Deer Hunting Quotes

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.

Hunting party," Horace said Both Halt and Will looked at him sarcastically. "You think?" Will said. "Maybe they found the deer and brought him back to repair him.

The four cornerstones of the American political psyche are 1) emotion substituted for thought, 2) fear, 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda

Trees shaped like deer should not be ridden like benches if they get stuck up in other trees. No hunting farming allowed. Fishing only.

But you can't kill humans It's-- Evil? The world is evil Risika. Wolves hunt the stragglers in a group of deer. Vultures devour the fallen.Hyenas destroy the weak. Humans kill that which they fear. Survive and be strong, or die, cornered by your prey, trembling because the night is dark.

He stepped forward. “We’ve been together a year. How many times have you seen me hunt?” Umm. “How many times, Kate?” “None.” “That’s because I don’t hunt. I’m a male lion. I weigh six hundred pounds. Do you really expect me to scamper through the brush after deer? When I want a steak, I want a damn steak.

If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.

I go out on the side of a hill, maybe hunting deer, and sit there and see the shadow of night coming over the hill, and I can swear to you there is a part of me that is absolutely untouched by anything civilized. There's a part of me that has never heard of a telephone.

Philosophy without criticism is like hunting deer without a shotgun, so, if you want people to like you, avoid robust philosophical debate.

I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine. We live here together always in my house. I will bring you the best of fruits, the tenderest deer, the finest meats that roam the jungle. I will hunt for you. I am the greatest of the jungle fighters. I will fight for you. I am the mightiest of the jungle fighters. You are Jane Porter, I saw it in your letter. When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you.

Love was a magic fairy spell. Didn't the girls in my books hunt after love like it was a deer with a white tail? Didn't love wake the dead? Didn't that lady love the beast so hard he turned into a good-looking white fellow? That was what love did. It turned you into something else.

Sure, some find gunning down unsuspecting, innocent animals to be a real hoot. I mean, for Christ sake, they mantle the decapitated, formaldehyde-stuffed heads on the wall. Then, of course, there are the people who enjoy putting sunglasses or hats on it, even putting a blowout in its mouth as if it were an avid party animal. If it had any hands, there would surely be a plastic cup full of cheap beer in it, as well. We can’t forget that it would be named some horrendous name, such as Bill or Frank, something so plain, ordinary, and down-right ridiculous that makes me want to bitch-slap the perpetrators.

I have never known the mind of a wolf hunting a deer, but I imagine it must feel a little like this. The twisted excitement of seeing the weak and wounded cowering before you. The knowledge that, in this instant, you have the power to end its life or grant it mercy. In this moment, I am a god.

As humans, after all, we become that which we seek. Dairy farming makes men steady and reliable and temperate; deer hunting makes men quiet and fast and sensitive; lobster fishing makes men suspicious and wily and ruthless.

What white middle America loathes these days are poor and poorish people, especially the kind who look and sound like they just might live in a house trailer. They will swear on a stack of Lands' End catalogs that they are not bigots, but, human nature being what it is, we are all kicking someone else's dog around, whether we admit it or not.

We had to throw rocks," she said miserably. "I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn't want her anymore. There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so she'd have deer to hunt. Only she kept following and finally we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me and I felt so 'shamed, but it was right, wasn't it? The queen would have killed her." "It was right," her father said. "And even the lie was... not without honour.

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast.

I mean, I don’t want to pass judgment—I just wish my husband didn’t shoot deer.” “Oh, Mel, don’t worry. I’ve been hunting with your husband—the deer are completely safe.

Texas is a state that had once outlawed sodomy and fellatio, but is totally cool with men giving themselves golden showers in the name of deer hunting.

Wildlife, we are constantly told, would run loose across our towns and cities were it not for the sport hunters to control their population, as birds would blanket the skies without the culling services of Ducks Unlimited and other groups. Yet here they are breeding wild animals, year after year replenishing the stock, all for the sole purpose of selling and killing them, deer and bears and elephants so many products being readied for the market. Animals such as deer, we are told, have no predators in many areas, and therefore need systematic culling. Yet when attempts are made to reintroduce natural predators such as wolves and coyotes into these very areas, sport hunters themselves are the first to resist it. Weaker animals in the wild, we hear, will only die miserable deaths by starvation and exposure without sport hunters to control their population. Yet it's the bigger, stronger animals they're killing and wounding--the very opposite of natural selection--often with bows and pistols that only compound and prolong the victim's suffering.

Whether hunting is right or wrong, a spiritual experience, or an outlet for the killer instinct, one thing it is not is a sport. Sport is when individuals or teams compete against each other under equal circumstances to determine who is better at a given game or endeavor. Hunting will be a sport when deer, elk, bears, and ducks are... given 12-gauge shotguns. Bet we'd see a lot fewer drunk yahoos (live ones, anyway) in the woods if that happened.

Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient.

She had the feeling that she would be different from now on, that she could never go back and be the same person she had been. So who am I now? Somebody fierce, I think. Somebody who’d enjoy running through the darkness, underneath stars bright as miniature suns, and maybe even hunt deer. Somebody who can laugh and death

Republican or Democrat, this nation's affluent urban and suburban classes understand their bread is buttered on the corporate side. The primary difference between the two parties is that the Republicans pretty much admit that they grasp and even endorse some of the nastiest facts of life in America. Republicans honestly tell the world: "Listen in on my phone calls, piss-test me until I'm blind, kill and eat all of my neighbors right in front of my eyes, but show me the money! Let me escape with every cent I can kick out of the suckers, the taxpayers, and anybody else I can get a headlock on, legally or otherwise." Democrats, in contrast, seem content to catalog the GOP's outrages against the Republic, showing proper indignation while laughing at episodes of The Daily Show. But they stand behind the American brand: imperialism. They "support our troops," though you will be hard put to find any of them who have served alongside them or who would send one of their own kids off to lose an eye or an arm in Iraq. They play the imperial game, maintain their credit ratings, and plan to keep the beach house and the retirement investments if it means sacrificing every damned Lynndie England in West Virginia.

For us hunting wasn’t a sport. It was a way to be intimate with nature, that intimacy providing us with wild unprocessed food free from pesticides and hormones and with the bonus of having been produced without the addition of great quantities of fossil fuel. In addition, hunting provided us with an ever scarcer relationship in a world of cities, factory farms, and agribusiness, direct responsibility for taking the lives that sustained us. Lives that even vegans indirectly take as the growing and harvesting of organic produce kills deer, birds, snakes, rodents, and insects. We lived close to the animals we ate. We knew their habits and that knowledge deepened our thanks to them and the land that made them.

