Origin

            I must have been an age not far off 10, the vast majority of my time had been spent playing video games or watching YouTube videos of people playing the same video games. Looking back now I only thank the universe that I found hunting, and wild places. My journey into hunting doesn’t start with hunting from a very young age, I can’t say it has a multi-generational history, nor can I say that it runs in my blood. I wasn’t born into a hunting family; Hunting didn’t find me, I found hunting and not in the way you might expect.

            Lord of the rings, game of thrones and so many fantasy style books, tv shows, movies and games got me into hunting. Maybe not solely on their own, there were many other external factors that caused me to walk this path. But none are quite as interesting as fantasy. Fantasy is defined as the occurrence of imagining improbable or impossible things. While that doesn’t exactly pin it down too accurately, for me fantasy encompasses anything where swords, dragons, quests and the like, form the primary story. If I think back to where it started, it’d probably be with a game known as Assassin’s creed 3. This game basically revolves around a plot line taking creative liberties in the American revolution of the 1800’s. In this game you play a half Native American, with the ability to hunt various species of wild game, leaping through trees and fighting English soldiers like batman. Most hunters are reading this going what a load of nonsense. They’d be right, even a game that revolves around historical events and accuracy is utter nonsense. But somehow, I like to think those hours of gameplay as a young kid, stalking elk that had no seasonal velvet growth, and bears that would stop at nothing to kill you, I came to a bit of a wall. Thinking about it know I’d say it was disappointment, that the games mechanics could only go so in depth. There was no wind, no optics, no research or physicality involved. It was just a game. It got my gears turning. What was it like for real? to really hunt these animals? At this point I had shot many dozens of rabbits with my dad and brother. My hunger for adventure and bigger game was just growing. It was just the beginning.

            Subconsciously my desire to hunt had always been there, I think. I always loved animals. Not just puppies and cats but the insects, the frogs, the birds, anything that I could catch, and put in a box and call mine. Me and my brother were the same, two kids with insatiable desire for knowledge of natural systems. We’d watch wildlife documentaries, witnessing crocodiles swallowing impalas whole at the age of 5. I think a well-deserved thankyou to my parents for enabling me to watch these programs is required. At the other end of the scale, me and brother loved everything involved with hero’s, they could be holding laser rifles or steel swords. It didn’t really matter, we followed stories as we explored farm gulley’s, using willow sticks as swords. I Think somewhere along the line I was always thinking. What does the knight eat when he goes on his quests, I doubt there is a country pub round ever corner and I doubt he has the coin to live in such luxury. Is he trapping rabbits or hunting deer with a bow? These questions played in my mind behind the scenes for so long, eventually I had to answer them. And thus began my short-lived passion for bushcraft.

Don’t get me wrong I still love the theory of wilderness living, using traditional gear and practicing survival techniques. I still love that stuff, but if you asked me what I was now, I’d say I was a hunter. I find a lot of the bushcraft community tend to focus on almost anything other than hunting and the procurement of meat. Its understandable, in England, arguably where bushcraft was most popularized by the famous Ray Mears, hunting is a very hard thing to do because of heavy regulations. Its natural that the focus would move onto everything else like shelter building, carving, fire craft and navigation. I guess I just always found it frustrating, a humongous piece of the puzzle was missing, in a Hunter gatherers situation, food (primarily meat) governs his every day. It takes up the most of his time. Bushcraft just didn’t focus on that enough for me. It didn’t seem realistic. However, I practiced a lot of these skills, I bought a lot of very gimmicky leather and canvas gear that was pretty impractical. I got laughed at a fair amount for it but I didn’t care. I suffered a lot, carrying an oil skin tarp, tomahawk and only salami in a huge canvas pack with no external or internal frame. It swung me in an ultra-light direction later on, and importantly, gave me an appreciation for modern gear.

Slowly but surely I was working my way towards being a self-professed ‘hunter,’ I starting hunting with a longbow. Looking for goats and fallow deer. At the same time, my dad had bought a Howa .270. we had all shot plenty of rabbits but after seeing deer a handful of times we thought it was time to have a crack at larger game, oddly enough this wasn’t spurred on by me. I think I was still in my primitive weapons only mindset. As I grew older and was slowly becoming more and more logical in my approach. After a couple failed attempts of hunting with my dad, we went to a safari park and both me and my brother took our first deer. It would take me a very long time to grow out of my naive opinions on hunting. My anti 1080 opinions, anti-trophy hunting (strictly meat hunting) and general dislike of modern equipment eventually gave way to objective reasoning as I broadened my intake of information. I had joined the tramping club, I got my gun license before I got my driver’s license, and bought a sporting .303 with open sights. I began to shoot deer on my own, and missed many more. I fell in love with the old deer culler stories and kiwi hunting culture. Traction was being gained; a snowball effects of probably 12 years finally being realised. Soon I was heading into the Tararuas solo to hunt. Researching on topo maps and forums when I should have been paying attention in class. Reading every hunting book under the sun, honing my skills, confidence and persona. I had never shot nearly as many deer as so many of my peers, I felt guilty. Like I didn’t live up to my reputation of my school’s name, ‘The Bushman.’ But really, I was doing things that no one else could do or would want to do. I was hunting the back country without guidance. Carrying 3 days’ worth of gear on my back. Its was a far cry from shooting deer out the back of the farm. I had caught the hunting bug and I wasn’t letting it go.

So many people get sucked into fake worlds. I don’t think video games or tv shows are a plague on society or cause violent behaviour. I still play games every now and again, and I watched every episode of Game of Thrones a dozen times. They help people unwind. But I also know that there’s people out their like me who never got curious, never branched out into anything with substance. Movies like lord of the rings, have the ability to capture the mind in a good way, every time I slung my quiver over my shoulder or drew back my longbow, deep down I was emulating Legolas. All those things that mesmerise us as kids, they’re what dictates out passions as adults. Do I have some kind of genetic throwback to hunting? Is it hard wired in a way that makes me desire to chase and understand animals? Most people don’t have these desires, or are they just hidden. Can anybody say that they’d be hunters if they weren’t raised in a certain way. Did those years watching documentaries and catching crickets decided what would be my outcome? Is the source environmental or genetic? Could anyone have been a hunter? Or become one? These questions are equally unsolvable and significant questions that I think every person should think about. I’m glad I became who I am, looking back at what could have been is like staring of an abyss. Without hunting I’d be a far less curious, ambitious and happy person. I’m still learning, still perfecting, I have so many ambitions now and so little time to accomplish them. Whatever happens I know ill always think back to those crickets I used to catch and keep in my bedroom drawer. That’s what hunting is to me, its harnessing a little piece of the wild, and keeping it.