Be where you belong, become an integral part of nature
July marks mid-summer and the rise of the Buck Moon. It is named such because it is the season when male whitetail deer are actively growing their crown of antlers.
The reason you do not typically see the large racks is because, for a buck to grow larger antlers every year, it means that that buck has been able to avoid being harvested through archery season, rifle season, another archery season and then a muzzleloader season. He has learned to stay behind in the shadows of the wood line. He lets the does and young bucks wander into the field first. He has learned to travel off the main trail to access his food or bed. He has learned to use the wind to his advantage and lies down in a bed with the strategic advantage of catching the first whiff of a predator’s scent. He has learned the various fragrances of the woods and fields. He can smell the difference between a white or red acorn, the white being more nutritious and less tannic. He knows the scent of apples, all the edible berries, pears, types of grasses and most importantly, the scent of a carnivore.
During the Buck Moon male whitetail deer’s antlers are growing.
The only time he might lose his focus is during the rut, when his entire concentration is to find every doe in heat and breed her. Even the most mature and wise old buck will slip up from his pattern to pursue a “hot” doe.
Years ago, I read an article by a Native American hunter who said that he always fasted from eating any red meat for two weeks before the hunting season began. I decided to investigate this concept and stopped eating red meat for two weeks before the opening of archery season. I had been running 6 miles a day and noticed that my sweat smelled differently than when I was an active carnivore.
Then an interesting thing happened on my daily loop. There was a black lab who lived at the 3-mile mark. He had always left me alone when I ran by until I was mid-experiment. He became extremely aggressive and for about a week, he would chase me, growling and nipping at my heels. He never went far from his yard but would chase me down the road for a 100 yards or so. “Why?” I asked myself. “What had changed?”
I started asking people I respected in the medical field and learned that red meat, when consumed, produces uric acid when we sweat. When we do not eat red meat there is a marked decline in this byproduct. Following this scientific fact, I hypothesized that a prey animal consumes only vegetable matter, and thus might then be keyed in on carnivorous predators and have an enhanced ability to smell uric acid emanating from a carnivore’s body. I tested this theory by asking a few medical professionals, and they said that it was entirely possible.
I have been testing this theory for a quite a few years now, and it has led me to further inquiry into “becoming invisible” to the animal world. Again, I found a link to native hunting practices. Most hunters will agree that a deer, and many other animals, seem to have a “sixth sense” for danger.
When we drive on icy roads, most of us have accepted that we need to be extra careful. So, what if a deer, turkey, duck or goose also had a “sense” that they might be in danger? Would they make a different decision on where to walk or land? Following that idea, what if we could eliminate the intention to kill what we were waiting for? What if we just blended our intention and thoughts into our surroundings? What if, like Native Americans, we focused instead on becoming a part of the tree we are sitting in? Or found our spirit becoming a part of the swamp grasses, completely immersed in the fragrance of the decaying vegetation of the swamp?
After all, to hunt, we seek to conceal ourselves with camouflage. Why not take that one step further like Indigenous people who have survived for millennia? Become the tree, the grasses, the wind, the fruit of the woods around us? My favorite quote from Big Thunder, Wabanaki Algonquin, is: “When we go hunting, it is not the arrow that kills the moose, no matter how powerful the bow; it is nature that kills him.”
If I see myself as an integral part of nature, I am where I belong. I am a part of all that surrounds me. The moose and I are One. The taking of the animal becomes a sacred practice that reflects love and respect for all that is.
(Bradley Carleton is executive director of sacredhunter.org, a privately owned limited liability corporation that seeks to educate the public on the spiritual connection of man to nature through hunting, fishing and foraging. His writing can be followed on Substack.)