Much of the food he put on the table came from hunting—despite the fact that he was uncomfortable killing animals. “My dad cried every time he shot a deer,” Billie says, 'but we had to eat, so he did it.

In a matter of a moment the amount of sand in the upper part of the hour-glass had dwindled dramatically, the tiny grains were rushing through the opening, each grain more eager to leave then the last, time is just like people, sometimes it’s all it can do to drag itself along, but at others, it runs like a deer and leaps like a young goat, which, when you think about it, is not saying much, since the cheetah is the fastest of all the animals, and yet it has never occurred to anyone to say of another person He runs and jumps like a cheetah, perhaps because that first comparison comes from the magical late middle ages, when gentlemen went deer-hunting and no one had ever seen a cheetah running or even heard of its existence. Languages are conservative, they always carry their archives with them and hate having to be updated.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

One morning, soldiers shot a swan; they routinely hunted our tame Palace Park deer. No one ever knew what happened to our pet elephant.

Yeah, I went hunting once. Shot a deer in the leg. Had to kill it with a shovel. Took about an hour. Why do you ask?

Rune was a deer, and he was a hunter. Taking her measure, noting every detail and flaw, trying to decide if she would be worth the hunt.

Gold-haired Phoebus borne by Koios's daughter after she joined with Kronos's son Zeus god of high clouds and high name. Artemis swore the great oath of the gods to Zeus: 'By your head, I shall always be a virgin untamed, hunting on peaks of solitary mountains. Come, grant me this grace!' So she spoke. Then the father of the blessed gods nodded his consent. Now gods and mortals call her by her thrilling eponym, The Virgin Deer Hunter. Eros, loosener of limbs, never comes near her

He smiled, looking into the flames. "He used to sleep on the foot of my bed, bad breath and gas and all, and I even took him hunting." "It's odd to take a dog hunting?" "Max? Yeah, sort of like taking along a brass band. He saved a lot of deer from death.

They were just little families cooking beans and planting and hunting a deer now and then, and having babies and laying their old folks to rest, not harming anyone, just living...I know that Indians aren't no dirtier than any white folks and cleaner than some. Not stupid, either. But I saved my breath. The likes of her isn't going to listen nor be changed in the mind just from hearing sense. Some people sense is wasted on and that's purely a fact.

Woah! Lina, you look . . .” Thomas’s jaw literally dropped. But then he noticed Howard looking at him like he was a deer during hunting season and he quickly cleared his throat. “Sorry. Nice dress. You look really pretty.” “You look nice too.” Gray fitted suit. Hair styled messily. I could practically hear Addie spontaneously combusting from here.

Suddenly,I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky...at his college roommate's ranch, perhaps...where rhey hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me.

There are thousands and thousands of deer here. Soon it will be hunting season. “At least most people who hunt up here hunt for food, not sport,” she says. I watch them bound away as we turn down her dirt road. “Why don’t they farm deer?” I wonder. “Is it because they are too pretty?” She shakes her head. “It’s because they panic when penned.

Whoso List to Hunt Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, helas! I may no more. The vain travail hath worried me so sore, I am of them that furthest come behind. Yet may I by no means, my worried mind Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Since in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I, may spend his time in vain; And graven in diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about, "Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, And wild to hold, though I seem tame." Sir Thomas Wyatt

Asking a consumer about his opinion of your advertising is like asking a deer about the best way to hunt it.

If by fawning, you mean he’s a deer, I have a gun, and it’s hunting season, then I guess you’re right.

Parties do not lead revolutions. They follow them. And then only when forced to.

Remember when welfare mothers were robbing us all blind and driving Cadillacs?

Whereas the food debris of the Neanderthals shows a wide variety of animal bones, suggesting that they took whatever they could find, archaeological remnants from Homo sapiens show that they sought out particular kinds of game and tracked animals seasonally. All of this strongly suggests that they possessed a linguistic system sufficiently sophisticated to deal with concepts such as: “Today let’s kill some red deer. You take some big sticks and drive the deer out of the woods and we’ll stand by the riverbank with our spears and kill them as they come down towards us.” By comparison Neanderthal speech may have been something more like: “I’m hungry. Let’s hunt.

One of the countless symbolic or allegorical images of the sexual act is a deer hunt: A detail from a painting by the 16th-century German artist Cranach. The sexual implication of the deer hunt is underlined by a medieval English folk song called “The Keeper”: The first doe that he shot at he missed, And the second doe he trimmed he kissed, And the third ran away in a young man’s heart, She’s amongst the leaves of the green O.

Along with the concept of American Dream runs the notion that every man and woman is entitled to an opinion and to one vote, no matter how ridiculous that opinion might be or how uninformed the vote. It could be that the Borderer Presbyterian tradition of "stand up and say your rightful piece" contributed to the American notion that our gut-level but uninformed opinions are some sort of unvarnished foundational political truths. I have been told that this is because we redneck working-class Scots Irish suffer from what psychiatrists call "no insight".Consequently, we will never agree with anyone outside our zone of ignorance because our belligerent Borderer pride insists on the right to be dangerously wrong about everything while telling those who are more educated to "bite my ass!

There's a concept in Wisconsin called deer widows, which is basically when all the menfolk leave town to go on their [hunting] trips and the women are left behind, bewildered and confused, to do whatever it is women do without men. (Celebrate.)

As they were speaking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Odysseus had bred before setting out for Troy, but he had never had any enjoyment from him. In the old days he used to be taken out by the young men when they went hunting wild goats, or deer, or hares, but now that his master was gone he was lying neglected on the heaps of mule and cow dung that lay in front of the stable doors till the men should come and draw it away to manure the great close; and he was full of fleas. As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the other side of the yard, dashed a tear from his eyes without Eumaeus seeing it, and said: 'Eumaeus, what a noble hound that is over yonder on the manure heap: his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?' 'This dog,' answered Eumaeus, 'belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him. Servants never do their work when their master's hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.' So saying he entered the well-built mansion, and made straight for the riotous pretenders in the hall. But Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years…

NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back — For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown, Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own. Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear. And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair. When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail. When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away. Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man! If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride; Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies; And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will; But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill. Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same. Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same. Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own: He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone. Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law. Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey!

