WHY DO YOU HUNT?

It’s a question I’m asked with monotonous regularity. At least I treat it as a question, genuine and courteous.

All too often it's intended as an accusation – “Oh how could you possibly hunt you heartless thug!”

Occasionally tho’, the question is sincere and it’s on such occasions that it becomes problematic.

The Georges River bushland of an idyllic childhood 

Since acquiring a public profile as a somewhat articulate defender of hunting as a legitimate cultural activity, people who are opposed to hunting assume I’m able to explain why people want to hunt in the modern era. 

The truth is, I cannot.  There is no one reason, nor any checklist of common reasons I’m aware of. 

Hunters seldom ask the question of each-other, but I suspect those for whom hunting is not simply a leisure activity or ‘sport’ have sought answers to the question within themselves, myself among them.

What follows then, constitutes nothing more authoritative than the story of why I hunt. 

I didn’t suddenly become a hunter one morning when the image of Elmer Fudd appeared to me in a piece of burnt toast. Like every other human being on the planet, I was born a hunter-gatherer.

In fact it has often occurred to me that the real question is not why do some people hunt, but rather why do so many men and women completely lose or deny their natural instincts to participate in the eternal struggle that keeps all things in balance.

I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney during the 1960s. At that time, nearby towns such as Camden and Campbelltown, both highly populated urban centres today, were little more than large farming communities. 

It was commonplace for men to head off to such handy locations on weekends, armed with the trusty .22 rifle or a box of ferrets, to get a few bunnies, which were brought home for the pot and often shared among grateful family and neighbours. 

Naturally enough, the kids went along with dad and sundry uncles to be taught basic hunting skills, both for the immediate reward of fresh meat and as a hedge against the poverty of the Great Depression, still looming large in the older generation’s consciousness. 

Many Australians today have no knowledge of the desperate poverty suffered during the ten misery-filled years between 1929 and 1939. Nor are they aware that, were it not for the ubiquitous .22 Lithgow rifle, thousands of Australian’s may have died for want of protein and the small income derived from rabbit skins sold to the felt trade.

But hunting with guns or ferrets were by no means the only food gathering activities practiced by my family and the wider community. 

Fishing expeditions on the Georges River were a regular afternoon activity for many schoolboys and school holiday camping destinations up or down the coast, were almost always determined by the quality and nature of their fishing grounds.

Within the camping areas themselves, small communities of friends from locations thither and yon, would meet annually to socialise, hunt and fish together. 

They would often store the products of these activities at local Fishermen’s Cooperatives or in Service Station cold rooms where they would remain, on ice, ‘til the end of the holidays.

When it was time to head home, the bounty would be shared out equally to be consumed until the next holiday replenished stores, and again much was distributed among family and neighbours, many of whom were elderly and unable to get away from Sydney themselves.

It was a simpler, safer and far more wholesome age, one in which a boy could occupy himself all day long without so much as a cent in the pockets of his cut-down jeans, and with nothing more elaborate in his hand than a broom handle to which a single barbed point had been attached with string.  

The rock-pools of Horse-Head Rock Wallaga Lake

With this spear he would wander estuary shallows looking for flounder, blue-swimmer crabs or even the odd lazy Flathead, or he might push his way through seemingly impenetrable mangroves in search of mud crabs.

Regardless of the quarry, his catch was destined to be consumed at camp by family, friends and pseudo aunts & uncles, all sat ‘round a fire swapping yarns about the day’s fishing adventures or things taken place at home since everyone last gathered.

Nights when the moon was deemed to be in the most propitious phase were particularly exciting, for these were nights for prawning.

Prawns were the equivalent of smoked salmon in the 1960s. There were no aquaculture farms like today, producing prawns for Woollies and Coles at just $10 a kilo. 

Prawns represented the very pinnacle of luxury foods, consumed regularly only by the wealthy, and by ordinary folk only at Christmas and even then, only sparingly. 

However, annual trips to the coast made king of us all on those nights when the moon was dark, the tide favourable, the wind still and grandpa’s old barometer said everything was just right....maybe. 

Such rare and mystical evenings saw our little camping community headed off to the banks of a lake, where the first item of business was the making of a bonfire, which would serve as a beacon for prawners after dark. 

The women folk would sit about the fire chatting happily (mostly about what their men forgot to pack) with an eye on any kids too small to negotiate reed beds and deep water, while the rest of us pushed “nut deep” as they used to say, through freezing water, a net in one hand and a pressure lamp hissing in the other.

The object was to deftly scoop the prawns from the water as they rose to your lamplight, or to convince them to swim voluntarily into your net, and for this everyone had his own foolproof method.  

