Good Books
A remedy for the post-hunting season blues
By James SwanCalifornia has some of the longest waterfowl and quail seasons in the United States — but they both ended the end of January. You can still hunt wild pigs, pursue rabbits, and released bird clubs offer hunting for another couple months until spring turkey hunting season kicks in, but this is a down time for most hunters here, as it is elsewhere throughout North America.
Sportsmen's Expositions and fund-raising dinners held by conservation organizations keep the memories of hunts alive and inspire some dreams of the future, but as winter's chilling winds flow down from the Great Bear, aside from ice fishing, what's there to do to keep the spirits of the ardent hunter in the groove?
One solution to the post-hunting season blues is to find a good book, and I got some to suggest to you.
Dr. Robert Wegner of Wisconsin is the ultimate "professor of deer studies." The founder and former owner and editor of Deer and Deer Hunting magazine, Wegner's classic book, "Deer and Deer Hunting" (Stackpole, 1992) is probably the most read of all how-to books on the pursuit of whitetails.
Wegner may have an obsession with whitetails, but his Ph.D. is not in wildlife biology, it's in cultural history. And after selling the magazine in 1992, Wegner turned that scholarly training into assembling and interpreting the history of deer hunting in the US which he had been collecting for years.
His 2004 richly-illustrated book, "Legendary Deer Slayers" (Krause) reminds us of the long legacy of heroic deerslayers in American history from Natty Bumpo and John Audubon, up to the present.
Wegner has now come out with a companion volume, Classic Deer Camps, (Krause, 2008 — $29.99), that is equally eloquent and visually stunning. The 222 pages are a tasteful blend of stories, history, photos, paintings, and even occasional poems, all in honor king whitetail. When I read this book, I have to do so slowly, because each page stirs up memories of northern Michigan deer camps, and the colorful characters who inhabited them back when red and black checkered clothing was the fashion, and whether you got our buck or not was the biggest thing in a calendar year.
Jack Hirt is a waterfowl guy, and his hot-off the press book "'S No Geese Like Snow Geese," from IHUNT (2009, $29.95 hardback) is a warm-hearted collection of stories gleaned from following a life-long passion of waterfowling. While tips and techniques are sprinkled through the book, it's Hirt's storytelling voice that is the real draw, as he guides you through years of encounters with teal, black ducks, sea ducks, and his special bird, snow geese.
A third notable hunting book that found its way to me is "My Spirit Moose: The Place of the Hunter in the Nature of Things", by Ralph Gibbons (Xlibris, 2008; 172 pages; $29.99 hardcover, $19.99 softcover).
On a hunt in northern Ontario, Gibbins wounded a huge moose. He tracked it for several days and at one point it nearly ran him down, escaping without Gibbins being able to fire a shot. Finally, the moose seemed to vanish. This moose seemed almost like something surreal. It haunted him.
On returning home, his wife directed him to friend of hers who was a psychic, who said that the bull moose was not just any moose, but a "Spirit Moose," that had special significance to him. Coincidentally, Gibbins' wife had a wound on her leg, which the psychic said would heal, just like the wound on the spirit moose. And the wound on his wife's leg did heal.
While he was skeptical of psychics, Gibbins found that this encounter with the spirit moose sent him on a quest to research the meaning of hunting to himself and modern man, as well as better understand why this moose was so important to him.
Gibbins covers some of the same territory others have traveled in seeking out the place of hunting in modern times. This is always helpful in building consensus about motivational theory, as this is a subject that is all too often neglected by the modern hunting community. He also weaves in material about Canada that I have not seen in other similar books.
Psychics are like hunting guides. Sometimes they are right, and other times ...
Perhaps you have a special relationship with one or more species of animals — something that you can't explain, but it's there. Or maybe you know people who seem to have a feeling for deer, bear, geese, or even rabbits. A friend of mine has such a passion for sea duck hunting. Another friend has an obsession with chukar partridge in the desolate high desert. Rob Wegner, obviously, is a deer man. Jack Hirt a waterfowlers. Keith Fraser of San Rafael, Calif., is sturgeon man.
In all these people, their affinity for a species has led them to be ardent conservationists. Some anti-hunters might find it hard to believe that people who really do have a special rapport with animals can also hunt them, but actually all around the world beliefs about animal-human kinship, are at the very core of native cultural systems that have been guiding hunters since the Paleolithic. Stories of based on those beliefs are, in fact, the first wildlife management principles, like the Navajo Deerhuntingway.
Some will simply say that's for natives only, but when I was practicing as a psychotherapist in Washington and Oregon, I had a number of clients who had vivid dreams and strange encounters with animals after having participated in Indian ceremonies. It seemed as though the rituals opened doors to the deep pools of the collective unconscious, and made us aware of out common heritage of the soul.
Today, as a faculty member of a college that trains psychotherapists, my students also find similar inter-species experiences among people they study. Carl Jung called things like kinship with animals as part of the "ancestral soul" that we share with all those who came before us in your family tree.
Modern western culture and psychology have trouble explaining inter-species relationships. In native psychology, every person is supposed to have one or more totem or spirit guide animals. For example, totem poles among Pacific Northwest Coast Indian tribes are not just colorful wood carvings, they are statements that certain species of animals have an especially close relationship — a kinship relationship — with a family or clan of people. In native psychology, special species are your totem animals.
If exploring your kinship with nature is of interest, my book Nature As Teacher and Healer explores this in more depth for both modern and native peoples, as well as other aspects of nature kinship that modern psychology tends to avoid.
If you feel that you have a special relationship with wild animals, I encourage you to keep a journal of dreams and encounters with wild critters. Go back and visit it periodically, looking for patterns and meanings. In such a quest lies many personal keys that may reveal insights into how people come to love nature, if they are a hunter or not, as well as why hunters become conservationists. It is not guilt that ultimately makes a hunter become a conservationist, but love for nature, and sometimes even some "advice" from the animals themselves.
James Swan — who has appeared in more than a dozen feature films, including "Murder in the First" and "Star Trek: First Contact," as well as the television series "Nash Bridges," "Midnight Caller" and "Modern Marvels" — is the author of the book "In Defense of Hunting." Click to purchase a copy. To learn more about Swan, visit his Web site.