A mounted buffalo chase was one of the most exciting things a man could do. There was always the risk of injury and death, but having once hunted buffalo from the back of a horse, no man could resist trying it over and over again. It was one thing to wait in ambush along a trail for black-tailed or white-tailed deer or at a waterhole for the white-bellied pronghorn, but chasing buffalo was the pursuit of life itself, testing one’s nerves and skills to the limit as fast as a horse could run.

Outsong in the Jungle [Baloo:] For the sake of him who showed One wise Frog the Jungle-Road, Keep the Law the Man-Pack make For thy blind old Baloo's sake! Clean or tainted, hot or stale, Hold it as it were the Trail, Through the day and through the night, Questing neither left nor right. For the sake of him who loves Thee beyond all else that moves, When thy Pack would make thee pain, Say: "Tabaqui sings again." When thy Pack would work thee ill, Say: "Shere Khan is yet to kill." When the knife is drawn to slay, Keep the Law and go thy way. (Root and honey, palm and spathe, Guard a cub from harm and scathe!) Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, Jungle-Favour go with thee! [Kaa:] Anger is the egg of Fear-- Only lidless eyes see clear. Cobra-poison none may leech-- Even so with Cobra-speech. Open talk shall call to thee Strength, whose mate is Courtesy. Send no lunge beyond thy length. Lend no rotten bough thy strength. Gauge thy gape with buck or goat, Lest thine eye should choke thy throat. After gorging, wouldst thou sleep ? Look thy den be hid and deep, Lest a wrong, by thee forgot, Draw thy killer to the spot. East and West and North and South, Wash thy hide and close thy mouth. (Pit and rift and blue pool-brim, Middle-Jungle follow him!) Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, Jungle-Favour go with thee! [Bagheera:] In the cage my life began; Well I know the worth of Man. By the Broken Lock that freed-- Man-cub, ware the Man-cub's breed! Scenting-dew or starlight pale, Choose no tangled tree-cat trail. Pack or council, hunt or den, Cry no truce with Jackal-Men. Feed them silence when they say: "Come with us an easy way." Feed them silence when they seek Help of thine to hurt the weak. Make no bandar's boast of skill; Hold thy peace above the kill. Let nor call nor song nor sign Turn thee from thy hunting-line. (Morning mist or twilight clear, Serve him, Wardens of the Deer!) Wood and Water, Wind and Tree, Jungle-Favour go with thee! [The Three:] On the trail that thou must tread To the threshold of our dread, Where the Flower blossoms red; Through the nights when thou shalt lie Prisoned from our Mother-sky, Hearing us, thy loves, go by; In the dawns when thou shalt wake To the toil thou canst not break, Heartsick for the Jungle's sake; Wood and Water, Wind air Tree, Wisdom, Strength, and Courtesy, Jungle-Favour go with thee!

What could be better on the nearly empty return voyage than a weighty cargo, no matter how drunk and unsavory, a cargo that could load and unload itself and was actually willing to pay to serve as ballast? So unsavory were Borderer habits that upon arrival in America even fellow Calvinists, the New England Puritans, would not accept them.

man! Can you believe they actually allow this stuff to be sold over there? Glad we got laws against that crap in this country." I remind him that the socialist party is probably the largest political party on the planet. "Aw bullshit!" he said. I asked, "Then what the hell do you think is the largest party?" "The Republican Party of course! We're the only country with real political parties." Now this is from a guy who has an MBA from one of the South's universities, holds local office, and has influenced public affairs.

One morning, soldiers shot a swan; they routinely hunted our tame Palace Park deer. No one ever knew what happened to our pet

A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded — such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him. ‘What you have told us,’ says he, ‘is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. ‘In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains. ‘They said to each other, “It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her.” They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: “Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations.” They did so, and to their surprise found plants they had never seen before, but which from that ancient time have been constantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground they found maize; where her left had touched it they found kidney-beans; and where her backside had sat on it they found tobacco.’ The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said: ‘What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood.’ The Indian, offended, replied: ‘My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?

Getting a lousy education, then spending a lifetime pitted against your fellow workers in the gladiatorial theater of the free market economy does not make for optimism or open mindedness, both hallmarks of liberalism. It makes for a kind of bleak coarseness and inner degradation that allows working people to accept the American empire's wars without a blink.

I was told he could never go back, for he had shot his own grandfather out hunting and his family would impale him if he fell into their hands. Turks are never convinced by a hunting accident, especially if it is the heir who removes the owner of numerous flocks. All the same, Joseph was an honourable knight; perhaps his grandfather really did look like a deer.

In the words of the Mongolian creation myth: ‘There came a wild dog who was blue and gray and whose destiny was imposed on him by the heavens. His mate was a roe deer.Thus begins another love story. The wild dog with his courage and strength, the doe with her gentleness, intuition, and elegance. Hunter and hunted meet and love each other. According to the laws of nature, one should destroy the other, but in love there is neither good nor evil, there is neither construction nor destruction, there is merely movement. And love changes the laws of nature.

I took to the Kingswood the midsummer after the Dame died. I did not swear a vow, but I kept to myself just as strictly, living like a beast in the forest from one midsummer to the next, without fire or iron or the taste of meat. I lived as prey, and I learned from the dogs how to run, from the hare how to hide in the bracken, and from the deer how to go hungry. In sorrow and pride I exiled myself to Kingswood. I shunned fire for I feared the kingsmen would hunt me down, and so by the way of cold and hunger I came near to refusing life itself. I never thought to anger or please a god by it.

the food movement needs people who can do the dirty work: hunt wild boar, gut deer, eat invasive species, try insects, raise animals the right way, and pay for ethically raised meat. That role falls to us.

There is a neat economic explanation for the sexual division of labour in hunter-gatherers. In terms of nutrition, women generally collect dependable, staple carbohydrates whereas men fetch precious protein. Combine the two – predictable calories from women and occasional protein from men – and you get the best of both worlds. At the cost of some extra work, women get to eat some good protein without having to chase it; men get to know where the next meal is coming from if they fail to kill a deer. That very fact makes it easier for them to spend more time chasing deer and so makes it more likely they will catch one. Everybody gains – gains from trade. It is as if the species now has two brains and two stores of knowledge instead of one – a brain that learns about hunting and a brain that learns about gathering.

