict enforcement. The US Lacey Act and certain EU regulations are useful examples! An internationally recognized certification and standardized norms of/for hunting operators, hunting concessions and hunting laws would also assist!
Hunting has underpinned conservation policies over so great a span of history and across so wide a range of cultures that this record, alone, makes a powerful case to continue it. Today, worldwide, it is still by far the greatest use of wild animals which simply restates the case. If illustration in detail is called for, then for sheer scale and an impact on habitats at a continental level, the record of Ducks Unlimited in the USA must be one of conservation’s great achievements.
Why hunt? What are its rewards? How does it equate with the injunction “thou shalt not kill” that underpins the modern world’s “United Nations” culture? The most fundamental and widespread reason for hunting is still for food. Even where the main drive is recreation, most quarry is eaten. How does killing equate with a general ethic against it? Therein lies nature’s great enigma: life needs death to sustain it. That might sound a trifle Irish, but with the possible exceptions of simple forms around volcanic fumaroles in the ocean deeps, all living things depend directly or
indirectly on the deaths of other forms. Nutrient chains may have few links, as in active predation, or many involving complex decomposition where plants are concerned, but nothing can change the fact that living depends on death. A great marlin will surely die and why it should be ‘right’ for a tiger shark to prey on it and ‘wrong’ for me to do so, is moot. The bottom line, philosophically, is that we
are both predators. After that point, views diverge irreconcilably. Suffice it that, even in this soft modern world and regardless of the arguments for and against, hunting is still the most general and powerful force for conserving.
I have hunted widely. As a brat collecting butterflies, I hunted. Still the same brat collecting birds for Kenya’s National (then Coryndon) Museum, I hunted. At both levels I did so, not because I had to, but because I wanted to and securing the rare specimen was enormous reward that added to the sheer fun of the activity. Later, and with a .22, this extended to duiker and bushbuck.
I confess that as an adult, hunting mammals for recreation faded away. Taking lion, leopard, rhino, hippo and elephant certainly produced occasional moments of excitement (as does driving on Kenya’s roads), but it was not something that I was ever moved to do for fun. As a warden where this hunting was routine work, in which quick, slick killing was professionally called for, the recreation did not figure. This is in contrast to professional hunters with clients where excitement is
the product on demand. The exceptions were buffalo. Charging around on the heels of buffalo in the densest vegetation in the wake of a pack of dogs was exciting. The victim was never taken unawares, by the time one caught up with it (or them), it was very angry, very active, and recognized the source of its problems as soon as it set eyes on you. Not many of us were engaged full-time in this activity, but of those who were, the number who got ‘bent’ was high. Only one other form of hunting topped
it for sheer excitement and the volume of adrenalin sent flooding through the system – and that was hunting an armed and alert human who could see you coming and was as keen to do you mischief as you were to do him.
Make no mistake: the all-out thrill of hunting something dangerous is the same thrill in all-out physical fighting. It re-appears in highly doctored forms in competitive sport generally. Its great rewards are internal, totally personal and have to do with the psyche. Only those who have also experienced them and the self-confidence they impart can appreciate them. Of course this is why trying to explain hunting on film invariably fails so badly: it is not a spectator sport. All that comes across is killing an animal which, like all death, is a grotty event. I have written the foregoing to make a point. While no great hunter myself, I understand a bit about it. One way or another, I have certainly hunted more than most, and it is from this point of view that I comment below on some of the hunting which is taking place in Africa today.
Among the many impulses that lead a person to hunt big game is to acquire a sense of achievement: to have done something difficult and possibly experienced physical danger. That being so, the modern white hunter starts off at disadvantage. Lets face it, killing a lion or a buffalo with a spear is an infinitely greater achievement that shooting it with a rifle. It calls for greater bravery and physical prowess. Yet, while it is still done widely by black people in parts of Africa, it is illegal and I only know of a couple of white compatriots who have hunted thus. Nevertheless – taking big game with a spear sets the measure against which killing something with a rifle must stand.
