What do you see?
When you walk into my house, or my parent’s house, what do
you see when confronted with the dead animal heads? If you are family and friends, most likely
you aren’t shocked, and unless you are a hunter, you probably don’t give them a
second glance. There is of course the
potential that you are offended. How
macabre, how barbaric, how antiquated, how blood-hungry you might ask. Let me tell you what I see.
First, I see a myriad of stories. Each head holds a memory shared, for not only
the person who harvested it, but the entire camp. One of the greatest parts of
hunting camp is the comradery, the swapping of tales at the end of the day. Not
of only successes, but near misses and the beauty encountered. For each animal harvested the story was
recounted as others filtered into camp that evening, breathing the joy of
success throughout each person. In this
way the animal doesn’t belong to just the man who pulled the trigger, but to
all who were there to hear the story, who walked those same hills, through
those same trees, and bent under the weight of a pack filled with meat.
While you may see a tame, frozen, inanimate rendering of
some creature, I see wildness. Those
lifeless glass eyes hold a million mysteries to me. What experiences did that
animal have? Living in the wild every day that we spend a short week in, how
many amazing sunrises and sunsets did that animal witness? I don’t merely see a
rigid, artistic recreation of the animals head, but rather a vision of the
entire animal, surrounded by its natural home. Trees, grass, and mountains the
background rather than warm earth-tone paint.
To me this is the greatest reason to hang a head on the wall: it is not
to intimate a taming of wildness, but to bring that wildness into the tameness
of our households.
Lastly I see the trophy.
But it’s not as simplistic as you might believe. This isn’t some point-counting, scorekeeping,
record-book-entry-seeking ideology. Rather it is respect and celebration of the
animals’ uniqueness and greatness. The
number of tines and Boone & Crocket score is not a reverence paid to the
hunter, but rather to the animal. The
hunter didn’t survive for years in the wild, escaping other hunters, enduring
bitter winters, and eluding natural predators.
The animal is its own trophy, a celebration of its own remarkable life
and legacy, not the hunters.
When you next see an animal head mounted (it is worth
clarifying they aren’t stuffed—that would be a teddy bear!) try to view it from
my perspective. It is not some gruesome braggadocios
claim of the hunter’s prowess, but a tribute to an amazing animal’s life. It is
a preservation of that animal’s greatness, its story intertwined with those who
chased it, and a life ended not in dismay, but in celebration and respect. And most importantly, at least to me, it is a
conduit to the wild places that animal inhabited, a reminder of their mastery
of places we only visit for short times.
Next time you see a head on someone’s wall, ask them the story. If they are a true hunter, their eyes will
light up as they recount the tale. And if you listen closely you will hear
something special; it’s not the hunter’s story, but the animals’ story, a story
preserved forever in the icon silently adorning the wall.