My heart was crazy now; it's too complicated to know what it was beating for, and how much of it was him and how much of it was the hunting - I think I cared about the deer that got shot - but it didn't matter then. Something was there and its source was irrelevant. It was so easy to feel nothing, all the time, and I held on as hard as I could, because the worst thing, I thought, now, would be for it to go away.

Not a tree of it left. I’ve been to Tear and Illian, too. Different names, and no memories. There’s only pasture for their horses where the grove was at Tear, and at Illian the grove is the King’s park, where he hunts his deer, and none allowed inside without his permission. It has all changed, Rand. I fear very much that I will find the same everywhere I go. All the groves gone, all the memories gone, all the dreams dead.

Somewhere along the line the American love affair with wilderness changed from the thoughtful, sensitive isolationism of Thoreau to the bully, manly, outdoorsman bravado of Teddy Roosevelt. It is not for me, as an outsider, either to bemoan or celebrate this fact, only to observe it. Deep in the male American psyche is a love affair with the backwoods, log-cabin, camping-out life. There is no living creature here that cannot, in its right season, be hunted or trapped. Deer, moose, bear, squirrel, partridge, beaver, otter, possum, raccoon, you name it, there's someone killing one right now. When I say hunted, I mean, of course, shot at with a high-velocity rifle. I have no particular brief for killing animals with dogs or falcons, but when I hear the word 'hunt' I think of something more than a man in a forage cap and tartan shirt armed with a powerful carbine. In America it is different. Hunting means 'man bonding with man, man bonding with son, man bonding with pickup truck, man bonding with wood cabin, man bonding with rifle, man bonding above all with plaid'.

Last night I dreamed of the "happy hunting ground." I passed through a place of bones that looked human, but weren't--the skulls were wrong. Then I came to a place where the days were the best of every season, the sweetest air and water in spring, then the dry heat where deer make dust in the road, the fog of fall with good leaves. And you could shoot without a gun, never kill, but the rabbits would do a little dance, all as if it were a game, and they were playing it too. Then winter came with heavy powder-snow, and big deer, horses, goats and buffaloes--all white--snorted, tossed their heads, and I lay down with my Army blanket, made my bed in the snow, then dreamed within the dream. I dreamed I was at Fleety's, and she told me the bones were poor people killed by bandits, and she took me back to the place, and under a huge rock where no light should have shown, a cave almost, was a dogwood tree. It glowed the kind of red those trees get at sundown, the buds were purple in that weird light, and a madman came out with an axe and chopped at the skulls, trying to make them human-looking. Then I went back to the other side of both dreams. --from a letter to his mother, Helen Pancake, where he describes a dream that seems to encapsulate the play between violence and gentleness in his life.

Looking at Great-Great Grandpa Baldwin's photograph, I think to myself: You've finally done it. It took four generations, but you've finally goddamned done it. Gotten that war against reason and uppity secularists you always wanted. Gotten even for the Scopes trial, which they say was one of many burrs under your saddle until your last breath. Well, rejoice, old man, because your tribes have gathered around America's oldest magical hairball of ignorance and superstition, Christian fundamentalism, and their numbers have enabled them to suck so much oxygen out of the political atmosphere that they are now acknowledged as a mainstream force in politics. Episcopalians, Jews, and affluent suburban Methodists and Catholics, they are all now scratching their heads, sweating, and swearing loudly that this pack of lower-class zealots cannot possibly represent the mainstream--not the mainstream they learned about in their fancy sociology classes or were so comfortably reassured about by media commentators who were people like themselves. Goodnight, Grandpa Baldwin. I'll toast you from hell.

Henry had already gotten his deer, a good-sized doe, and Jonesy had an idea Pete cared a lot more about making sure of the beer supply than he did about getting his own deer—for Pete Moore, hunting was a hobby, beer a religion.

I was thinking of Hecate at the crossroads with her burning torches and keys, Medusa with her snakes and fatal gaze, Artemis with her hunting dogs and deer, Aphrodite with her doves, Demeter with her mares, Athena with her owl. Whenever I saw eccentric and sometimes mentally fragile older women feeding pigeons on the pavement of every city in the world, I thought, Yes, there she is, she is one of those cut-down goddesses who has become demented by life.

Hunt game? With pearl-handled revolvers?” I asked, incredulous. “Isn’t that a bit…I dunno…fancy? Do I just run out into the forest with my pearl-handled revolvers, or do I invite some deer to a cocktail party and then gun them down?

Indian Creek, in its whole length, flows through a magnificent forest. There dwells on its shore a tribe of Indians, a remnant of the Chickasaws or Chickopees, if I remember rightly. They live in simple huts, ten or twelve feet square, constructed of pine poles and covered with bark. They subsist principally on the flesh of the deer, the coon, and opossum, all of which are plenty in these woods. Sometimes they exchange venison for a little corn and whisky with the planters on the bayous. Their usual dress is buckskin breeches and calico hunting shirts of fantastic colors, buttoned from belt to chin. They wear brass rings on their wrists, and in their ears and noses. The dress of the squaws is very similar.

Inconceivable though it may seem to urban Americans, it is easily possible for many working Americans not to know a person of the liberal persuasion. Why? Partly because most middle-class liberals are uncomfortable being around people like Nance.

He fell on his side with a sigh and flicked away the thong underwear with both idle curiosity and distaste. "And how good to leave us this slingshot with which to hunt for our dinner." "Yes," I said dryly. "I'll go now and take down a deer with it.

That’s because I don’t hunt. I’m a male lion. I weigh six hundred pounds. Do you really expect me to scamper through the brush after deer? When I want a steak, I want a damn steak. I don’t want to chase it around the woods for two hours and then eat it raw. I have food brought to me, and the only time I get off my ass is when something threatens the Pack. I’ve been on exactly one hunt in the last three years. I went because I had to go, and once they ran off, I found a nice warm rock and had myself a nap in the sun.

Bishop’s book tells the story of how we’ve geographically, politically, and even spiritually sorted ourselves into like-minded groups in which we silence dissent, grow more extreme in our thinking, and consume only facts that support our beliefs—making it even easier to ignore evidence that our positions are wrong. He writes, “As a result, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear, and the neighborhoods we live in.” This sorting leads us to make assumptions about the people around us, which in turn fuels disconnection. Most recently, a friend (who clearly doesn’t know me very well) told me that I should read Joe Bageant’s book Deer Hunting with Jesus. When I asked him why, he answered, with contempt in his voice, “So you can better understand the part of America that college professors have never seen and will never understand.” I thought, You don’t know a damn thing about me, my family, or where I come from.

