soggy
Well-Known Member
I spotted this on another web site and thought you all might like to read it. It puts thing rather well I thought.
Why we Hunt - by Quixote
There are those who would consider hunting to be a mere exercise in killing. To us who pursue the sport, it is so much more. Of course, we must confess to the enjoyment of it (otherwise, why would we continue?), but the actual 'kill' becomes less important than the underlying philosophies.
Not just camaraderie, or a love of the wild places, or exercise, the perfection of technique, the appreciation of nature or the things that we privileged few are exposed to as a result of being 'closer to nature' than others. These things can be experienced by those who don't shoot just as easily.
Rather, it is the amalgamation of a set of values and beliefs, including respect for the quarry and oneself, allied to an indefinable feeling of 'self' (perhaps even a subconscious awareness of our own mortality drives us to wield the power of life and death over other beings? That's possibly a bit too deep though)
But who can deny that feeling of melancholy we experience once the quarry has been retrieved and admired? Paradoxically, perhaps, that feeling is proportional to the size of the prey. The larger and more noble the quarry, the greater the melancholy, and yet greater too is the compulsion to hunt it
I think we can safely summarise by saying that hunting is a vocation that is far, far greater than just the sum of its parts. It's an intrinsically complex amalgamation of base emotions and instincts. Taken in isolation, each of these facets become ever more difficult to define in the context of hunting..........with each attempt resulting in an ever-more elusive conclusion. Yet when all the facets coincide, the result is a labyrinthine juxtaposition of ideals, morals and instincts that effectively elude definitive rationalisation."
http://www.greenwellies.org/
The greenwellies site is a pretty good forum.
Why we Hunt - by Quixote
There are those who would consider hunting to be a mere exercise in killing. To us who pursue the sport, it is so much more. Of course, we must confess to the enjoyment of it (otherwise, why would we continue?), but the actual 'kill' becomes less important than the underlying philosophies.
Not just camaraderie, or a love of the wild places, or exercise, the perfection of technique, the appreciation of nature or the things that we privileged few are exposed to as a result of being 'closer to nature' than others. These things can be experienced by those who don't shoot just as easily.
Rather, it is the amalgamation of a set of values and beliefs, including respect for the quarry and oneself, allied to an indefinable feeling of 'self' (perhaps even a subconscious awareness of our own mortality drives us to wield the power of life and death over other beings? That's possibly a bit too deep though)
But who can deny that feeling of melancholy we experience once the quarry has been retrieved and admired? Paradoxically, perhaps, that feeling is proportional to the size of the prey. The larger and more noble the quarry, the greater the melancholy, and yet greater too is the compulsion to hunt it
I think we can safely summarise by saying that hunting is a vocation that is far, far greater than just the sum of its parts. It's an intrinsically complex amalgamation of base emotions and instincts. Taken in isolation, each of these facets become ever more difficult to define in the context of hunting..........with each attempt resulting in an ever-more elusive conclusion. Yet when all the facets coincide, the result is a labyrinthine juxtaposition of ideals, morals and instincts that effectively elude definitive rationalisation."
http://www.greenwellies.org/
The greenwellies site is a pretty good forum.