This brings me to the tupa nyuma hunters. The Kiswahili verb tupa means to throw, cast or fling. The adverb nyuma means after, behind, at the back of or in the rear of. The tupa nyuma hunters are those professionals (and their clients) who shoot animals from a vehicle, drive up to the victim and shout to the staff in the back tupa nyuma! then drive on to the next victim. This form of hunting – if indeed it is hunting – must be the nether pole to taking one’s quarry with a spear. It calls for no bravery, no physical prowess and, if it induces a sense of achievement in its practitioners, then it merely establishes what pathetic standards they hold.
It is said that 80% of game animals shot in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa are shot from motor vehicles. I cannot verify the statistic, but it originated from among hunters themselves. I have personally heard well-known PHs acknowledge that most of their clients’ quarry is taken from a vehicle. They argue that as the client has paid to shoot an animal – or will pay the landowner whatever the going rate is for the animal – it is up to him to then take that animal as he sees fit. If it is from a vehicle, then so be it, then it is up to his professional hunter to get the vehicle as close to the quarry as possible.
And then there is ‘canned’ hunting in which animals – predators usually – are bred literally as domesticants, before being turned loose before a sportsman to shoot. While this appears to be a South African speciality, its apogee was surely that instance reported by Newsweek a decade or more ago from the USA, where a ‘hunter’ was presented in succession with a chained lion, a chained tiger and a chained cheetah, and which he shot in turn. That he was highly excited make no mistake. He fainted three times during the ‘hunt’.
Hunters often say that the actual kill is but small part of hunting’s thrill. The attraction lies in exercising the skills of tracking, stalking and getting close to the quarry, being ‘out in the bush’ and the ambience of getting away from it all. However, all this is rendered so much old ‘cobblers’ when animals are shot from vehicles or in virtual domestication. In all such cases, there is no skill, no tracking, no stalking and the sole ambience is that of sitting inside a motor vehicle. In such circumstances it is obvious that the sole reason it is indulged in, is to kill something.
PHs taking clients killing like this aim to satisfy the client as efficiently as possible. How clients can be satisfied by this ersatz ‘hunting’ they must explain to themselves. Suffice it that many are elderly and infirm and quite unable to physically partake in any sport that would entail running. Here note that, like football, mountaineering, or skiing, real hunting is primarily a youthful activity. While fit people may carry on into middle age, these fields are closed to old age. Money and the internal combustion engine give geriatrics access to much of Africa’s game: but it is not hunting.
What is all this about? Because, like many of my contemporaries in Kenya, I support hunting as a primary cause for conservation, but I cannot find anything admirable in the tupa nyuma hunting so prevalent in Africa today.
The principle that it doesn’t matter so long as it brings in the cash, also underwrites prostitution. Pimps and tupa nyuma hunters share that in common and it has contributed substantially to anti-hunting feeling in Kenya. Ironically it has greatly diluted support for hunting from those who would otherwise have come out foursquare for it. What can be done to rectify matters? I’m not sure. Perhaps publishing an annual Pimps’ Roster of all the tupa nyuma hunters and their clients’ names in African Indaba might be a disincentive? I’m not so sure, however, because if the hunters themselves don’t have an internal barrier against this sort of activity, then they will always be predisposed to continue and hope to get away with it.
Why We Hunt - "Run Towards the Roar"
Danene van der Westhuyzen
The hum of the little plane went right into my bones. Every vibration felt magnified, every bump in the sky another reminder of how fragile we humans really are when the ground disappears beneath our feet. My husband sat at the controls, calm and steady, as he always is in the air, on the hunt, and in life.
I, on the other hand, gripped the seat so tightly my nails dug into the fabric.
Breathe, Danene. Just breathe.
Flying is my private battlefield. Each flight unleashes a storm of panic in me ‒ the spinning what-ifs, the pounding heart, the raw knowledge of just how unforgiving gravity can be. And yet here I was, forcing myself into that cockpit, because beyond the flight lay a hunt I dreaded but knew I had to face: a tuskless elephant cow.
I pressed my forehead against the cool Perspex window and looked down. The African bush stretched endlessly, a mosaic of thornveld and sandy veins, harsh and beautiful, unforgiving and alive.