A number of animals were considered particularly sacred to Artemis.  Chief amongst these were the deer, the dog and the bear, but they also included the boar, the hare and possibly the lion.  Several birds were also considered sacred to her, including the partridge, quail and buzzard.

The mortgage industry, a mutant monster organism of lapsed lending standards and arrant grift on the grand scale, is going to implode like a death star under the weight of these nonperforming loans and drag every tradable instrument known to man into the quantum vacuum of finance that it creates.

Here, Kells. I brought you something,” he said unassumingly and held out three mangos. “Thanks. Um, dare I ask where you got them?” “Monkeys.” I stopped in mid-brush. “Monkeys? What do you mean monkeys?” “Well, monkeys don’t like tigers because tigers eat monkeys. So, when a tiger comes around, they jump up in the trees and pummel the tiger with fruit or feces. Lucky for me today they threw fruit.” I gulped. “Have you ever…eaten a monkey?” Ren grinned at me. “Well, a tiger does have to eat.” I dug a rubber band out of the backpack so I could braid my hair. “Ugh, that’s disgusting.” He laughed. “I didn’t really eat a monkey, Kells. I’m just teasing you. Monkeys are repellant. They taste like meaty tennis balls and they smell like feet.” He paused. “Now a nice juicy deer, that is delectable.” He smacked his lips together in an exaggerated way. “I don’t think I really need to hear about your hunting.” “Really? I quite enjoy hunting.” Ren froze into place. Then, almost imperceptibly, he lowered his body slowly to a crouch and balanced on the balls of his feet. He placed a hand in the grass in front of him and began to creep closer to me. He was tracking me, hunting me. His eyes locked on mine and pinned me to the spot where I was standing. He was preparing to spring. His lips were pulled back in a wide grin, which showed his brilliant white teeth. He looked…feral. He spoke in a silky, mesmerizing voice. “When you’re stalking your prey, you must freeze in place and hide, remaining that way for a long time. If you fail, your prey eludes you.” He closed the distance between us in a heartbeat. Even though I’d been watching him closely, I was startled at how fast he could move. My pulse started thumping wildly at my throat, which was where his lips now hovered as if he were going for my jugular. He brushed my hair back and moved up to my ear, whispering, “And you will go…hungry.” His words were hushed. His warm breath tickled my ear and made goose bumps fan out over my body. I turned my head slightly to look at him. His eyes had changed. They were a brighter blue than normal and were studying my face. His hand was still in my hair, and his eyes drifted down to my mouth. I suddenly had the distinct impression that this was what it felt like to be a deer. Ren was making my nervous. I blinked and swallowed dryly. His eyes darted back up to mine again. He must have sensed my apprehension because his expression changed. He removed his hand from my hair and relaxed his posture. “I’m sorry if I frightened you, Kelsey. It won’t happen again.” When he took a step back, I started breathing again. I said shakily, “Well, I don’t want to hear any more about hunting. It freaks me out. The least you could do is not tell me about it. Especially when I have to spend time with you outdoors, okay?” He laughed. “kells, we all have some animalistic tendencies. I loved hunting, even when I was young.” I shuddered. “Fine. Just keep your animalistic tendencies to yourself.” He leaned toward me again and pulled on a strand of my hair. “Now, Kells, there are some of my animalistic tendencies that you seem to like.” He started making a rumbling sound in his chest, and I realized that he was purring. “Stop that!” I sputtered. He laughed, walked over to the backpack, and picked up the fruit. “So, do you want any of this mango or not? I’ll wash it for you.” “Well, considering you carried it in your mouth all that way just for me. And taking into account the source of said fruit. Not really.” His shoulders fell, and I hurried to add, “But I guess I could eat some of the inside.” He looked up at me and smiled. “It’s not freeze-dried.” “Okay. I’ll try some.

FEAR OF DEATH LEADS TO two kinds of fears as it transforms all living creatures either into predator or prey. The fear of scarcity haunts the predator as it hunts for food; the fear of predation haunts the prey as it avoids being hunted. Nature has no favourites. Both the lion and the deer have to run in order to survive.

So far he’s never been bit, but there was once, deer hunt, climbing a bluff and he’d slipped, rolled down a shale slide into some kind of grotto and the whole place started buzzing. Big rattlesnake nest, twenty or so, all small but they’ll kill you just the same and he’d scrambled and cranked round after round through the bolt, felt a hot white pain in his leg, dropped the gun and jumped. Once he was out of it he pulled down his pants, found the bite but it wasn’t a bite, just the one hole and too big, something lodged under the skin. He cut at it for a time. Piece of copper jacket from one of his own bullets, turned out. Stood there, sun in his eyes, blood on his hands, pants full of blood and bunched at his ankles, happy as he’d been in a while. - "Any Deadly Thing

The master and mistress of the house and the rest of the Blood -even the Crux himself- brought our food, poured the wine, did our bidding. The centerpiece was a roasted stag. crowned with gilded antlers and stuffed with songbirds; they had hunted well. We were forbidden to kill the deer that fattened on our coleworts and stole our grain, and the venison tasted all the better for the salt of revenge.

One of the most asked questions about the stories told in my family is “How much of that is true?” Of course, the answer depends on who is telling the story. There is no doubt that Uncle Si is the most entertaining storyteller among the Robertson clan. One of his most famous stories is about the time his secondhand smoke made a deer cough. The story came about after many members of my family jokingly refused to let Si hunt our deer stands because of the odor he left behind. Deer hunters know the best survival defense for a deer is his sense of smell. Si seems to think that is just a superstition and has a coughing deer story to prove it. Even though Si has quit smoking, we encourage him to hunt his own stand with the wind blowing in his face for best results. What makes Si’s stories so funny is his passion and mannerisms in telling them.

I found the same excitement in hunting frogs and deer for the first time. The first time I went frog-hunting, I was dumb-founded that someone could have that much fun without doing something immoral or illegal. I was the ice chest man on my first hunt, which basically meant every time my dad caught a frog I would quickly open the lid and then shut it before the frog jumped out. I realized the best part was being the catcher. I don’t want to brag, but I became one of the greatest frog catchers on the planet.

