Chase McClearyMrs. BeardsellENG 10120 October 2016Native Instinct Still LivesHunters today compare very closely in areas while staying in completely different worlds with Native Americans. We, modern sportsman, can relate to our predecessors in ethics, vindication, and some strategies as well as weaponry. We differ from Native Americans through advancement in technology and society. Ultimately hunting has changed little over the decades long past.
The feeling of a fair chase hunt still pumps in hunters today the same adrenaline that pumped in the Osage Indian tribe long ago. “Fair chase hunt” is a hunt where the animal is not confined or hampered by outside forces and has free range of escape from a hunter who is using good moral and ethical decisions. This is where our society today gets hung up: they do not think we hunters do this. While they are not wrong, not every hunter is ethical, you mustn’t blame the whole village for the village idiot’s idiocy. Resect for the animal you harvest, respect for land owners and fellow hunters are all still the same as the Osage Indians who walked this very land some time ago. Hunting in my family is a tradition.
My father and my brothers hunt so I’ve always hunted with them. As long as I can remember the fall season was always hunting season, which wasn’t a bad thing to me. Hunting with my family meant fresh food on the table and good life lessons. My father started teaching me how to hunt when I was young, about 10.
He taught me gun safety, behavior of animals, and ethics. I was a natural born hunter, dad would tell me, remarking on my awareness and stealth in the woods. I remember one hunt in particularly that has stuck with me ever since. It was late November and rainy and was my first time hunting alone, away from Dad’s guidance. I wait in a tree stand for 2 or 3 hours and see no sign of animal activity. As I am about to leave my stand due to approaching darkness I hear quite load prancing headed in my direction.
I ready myself and begin to tremble in my knees from a spike of sudden adrenaline. The trotting slows and out emerges a younger buck with a limp. It looked diseased and not good for eating, it looked in pain. I thought to myself, “This deer is suffering from a car accident or a bad infection.
It will surely die a slow and painful death. I should harvest this deer. “. I aimed, I fired. My bullet pierced both its lungs and nipped at its heart, the animal fell instantly.
From the moment forward I knew hunting wasn’t about making a good shot, nor was it about even harvesting an animal: It was about respect for the animal and carrying a sacred tradition that can’t be imitated which was created by Native Americans. Our motive for hunting today isn’t as extreme or crucial as it was then. If you were a native American tribe and you did not hunt you had little or no food. Hunting was literally the way of life then.
Today, it is a lifestyle more or less, not a life of its own. Today some mount a very large antlered deer or a bear pelt on a wall as a trophy, I do it in remembrance of the once being creature who provided me with many things; Food, hide, feathers, exhilaration, a memory. A vast majority of modern sportsman hunt for the adrenaline rush we call “Buck Fever”. Osage Indians used their harvests for even more practical uses other than food and Buck Fever. They hunted for every single part of the animal; bones for tools, hide for clothing, feathers for arrows, internals for baits CITATION Ewe68 l 1033 (Ewers).
Our vindication has only slightly been altered due to our resources other than the woods. Where we differ quite radically is Conservation and the view society has on us. In 1906 President Roosevelt introduced the Conservation Act to America CITATION Wik16 l 1033 (Wikipedia Theodore Roosevelt Conservation). This led to American hunters having regulation on their hunting habits. Seasons to hunt in, permits to hunt at all, and tags for each animal you harvest that must be purchased. Mr.
Roosevelt cracked down on unethical hunting for the good. As time changed going forward, as did societies opinion on hunting, only it went backward. More and more hunters disrespected the fair chase hunting style and bent the rules and sought out loopholes; Bragging of kills and boasting about their false dominance of nature, I agree with society on this matter, it is not right. Society has become divided on this topic though Osage Indians of Missouri had zero reason to dislike hunting game.
Their society knew it was the only way of survival and they admired their great hunters. It was a duty and a responsibility. They had no official conservation due to an abundance of animals at the time and their ideology of taking what they need. The Osage knew if they hunted a certain animal too much in an area that it would be drove out or hunt to extinction and that would be a huge detriment to their tribe’s resources. Hunting techniques and weaponry are almost all based on hunting tactics applied by Osage Indians.
The strategies used then still work very well today because we have the same terrain and are hunting the same animals. Buffalo and Elk are the two species that we hunted out of Missouri after settlers migrated over and before conservation acts that the Osage had the opportunity to hunt. Deer, Turkey, Coyote, and Waterfowl are all still quite abundant in most parts of rural Missouri. The Osage Indian tribe primarily hunted with a bow and broad-tipped arrow, which we use today still. Their long bows were made of a solid piece of carved soft wood CITATION Sti16 l 1033 (Stick). Today many bow hunter use compound bows, which imply wheels and pulleys to increase the speed at which the arrow is shot at.
The Osage, however, often utilized what is now called persistence hunting, the act of stalking an animal until it wears out allowing you to have range with the animal CITATION Sho93 l 1033 (Shott). Today hunters in Missouri don’t use persistence hunting nearly as much due to range of relatively new found technology, the gun. Reaching out to over hundreds of yards a hunter can harvest an animal with extreme precision. Today we can use a more passive hunting tactic with a tree stand.
Posted around 20 feet up in a sturdy tree a hunter waits, watching either a path or field, for the animal he is out to harvest. Calls, awareness, and situational tactics, like spotting and stalking, all remain just as the Osage shaped them. On October the 14th I sit in a tree stand pondering thoughts for a compare contrast paper. It starts pouring rain and it is cold. I see two large bodied bucks emerge from opposing sides of a field. Their posture and stride were confident as if they were rivaling each other.
I quake with adrenaline but have not much reason, these animals are much too far for a shot from a bow. I watch these majestic animals meet in the middle of the bean field and admire then. They bow their heads and lock antlers in a fight for governance. I imagine what an Osage Indian would do, and that is to be still.
Watch these deer do their nature and appreciate them. In such a drenchingly beautiful way I feel just like a Native American hunter, with minor alterations. I have my bow and arrow in hand, know the calls I need to use, and understand what hunting means for me; all as if I was an Osage Indian. All in all, we sportsman can only thank our hunting predecessors for forming such a sacred tradition that is still carried out today. We today use many of the same tactics and weaponry, we hunt for many of the same reasons and have the same ethics. Our societies have changed around us and our technology has been improved, which makes us differ in some areas.
Work CitedBIBLIOGRAPHY l 1033 Ewers, John Canfied. Indian Life on the Upper Missouri. University of Oklahoma Press, 1968. Rosa, Alfred and Paul Eschholz.
Models for Writers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2015. Textbook. Shott, Michael J. “Spears, Darts, and Arrows: Late Woodland Hunting Techniques in the Upper Ohio Valley.
” American Antiquity (1993): 425-443. ebook. Stick, David. Indian Fishing and Hunting. 2016. Web.
Wikipedia Theodore Roosevelt Conservation. 17 October 2016. Web.
