Information on working terriers, dogs, natural history, hunting, and the environment, with occasional political commentary as I see fit. This web log is associated with the Terrierman.com web site.
Friday, May 08, 2009
Old School Hunting ... VERY Old School
A "persistence hunt" of a Kudu, by members of the San tribe in the Kalahari Desert. .
most amazing of all is the technique that the bushman uses to put his mind in the mind of the animal when he cannot see any tracks, and also the massive, almost grieving respect for the quarry. They rub the saliva on their aching muscles to relieve the pain. Nothing is wasted, everything is shared.May the circle remain unbroken.
So with all your posts about how filmed hunts are often "canned" because there's no way a camera crew could move around in the woods without scaring away all the game for miles, how do you suppose they filmed this one? I doubt the average camera crew could stay on the run for 8 hours...(I'm not saying this is a canned hunt, just honestly curious as to how this could be filmed authenticly.)
A filmed hunt is not necessarily a canned hunt, and in this case it clearly was not.
A canned hunt is an animal being hunted in an enclosure where the animal cannot get away, or where the animal has been so acclimated to food or humans (or both) so that its movements are predictable.
In this case, I have little doubt that the film crew was in an ATV for filming the San (Bushman), but over the course of a 7 or 8-hour run, the film crew is perhaps getting 20 minutes on tape and cutting it down to 7 minutes. You will note that most of the time, the bushman and the Kudu are not in the same frame -- that only changes at the very end, when the game is clearly up.
Was this a staged hunt? Sure. Bushmen (the San) are more likely to use bow and arrows and snares, to hunt and some even use guns. But it's still possible to run down an animal if the ground is open enough to keep the pressure on. Is it done very often? I doubt it. But it can be done, and only 150 years ago, no doubt it was a lot more than it is today.
4 comments:
Reminds me of Galway Kinnell's poem "The Bear." http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171391
Thank you.
most amazing of all is the technique that the bushman uses to put his mind in the mind of the animal when he cannot see any tracks, and also the massive, almost grieving respect for the quarry. They rub the saliva on their aching muscles to relieve the pain. Nothing is wasted, everything is shared.May the circle remain unbroken.
J. CT
So with all your posts about how filmed hunts are often "canned" because there's no way a camera crew could move around in the woods without scaring away all the game for miles, how do you suppose they filmed this one? I doubt the average camera crew could stay on the run for 8 hours...(I'm not saying this is a canned hunt, just honestly curious as to how this could be filmed authenticly.)
A filmed hunt is not necessarily a canned hunt, and in this case it clearly was not.
A canned hunt is an animal being hunted in an enclosure where the animal cannot get away, or where the animal has been so acclimated to food or humans (or both) so that its movements are predictable.
In this case, I have little doubt that the film crew was in an ATV for filming the San (Bushman), but over the course of a 7 or 8-hour run, the film crew is perhaps getting 20 minutes on tape and cutting it down to 7 minutes. You will note that most of the time, the bushman and the Kudu are not in the same frame -- that only changes at the very end, when the game is clearly up.
Was this a staged hunt? Sure. Bushmen (the San) are more likely to use bow and arrows and snares, to hunt and some even use guns. But it's still possible to run down an animal if the ground is open enough to keep the pressure on. Is it done very often? I doubt it. But it can be done, and only 150 years ago, no doubt it was a lot more than it is today.
Patrick
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