The tide of our national meanness rises incrementally, one brutalizing experience at a time, inside one person at a time in a chain of working-class Americans stretching back for decades. Back to the terror-filled nineteen-year-old girl from Weirton, West Virginia, who patrols the sweat-smelling halls of one of the empire's far-flung prisons at midnight. Back to my neighbor's eighty-year-old father, who remembers getting paid $2 apiece for literally cracking open the heads of union organizers at our textile and sewing mills during the days of Virginia's Byrd political machine. (It was the Depression and the old man needed the money to support his family.) The brutal way in which America's hardest-working folks historically were forced to internalize the values of a gangster capitalist class continues to elude the left, which, with few exceptions, understands not a thing about how this political and economic system has hammered the humanity of ordinary working people. Much of the ongoing battle for America's soul is about healing the souls of these Americans and rousing them from the stupefying glut of commodity and spectacle. It is about making sure that they—and we—refuse to accept torture as the act of "heroes" and babies deformed by depleted uranium as the "price of freedom." Caught up in the great self-referential hologram of imperial America, force-fed goods and hubris like fattened steers, working people like World Championship Wrestling and Confederate flags and flat-screen televisions and the idea of an American empire. ("American Empire! I like the sound of that!" they think to themselves, without even the slightest idea what it means historically.)

Raphael leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Have you ever seen a lion hunt a herd?” “No.” “They are very single-minded. When a lion stalks a herd, he sneaks in close, lies down, and surveys them to choose his victim. He takes his time. The deer or buffalo have no idea he’s near. He finds his prey and then he explodes from his hiding place and grabs it. Even if another, perfectly serviceable animal ends up within his reach, he isn’t going to alter his course. He has chosen, and he would rather go hungry than change his mind. A dumb way to live, if you ask me, but that’s their nature.

My mind went back to Bambi. If there were too many deer, then hunters were given the opportunity to shoot them. Cheating husbands were also a problem in the balance of nature, and there were far too many of them. Why couldn't there be open season on cheating husbands? Deceived wives could purchase a gun, take lessons, and receive a cheating-husband hunting license complete with a big red A label to tie to the man's zipper after the kill. Open season could be scheduled months in advance to give the husbands a fighting chance. They could hide in refuges or stay home and take their chances at being shot through the living room window as they watched Monday Night Football.

The Law of the Jungle NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back — For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown, Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own. Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear. And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair. When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail. When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away. Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man! If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride; Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies; And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will; But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill. Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same. Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same. Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own: He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone. Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law. Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey!

And so begins the strangest campaign in military history : a competent general and a seasoned army of eighty thousand men chased like deer, in their own country, by an invader who used his vastly smaller forces more like a pack of hunting dogs than men; laying them on the scent rather than mapping routes, caring no more for their feelings, their fatigues, their lives, than a hunter who is rather fond of a good dog. Up and down the map of East Germany they ran, hunter and hunted, in an Alexandrian zig-zag of the best manner. The only strategical question in Charles’ science was “ Where are they ? ” Never, “ How many ? How entrenched ? ” At last Charles had made war into what schoolboys dreamed it ought to be.

This morning when I looked out the roof window before dawn and a few stars were still caught in the fragile weft of ebony night I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me: a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting, and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer in this city far from the hammock of my mother’s belly. It works, of course, and deer came into this room and wondered at finding themselves in a house near downtown Denver. Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song to get them back, to get all of us back, because if it works I’m going with them. And it’s too early to call Louis and nearly too late to go home. [from poem, "Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On"]

BECAUSE MY FATHER WASN’T allowed to hunt hippies, he decided to settle for hunting deer instead. It was a good compromise, all things considered. Deer were the pacifists of the animal kingdom. They sat around doing weeds all day and didn’t even try to get jobs. The males of the species pranced and ate salad and had a hundred kids they didn’t know about. In November, a long line of them marched to the polls, leaves held delicately in their mouths, each marked with the name of the Green Party candidate. A deer, in short, was a peace sign made out of meat, and the only way to fight it was with bullets. “PROPAGANDA!” he once burst out suddenly, when he caught Mary and me watching Bambi in the living room, curled up together on the couch. If there was any fictional character my father hated, it was Bambi.

The underlying reason why this transition was piecemeal is that food production systems evolved as a result of the accumulation of many separate decisions about allocating time and effort. Foraging humans, like foraging animals, have only finite time and energy, which they can spend in various ways. We can picture an incipient farmer waking up and asking: Shall I spend today hoeing my garden (predictably yielding a lot of vegetables several months from now), gathering shellfish (predictably yielding a little meat today), or hunting deer (yielding possibly a lot of meat today, but more likely nothing)? Human and animal foragers are constantly prioritizing and making effort-allocation decisions, even if only unconsciously. They concentrate first on favorite foods, or ones that yield the highest payoff. If these are unavailable, they shift to less and less preferred foods.

The Neanderthals had it tougher; their long spears and canyon ambushes were useless against the fleet prairie creatures, and the big game they preferred was retreating deeper into the dwindling forests. Well, why didn’t they just adopt the hunting strategy of the Running Men? They were smart and certainly strong enough, but that was the problem; they were too strong. Once temperatures climb above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a few extra pounds of body weight make a huge difference—so much so that to maintain heat balance, a 160-pound runner would lose nearly three minutes per mile in a marathon against a one hundred-pound runner. In a two-hour pursuit of a deer, the Running Men would leave the Neanderthal competition more than ten miles behind. Smothered in muscle, the Neanderthals followed the mastodons into the dying forest, and oblivion. The new world was made for runners, and running just wasn’t their thing. Privately,

There was major u.s. imperialist support for Italian, Spanish and German fascism before and even during World War II, as opposed to support for fascism at home. Fascism was distinct from racism or white supremacy, which were only "as American as apple pie." Neither the ruling class nor the white masses had any real need for fascism. What for? There was no class deadlock paralyzing society. There already was a longstanding, thinly disguised settler dictatorship over the colonial proletariat in North America. In the u.s. settlerism made fascism unnecessary. However good or bad the economic situation was, white settlers were getting the best of what was available. Which was why both the white Left and white Far Right alike back then in the 1930s were patriotic and pro-American. Now only the white Left is. The white Left here is behind in understanding fascism. When they're not using the word loosely and rhetorically to mean any repression at all (like the frequent assertions that cutting welfare is "fascism"! I mean, give us a break!), they're still reciting their favorite formula that the fascists are only the "pawns of the ruling class". No, that was Nazism in Germany, maybe, though even there that's not a useful way of looking at it. But definitely not here, not in that old way. The main problem hasn't been fascism in the old sense – it's been neocolonialism and bourgeois democracy! The bourgeoisie didn't need any fascism at all to put Leonard Peltier away in maximum security for life or Mumia on death row. They hunted down the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement like it was deer hunting season, while white America went shopping at the mall – all without needing fascism. And the steady waterfall of patriarchal violence against women, of rapes and torture and killings and very effective terrorism on a mass scale, should remind us that the multitude of reactionary men have "equal opportunity" under "democracy", too.

