Pennsylvania Game News - August 2021 - 21

after the shot.
Self-filming hunts has increased in
popularity and these videos are viewed
widely across various media platforms.
Some are remarkably well done with
heartfelt respect shown to the animal.
Some, not so much, with excessive
hooting and hollering, fist-pumping
and the regurgitated cliches from old,
tired scripts.
Whenever a video camera becomes
part of a hunt, playing to an audience
becomes a factor, and the hunter-turnedperformer
may not carry the same values
to the lens as they would off-camera.
This is an outgrowth of a sports
entertainment mentality, where opposing
teams or individuals battle it out
until one reigns as a victor, no matter if
that contest is a real-time competition,
a video game, or even a theatrical performance
as in professional wrestling.
What separates hunting from competitive
sports is that hunting has nothing
to do with winning or losing; deer and
other game are not adversaries. The " us
versus them " dictum is a leftover from
days of yore, when all wild creatures
were considered opponents, even enemies,
in direct competition with man.
Deer are a quarry, but not a foe; they
neither hate nor loathe your presence.
They present no offense, relying on evasiveness,
camouflage, hiding, running
and other learned survival responses to
danger. With over-the-top celebrations,
some hunters portray themselves as conquering
heroes when they kill a buck.
It can be an emotional event, and
it's easy to get fired up with cause for
celebration. But would all these histrionics
on video occur if there were
no camera or audience? Probably not.
That's just acting staged to please a
targeted demographic, gain subscribers
AUGUST 2021
or make money.
I am but a visitor in the woods, there
to engage in the venue of the hunt, where
I hope the better natures of my being
can participate honorably among this
wild citizenry that I consider our equals.
I don't dismiss gray squirrels as " tree
rats " or refer to coyotes as " bloodthirsty
deer killers. " When I kill a deer, I don't
describe its demise as it taking a " dirt
nap. " Further, I relish the cackling and
hammerings of a pileated woodpecker
or the sentinel calls of blue jays, sounds
equivalent to those of exotic jungle birds
that lend a primeval intensity to the hunt.
A buck relegated incidentally as a
" shooter buck " on a " hit list " simply is
the consumeristic slang of an inflated
ego, or someone shopping for groceries.
A deer is not a cantaloupe. As soon
as we place ourselves above all else,
we have diminished the value or need
of wonder, become something apart
from the wild, adrift alone in a vacuum,
without connection to the constant churn
of life.
S
OMEWHERE OUT THERE a
spotted fawn has grown into a fine
buck. It will leave signs and clues that
you might discover and wonder at, then
stitch together, creating a strategy for
the hunt.
The trajectories of both hunter and
hunted follow divergent paths, yet in one
wondrous moment at a single tangential
point, your arrow or bullet may connect
the last yards of two amazing journeys.
You may kill this deer, or it may continue
on into the depths of your shared
universe on a path that perhaps never
again may cross with yours.
The greatest wonder of all, though,
is that, everything considered, both ever
met at all.
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Pennsylvania Game News - August 2021

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