Cuttagee Lake a kids' prawning and fishing paradise 

Mine involved placing the rim of my net on the sandy bottom, just behind my quarry.  Then, with my left foot, I would provoke the prawn into flight, which saw him flicking backward into my waiting net. 

It didn’t always work, nor were the prawns always plentiful, but when all the magic came together it meant a feast the like of which few today will ever experience. 

More often than not we would cook our catch in seawater boiled in huge pots suspended over the fire, which the womenfolk would have diligently managed ‘til it was nothing more than a pit of seething red hot embers.  

Three minutes in boiling seawater to which a little sugar had been added was all it took, before the prawns were scooped out and sprinkled with rock salt, which penetrated their shells as they cooled. 

Then the feast would begin, along with the consumption and comparison of various home brews, while the kids ran up and down the beach in the dark, exploring piles of rotting seaweed and looking for signs that sea monsters or mermaids came to shore in the night.

Of course none of this stuff happened without effort. There were campsites to be set-up, rods, reels and rifles to be maintained and spears to be straightened. 

There were ferret and prawning nets to be woven and repaired and new mantles to be fitted to lamps. All of it done by firelight and often to the sounds of guitar or accordion, or perhaps the latest Slim Dusty album as rendered a-cappella by Aunty Shirley after a few too many ‘sherbets’. 

There were observations to be made and debates to be had about the environment the winds and tides.  Bait needed to be collected, during which process much was learned about what dwelt beneath rocks or deep down in the muddy sand exposed by nipper pumps. 

There were lessons to be learned too, about community and working together toward a common goal, about sharing the proceeds of the hunt, whether it was fish, prawns and crabs, bunnies shot on nearby pasture or even the odd goat spit-roasted and consumed by all in an atmosphere of conviviality and achievement.

But perhaps the most important lessons we learned were those relating to confidence, cooperation, self-sufficiency, respect for the environment and humanity’s place in the eternal struggle that is life. 

Remove the rifles, the pressure lamps and the tents from the 1960s tableau I’ve described and it is almost indistinguishable from Aboriginal camp life. 

For many Australian families this remains the case today. However, in 2016 one can expect the public to admire and even venerate one group, while vehemently condemning and even hating the other, simply by virtue of race and skin colour. 

In fact many of the hunting and gathering skills so precocious to me, were taught to me by the Aboriginal kids I’d renew friendships with each school holiday trip to Bermagui. 

Where to find the best crabs and which ones to leave to ensure plentiful stocks. How to find bimblers (cockles) hidden in reed banks, with my feet. 

How to build fish traps and where to find abalone during ultra low summer tides. Which baits to use for various fish and how to treat the wounds many could inflict with their spines. 

The list, it seems, is endless!  

All this knowledge, all the skills I now preserve for future generations, were bequeathed to me, not as ‘sport’ or a hobby, but as a way of life practiced by countless generations, both Aboriginal and European, that went before. 

In my early life as an suburbanite, at school, in the workplace and in community activities, I would come to employ lessons in patience, cooperation, observation, tolerance, lateral thinking, self-sufficiency, resource conservation and respect, all learned from hunter gatherers of a variety of cultural origins.

I can’t help thinking the world would be a better place if we’d all searched for bimblers with our toes, or shared a spit-roasted meal with friends after a successful hunt.  Knowing how a meal came to be on one’s plate and at what cost to both the quarry and the hunter, somehow makes one appreciate it all the more.

I must say that the responsible, ethical hunters I associate with today are every bit as tolerant, welcoming and willing to share skills and resources as those I learned from a half century ago. 

Their critics, on the other-hand, are typically among the most hateful, intolerant, ignorant and sadistically violent people one could possibly imagine. 

The language they use in condemnation of hunters (white hunters that is) and the torture scenarios they concoct by way of punishment for anyone who shoots a rabbit, make the insane ravings of radical Islamists seem like heartfelt Christmas greetings by comparison.

But back to the question - why do I hunt?

I am a hunter – or perhaps more accurately, a hunter gatherer – because I know no other, better, life. 

I was raised by hunters, who were raised by hunters, who responsibly and skilfully exploited nature’s resources as men and women have done for countless eons.

Even if I never again raise a bow, cast a bait or wander rock pools at low tide, I will remain a hunter. 

It is the European Australian culture and law I was born to and I can no more relinquish it than Aboriginal Australians can relinquish their culture, except under the weight of bigotry, ignorance, intolerance and threats.

If you came by your hunting culture and traditions in ways other than I have described above, I would enjoy reading about them in the comments section below. 

Of particular interest to me are descriptions of hunting cultures and traditions brought to Australia from a non-Anglo Saxon backgrounds.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

©gmallard2016 all rights reserved

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