Oak trees can churn out roughly 500 to 1,000 pounds (225 to 450 kg) of acorns a year, albeit during a brief window of a few weeks. A Native American family living in California a few centuries ago, collecting over the span of two or three weeks, could set aside enough acorns to last two or three years. They could gather acorns from at least seven different species of oak trees, preferring oily acorns over sweet ones, and knew two methods to purge them of noxious tannins. The common technique was to de-hull the acorns, pound the acorn meat into mush and drop it into a pit, then douse the mush with water heated by hot stones until all the bitterness was leached. Alternatively, acorns could be buried in mud by streams or swamps for several months, after which they would become edible. To complement their protein-deficient acorn cuisine, Native Americans in California hunted salmon, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, and black bear and gathered earthworms, caterpillars (smoked and then boiled), grasshoppers (doused with salty water and roasted in earth pits), and bee and wasp larvae.15 The

Much like his birth, Cole’s first hunting experience was a little more traumatic. He was give years old and we were getting ready to have our Christmas party at Phil’s house in 2002. Because we hunt on private land, we’re allowed to shoot deer from our vehicles. Cole and I climbed into my truck right before dark, and I drove next to the woods. As I was explaining safety and other things about hunting to him, a deer walked right into the middle of a trail. We hadn’t been there for five minutes before the deer showed up! I looked at Cole and pointed toward the front of the truck. Without saying anything, I leaned my gun out the driver’s-side window of my truck and shot the deer. The deer did a double backflip and hit the ground. I looked at Cole and his mouth was wide open. I could have picked his jaw up from the floorboard. “That’s how you do it, son,” I told him. Cole didn’t say anything. I figured his ears were still ringing, and I instantly regretted not telling him to cover them. It ended up being a pretty traumatic experience for him, and I feared he’d never want to go hunting again. In hindsight, he might have been a little too young to witness something like that.

When pressed, hunters who claim that they just want “to be out in the wilderness,” will admit that the kill is essential—or at least the hope of a kill. As it turns out, there is no correlation between hunting and hiking, climbing, backpacking, kayaking, or any other outdoor activity. Hunters do not purposefully linger in the woods after a kill, but quickly begin the process of preparing to head home with the corpse. For hunters, the kill is the climax—the most important moment. They are not driving into the woods (or sometimes actually walking) for the sake of beauty, but in the hope of a kill. The kill can be likened to male orgasm. Sex is traditionally thought to be over when the man has an orgasm, and the hunt is never so decisively over as it is after a successful kill. As a teacher, I impatiently listened to a young man matter-of-factly defend the importance of hunting because he found the experience “orgasmic.” From his point of view, all that mattered was how exciting and wonderful the experience was for him. The “side affects” of the man’s preferred action—the experience of the deer (and the woman)—are deemed to be so irrelevant that they are not even mentioned.

On the Larch Scape humans had never managed to extend a sizeable population across entire continents, so much of the megafauna considered to be a distant Pleistocene memory on other Scapes had lingered. The mammoths, giant sloths and woolly rhinoceroses were extinct, but there were hyenas, fanged cats and amphicyonids hunting bison, omnivorous deer, glyptodons, great boars, and wild horses too large for men to ride south of the Laurentian Sea, in what was called Illinois on Malone’s Scape. The island of Manhattan was not an island due to the lower sea level, and it was uninhabited by men, an impenetrable mass of old growth larch trees ruled by creatures thought to be related to the raccoon. The Larch ‘raccoon’ was frequently said to be too intelligent to domesticate; in groups they would destroy shelters and eat the faces of sleeping humans. The atrox cat had been genetically sequenced in cooperation with Austral scientists years ago and determined to be more closely related to the lion than the cougar, and it had enjoyed a range extending north of the Laurentian Sea up to the glaciers until very recently. It was a dark creature with a thick mane in both genders; besides the elements, their prides were the deadliest things to encounter in the far north.

The first time I saw your father, I’d just come home from the hunt. The forests of Calydon are thick with game, but the deer are so clever that it was the first time I’d managed to bring one down. I was so proud of what I’d done that I insisted on carrying the buck into the throne room myself and dropped it at my father’s feet before I noticed we had a guest.” She smiled at the memory. “I’ll bet Father thought you were Artemis herself,” I said. That made my mother laugh. “Not Artemis. You know how he feels about her. But he did say he mistook me for one of her huntress nymphs. That was just before he told me he had to marry me or die.” I made a face. “Father said that?” “Men say many things when they want to win a woman. Whether or not they mean what they say…” She shrugged. “Your father meant it. Poor soul, it seemed like he would die, because none of my father’s advisers thought I should marry him. Tyndareus came to Calydon as a landless exile; his brother had stolen his kingdom.” The story of Father’s early trouble and final triumph was so well known that the palace stones could tell it. “Did you come to Sparta to marry him after he won back his crown?” I asked. “Or did he have to go back to Calydon for you?” “Are you asking because you want to know, or because you want to distract me from what we need to talk about?

