Hunting did a lot for my understanding of who I am in the world. It was more powerful for me than anything I had done in nature up to that point, but I had  experience with hunter/gatherer skills prior to ever hunting. I had ‘played’ at it as  most people interested in these things do. No matter how much you work at it, how would anyone really know exactly what it was like for hunter/gatherers? For the majority of people alive today the world is quite different from what it was for their nomadic ancestors. But, I went into hunting with some physical skills and a world view that had shifted due to my experiences in nature. Hunting refined my skills, my  view and inspired me to get better at connecting to nature. It gave me a reason to try harder. Something serious to me was a stake- another being’s life. After that, I didn’t want to go back.

I do not like to suppose that I have any idea with certainty, what it was like to be a hunter/gatherer. I was not there. I don’t care what anthropologists say. That said, it is likely that for hunter/gatherers (our modern terms by the way and probably not their descriptors) these activities were merely ordinary, necessary activities in the context of their ordinary lives- lives in which hunting was just a part of a way of living.  For me shopping might be a modern equivalent to hunting and gathering. It is definitely ordinary, necessary and I hardly give it any thought unless I need something. It demands of me a certain set of skills and knowledge, I am familiar with. I was taught it very young and how I apply the knowledge has evolved over time.

I am deluged with messages about shopping’s essential function in preserving my survival, comfort  and cultural well being from the big story teller of our modern society, mass media. I think the requirements of meeting my basic needs has become more complex not less so, to keep up with the speed of society’s changes. While nature offers us never ending levels of complexity to know, it is arguable that  hunter/gatherers had more time to get better at some basic living skills. Likely their culture required them to learn less than we do today to maintain their lives. This does not mean they were not learning something new all the time.  My larger point though is that these activities are contextual and cannot be fully experienced outside of that context. My focus on shopping would not be for its sake, but in service to the context of my life.

I had to explore why I wanted to hunt. I decided If my desire was to hunt in a more supposedly traditional, primitive holistic way, I needed to “play at” or practice skills used by hunter/gathers. This required me  to learn a lot. I need to learn about  tracking, navigation,  basic survival skills, natural history of the animal I wanted to hunt, working with an animals remains, awareness, camouflage, low tech hunting methods such as traditional archery, making crafts, cooking, preserving etc, etc.  You do not have to do this to hunt in the context of a modern world. There are ways to hunt successfully without knowing a lot of this. Then it is hunting in a different context.

If I was to teach someone to hunt I would honor whatever context they come with (within my judgement of reasonableness and my capabilities.)  However, I can only take them where they wish to go.  For me primitive hunting implies a different context than myriad other reasons why people might hunt today, all of which are their business.

Unless something really drastic happens (which is not necessarily at all desirable) we are probably never going to go back to a hunter/gatherer world. I believe that  we can create and have experiences that give us insight about how to live better today.  I’ve been learning, practicing and teaching basic survival skills for 13 years and I have had some pretty good teachers. But, in truth, the best teacher I have had has been my own experience coupled with a good mentor. Dirt time really is the magic ingredient, but most of us need reasonable support along the way. This is what I want to offer, good experiential support.