Tuskless elephants are not just any elephants. They are legends, whispered about in camps and around fires. Unpredictable. Aggressive. Quick to charge. I had hunted dangerous game before, but this was different. This was Zimbabwe, and I was not licensed to guide here. For once, I was not the professional. I was a guest, reliant entirely on the PH, Keith, leading us. For someone used to carrying her own authority ‒ and my own rifle ‒ the vulnerability was crushing
“Hunting is at once raw and exalted, both primal and profound. It draws us back into the rhythm of the natural order, where life and death are not abstractions but realities woven into every step, every breath. Out there, stripped of distraction, we move closer to animalistic ‒ alert, vulnerable, alive.”
THE WEIGHT OF FEAR
There is a particular kind of fear that takes hold when your mind and body refuse to agree.
Every second in that seat was an act of war with myself.
Rationally, I knew the plane was safe. Rationally, I knew the PH had the skill, the team, and the experience. Rationally, I knew the risks were calculated, that we were prepared. But fear doesn’t listen to reason.
Fear lodges in the body. It clamps your chest. It steals your breath. It whispers the same poisonous words again and again: You can’t. You shouldn’t. You won’t survive this.
And yet, beneath the fear, something deeper stirred. A recognition that this was not about planes or elephants at all. This was about life itself ‒ about choosing whether to keep shrinking from the things that terrify me or to move towards them and claim the clarity waiting on the other side.
Another voice rose up inside me ‒ one I had learnt to listen for in moments like this: Run towards the roar.
AFRICA’S DEMANDS
We landed on a strip of earth that looked more like a suggestion than a runway. Dust billowed, and the air hit me like an oven door opening ‒ thick, dry, merciless.
Some things in this world defy description, where language falters against the weight of experience and the complexity of emotion. Africa offers little middle ground. Its landscapes demand huge acceptance, to the extent that one would lose oneself, willingly and at times unwillingly. The vulnerability of it all steers us toward either elation or defeat. A love-hate relationship, which you either can’t endure, or the charms sink deep into your bones, never to leave.
And so, throat parched from dry air, I stepped into the bush. Hunting is at once raw and exalted, both primal and profound. It draws us back into the rhythm of the natural order, where life and death are not abstractions but realities woven into every step, every breath. Out there, stripped of distraction, we move closer to animalistic ‒ alert, vulnerable, alive.
The true gift of hunting is not only in the taking of game, but in the way it sharpens our vision for what lies beyond the obvious. It teaches us to see landscapes not merely as scenery but as stories waiting to unfold ‒ shaped by hidden tracks, fleeting signs, and the promise of unexpected encounters.
NAKED WITHOUT A GUN
I carried the client’s rifle, far heavier than mine, its strap biting into my shoulder until it burned. Each day we walked farther than I thought possible, the sun punishing us relentlessly. My mouth dried until my tongue felt like leather, every sip of water rationed, savoured, and never enough.
And then there were the flies. The tse-tse and mopane flies descended in persistent swarms, biting with needle stings, crawling into ears, eyes and nostrils. They seemed designed to break your spirit as much as your skin.
The veld became a crucible for body and mind. Every nerve screamed: Turn back. This is too much. You don’t even have your own rifle. I felt naked without a gun of my own. Exposed. Stripped of the small thread of control I usually held. My survival was in the hands of another man, and my only choice was trust. That kind of dependence does not come easily. But in the bush, pride means nothing. You walk, you endure, you submit.
THE ENCOUNTER
We tracked through dust and thorns, over ridges so steep and rocky I never imagined an elephant could climb them. The ground crumbled underfoot, the thorns tore at my shins, and each step felt heavier than the last. My legs turned to lead, my shoulders throbbed beneath the unforgiving weight of the sling, each step driving the burden deeper, as if the rifle meant to fuse with bone.
The tracks teased us again and again, drawing us on through shimmering heat until hope frayed thin. Time after time we came upon cows with dependent calves ‒ impossible. Other times the spoor ended at elephants with long ivory glistening in the sun, forcing us to circle back, to start again. Futility gnawed at me ‒ thirst rasped in my throat, sweat stung my eyes, the drone of tse-tse flies a merciless torment. Once, a young bull burst from the mopane scrub, mock-charging with a trumpet that split the air. He pulled up short, dust flying, but my heart slammed to a dead stop.
It was on one of those endless days ‒ when the sun sank too slowly, dragging out our exhaustion, and the dwindling path back to the truck twisted through suffocating jess ‒ that it happened. A massive cow, calf pressed tight to her side, stepped out ahead of us.