Wendell was no sooner gazing at the silver sewing needles than he was brushing away a tear. "They are like my father's," he said wonderingly. "I remember the flicker of them in the darkness as we all sat together by the ghealach fire, with the trees surrounding us. He would bring them everywhere, even the Hunt of the Frostveiling---that is the first hunt of autumn, the largest of the year, when even the queen and her children roam through the wilds with spears and swords, riding our best---oh, I don't know what you would call them in your language. They are a kind of faerie fox, black and golden together, which grow larger than horses. My brothers and sisters and I would crowd round the fire to watch him weave nets from brambles and spidersilk. And all the moorbeasts and hag-headed deer would cower at the sight of those nets, though they barely blinked at the whistle of our arrows." He fell silent, gazing at them with his eyes gone very green. "Well," I said, predictably at a loss for an answer to this, "I hope they are of use to you. Only keep them away from any garments of mine." He took my hand, and then, before I knew what he was doing, lifted it to his mouth. I felt the briefest brush of his lips against my skin, and then he had released me and was back to exclaiming over his gifts. I turned and went into the kitchen in an aimless haste, looking for something to do, anything that might distract me from the warmth that had trailed up my arm like an errant summer breeze

As they spoke, 290 Argos, the dog that lay there, raised his head and ears. Odysseus had trained this dog but with no benefit—he left too soon to march on holy Troy. The master gone, boys took the puppy out to hunt wild goats and deer and hares. But now he lay neglected, without an owner, in a pile of dung from mules and cows—the slaves stored heaps of it outside the door, until they fertilized the large estate. So Argos lay there dirty,300 covered with fleas. And when he realized Odysseus was near, he wagged his tail, and both his ears dropped back. He was too weak to move towards his master. At a distance, Odysseus had noticed, and he wiped his tears away and hid them easily, and said, “Eumaeus, it is strange this dog is lying in the dung; he looks quite handsome, though it is hard to tell if he can run, or if he is a pet, a table dog,310 kept just for looks.” Eumaeus, you replied, “This dog belonged to someone who has died in foreign lands. If he were in good health, as when Odysseus abandoned him and went to Troy, you soon would see how quick and brave he used to be. He went to hunt in woodland, and he always caught his prey. His nose was marvelous. But now he is in bad condition, with his master gone, long dead. The women fail to care for him.320 Slaves do not want to do their proper work, when masters are not watching them. Zeus halves our value on the day that makes us slaves.” With that, the swineherd went inside the palace, to join the noble suitors. Twenty years had passed since Argos saw Odysseus, and now he saw him for the final time— then suddenly, black death took hold of him.

What in the world happened?” Phil asked me. “Did you flip your truck?” “It’s a long story,” I said. “Let’s go duck-hunting.” We ended up having one of our best duck hunts of the season. When we returned to Phil’s house, I filled up about twenty bottles of water. My busted radiator leaked the entire way home, and I had to stop every couple of miles to fill it up with water. There was a body shop close to our house, so I pulled in there before going home. “Well, whatcha think?” I asked the mechanic. “Well, we can fix it,” he said. “I can get you a radiator.” “What’s it going to cost me?” I asked. “Well, what are you going to do with the deer?” he said. “I can get you a radiator for the deer.” About that time, the mechanic’s assistant walked up to my truck. “What are you going to do with the rack of horns?” the assistant asked me. “Hey, if you can fix my door so it will close, you can have the horns,” I told him. There’s nothing quite like good, old-fashioned redneck bartering. Unfortunately, I didn’t get off so easy with the damage to Missy’s car. In all the excitement of the day, I’d completely forgotten to tell her that I’d wrecked her car. When I got home, she told me somebody pulled in the driveway and sideswiped it. I couldn’t tell a lie. “You remember how you scolded me about forgetting to turn out the carport light?” I said. “Yeah,” she said. “Well, this is what happens when you start worrying about small things like that,” I said. A big argument ensued, but Missy took her car to the body shop, and it cost us several hundred dollars to fix it. Two days after we picked up her car, I was driving it to Phil’s house. Wouldn’t you know it? Another deer jumped in front of me in the road. I totaled Missy’s car. We had to buy her a new car, and my truck never drove the same after it was wrecked, either. I sold it for—you guessed it—a thousand bucks.

{Excerpt from a message from one of the Cherokee chiefs - Onitositaii, commonly known as Old Tassle} ... 'If, therefore, a bare march, or reconnoitering a country is sufficient reason to ground a claim to it, we shall insist upon transposing the demand, and your relinquishing your settlements on the western waters and removing one hundred miles back towards the east, whither some of our warriors advanced against you in the course of last year's campaign. Let us examine the facts of your present eruption into our country, and we shall discover your pretentions on that ground. What did you do? You marched into our territories with a superior force; our vigilance gave us no timely notice of your manouvres [sic]; your numbers far exceeded us, and we fled to the stronghold of our extensive woods, there to secure our women and children. Thus, you marched into our towns; they were left to your mercy; you killed a few scattered and defenseless individuals, spread fire and desolation wherever you pleased, and returned again to your own habitations. If you meant this, indeed, as a conquest you omitted the most essential point; you should have fortified the junction of the Holstein and Tennessee rivers, and have thereby conquered all the waters above you. But, as all are fair advantages during the existence of a state of war, it is now too late for us to suffer for your mishap of generalship! Again, were we to inquire by what law or authority you set up a claim, I answer, none! Your laws extend not into our country, nor ever did. You talk of the law of nature and the law of nations, and they are both against you. Indeed, much has been advanced on the want of what you term civilization among the Indians; and many proposals have been made to us to adopt your laws, your religion, your manners, and your customs. But, we confess that we do not yet see the propriety, or practicability of such a reformation, and should be better pleased with beholding the good effect of these doctrines in your own practices than with hearing you talk about them, or reading your papers to us upon such subjects. You say: Why do not the Indians till the ground and live as we do? May we not, with equal propriety, ask, Why the white people do not hunt and live as we do? You profess to think it no injustice to warn us not to kill our deer and other game for the mere love of waste; but it is very criminal in our young men if they chance to kill a cow or a hog for their sustenance when they happen to be in your lands. We wish, however, to be at peace with you, and to do as we would be done by. We do not quarrel with you for killing an occasional buffalo, bear or deer on our lands when you need one to eat; but you go much farther; your people hunt to gain a livelihood by it; they kill all our game; our young men resent the injury, and it is followed by bloodshed and war. This is not a mere affected injury; it is a grievance which we equitably complain of and it demands a permanent redress. The Great God of Nature has placed us in different situations. It is true that he has endowed you with many superior advantages; but he has not created us to be your slaves. We are a separate people! He has given each their lands, under distinct considerations and circumstances: he has stocked yours with cows, ours with buffaloe; yours with hogs, ours with bear; yours with sheep, ours with deer. He has indeed given you an advantage in this, that your cattle are tame and domestic while ours are wild and demand not only a larger space for range, but art to hunt and kill them; they are, nevertheless, as much our property as other animals are yours, and ought not to be taken away without consent, or for something equivalent.' Those were the words of the Indians. But they were no binding on these whites, who were living beyond words, claims ...