A thoughtful commenter on one of my recent blog entries asked why exactly I have been setting about packs of wild boar on foot with nothing more than a knife in hand. This is a reasonable question. There are two reasons.
First, I have become very much interested in very primitive hunting methods. Persistence hunting has been one of those primitive methods that I've blogged about before, but I'm not really cut out for long-distance running at the moment. I'm in decent shape but I haven't been training for marathon-type distances and with several old injuries to my feet and knees (broken bones which were not properly dealt with at the time) I doubt that I am physically capable of running for that long.
Yet persistence hunting is only the first of humankind's early hunting techniques. Ambushing prey on foot with a simple blade must surely have followed closely on the heels of persistence hunting.
This is what I have been attempting with these wild pigs. Indeed, I do not think that it would be possible to use persistence hunting methods to take a wild pig. Swine tend to head straight for very thick cover that they know very well and a runner would be lost quickly in it. Pigs create a maze of tunnels roughly three feet high through thorns and scrub which they can run through but which a human pursuer would have to drop to hands and knees to pass through. Trust me, I have tried.
Taking wild pigs on foot requires either something that holds the pig in place (as when hunting with trained dogs) or closing with the animal very rapidly and either overtaking or cornering it in order to kill it with a knife or spear.
I have made a habit of hunting armadillos this way, which has been good practice for running down pigs. Only a few days ago I used a steep cliff to corner an armadillo and took it on foot alone, butchering it for food. The idea is to scale up these tactics against more dangerous prey. Eventually I would like to amass enough experience hunting a variety of prey this way to be able to produce a book or a documentary film about it. As a survival tactic, it would be a valuable skill. All that you need is a sharp thing and good health. Nobody else seems to be researching this so it seems like something I ought to be doing.
I think that actually attempting these primitive techniques can help me to understand some very old aspects of being human in a way that mere research cannot.
The other reason, which I find difficult to explain, is that once I had the idea I cannot bear the thought of failing to follow through with it.
I realize that what I am doing is extremely dangerous and arguably stupid. If I keep it up then eventually I am going to find myself up against a large, aggressive boar and I will be badly injured. I know this. A subsistence hunter 20,000 years ago had the advantage of growing up in a society where these things were taught from a young age and he or she learned tactics from stories and examples that I have to learn for myself, the hard way.
Yet I live in an age of penicillin, plaster casts and expert stitching. The odds of me actually being killed by a wild boar are very low. Worst case scenario, I get torn up and bitten and lose some blood and maybe suffer some nerve damage and broken bones. I can deal with that. The real problem is that I have had the idea and now that I have been presented with the opportunity to follow through with it, I would never be able to forgive myself for not making the attempt. At heart, I suspect that this is the same thought process that goes through the mind of any American football quarterback. He knows that its only a matter of time until he receives the big injury, but he goes back into the game again and again because he must.
My whole approach to the way that I live my life has changed very much over the last few years. I have a philosophy of living -- which I apply only to myself and hold up as a standard for nobody else -- which demands that I constantly seek out and choose a better story to live. This is approximately what Teddy Roosevelt referred to as "choosing the strenuous life." I am well aware of the fact that I am burning the candle at both ends and that sooner or later there will be a toll to pay.
[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers and Helenah Svedberg.]
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