In that instant, the world changed.
The air grew thick, almost liquid. The bush went silent, sound sucked away until I could hear only my pulse hammering in my ears. She loomed there ‒ massive, restless, her hide grey and cracked, eyes glinting with a hot, unsettling fire.
This is it. You have children. You have responsibilities. You can’t outrun her. You can’t outfight her.
I felt smaller than I had ever felt in my life. Stripped bare. No authority. No weapon of my own. Just raw exposure, the heavy borrowed rifle biting into my shoulder, and the steady silhouette of Keith beside me. My life reduced to his judgment, his steadiness, his trigger finger.
Then the charge came.
The ground shook as if the earth itself recoiled from her fury. The air rushed forward, carrying her dust and musk, the guttural rumble of her rage.
Keith’s roar cut through it, his voice hurled like a weapon at the oncoming mass. It rolled out thunderous and desperate, yet threaded with a strange tenderness ‒ almost a plea, almost a prayer.
But she did not slow. She did not fear. She did not listen.
My chest locked. My heart battered my ribs so violently I thought it might burst free. My legs twitched to run. Every instinct screamed: Turn. Flee. Survive.
Don’t miss. Dear God, don’t miss.
Ten paces. Dust boiling in the air. My husband at my side, calm as stone. Me, lungs burning, every muscle strung tight between fight and flight.
Fear had never been louder.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF GIFT
And yet in that moment of terror, something broke open inside me. It is impossible to describe fully what it is like to stand in that space between life and death. The air itself is thicker. Every sound sharper. Every thought distilled into a single truth: you are alive. Terrifyingly, magnificently alive.
And in that moment I understood something I had only half grasped before: fear was not my enemy. Fear was my teacher. It stripped me to the essential, burning away the trivial and leaving only the raw, undeniable gift of presence.
It sharpened my awareness and left me face-to-face with the truth: life is fragile, fleeting, sacred.
I did not conquer fear that day. I carried it. I stood with it. And because of that, I walked out of the bush alive, whole, and strangely renewed.
THE AFTERMATH
When it was over, when the dust settled and the elephant moved away, I found myself shaking ‒ not with weakness, but with release. A laughter bubbled in me, shocking and bright, as though my body had to spill the excess of adrenaline somehow. Keith and my husband looked at me with quiet nods and small smiles.
I came back elated ‒ not because I was fearless, but because I had leaned into fear with every fibre of me. I had trusted where I could not control. I had walked through exhaustion, thirst, swarms of flies, and the crushing weight of doubt, and still I had come out on the other side.
I am embarrassed by my fear, yes. Humbled by it. But I am also grateful. Because it reminds me of the stakes. It reminds me that hunting, like living, is not about control. It is about surrender. About stepping into the roar, again and again, and finding in the chaos a kind of order that only the heart can recognise.
Fear had not left me, but I had carried it ‒ and it had carried me.
WHY IT MATTERS
We live in a world that tells us safety is the ultimate goal. Stay home. Stay comfortable. Stay alive. But in the veld, comfort has no place. The sun burns. The thorns pierce. The elephant charges. And in those moments, you are reminded that the only thing worse than dying is not really living. To live fully is to embrace the unknown. To accept that death awaits us all, but that life is a gift only if we dare to live it vulnerably, fiercely and with faith.
We explore the marvellous reality of life and the unapologetic chances that we are not meant to fear, but bravely embrace. One which serves a purpose of connection.
Running from the roar may feel good at that moment. It may give you the illusion of safety. But in truth, it robs you of the chance to grow, to feel alive, to honour the dreams planted deep inside you.
I am not fearless. I am afraid. Often. Afraid in the cockpit. Afraid in the veld. Afraid when the beast turns and eyes lock on mine. Afraid when I walk kilometre after kilometre in the blistering sun with my shoulder burning and flies biting until I bleed.
This is it. This is madness.
And yet, another voice always answers: Move forward anyway.
Perhaps you have felt it too. Standing at the edge of something vast and uncertain, you have heard the roar and longed to run. And if you dare to step forward ‒ trembling, heart pounding, but unbroken ‒ you may discover, as I did, that fear is not the end of the road but the beginning.
Because you chose to run towards the roar