Trench lines directed animals to a terminal pit trap

Arutz Sheva reports that a research team from University of Haifa, the Arava Institute, the Geological Institute in Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and Bar-Ilan University, working with National Geographic, has concluded that so-called “desert kites,” kite-shaped lines discovered by British pilots during the WI era, marking the surface of the Negev and Arava Deserts represent the remains of man-made Neolithic period hunting traps used to direct driven animals into pits, the same way Plains Indians used to drive buffalo herds toward unexpected cliffs.

[T]he olifant its echoing music speaks. – La Chanson du Roland — Sicily, c. 1100 A.D.

Sotheby’s December 2nd Old Master Sculpture and Works of Art sale in London featured a remarkable relic of the Middle Ages, an Oliphant, a great (47cm., 18½”) 12th century hunting horn, fashioned from the tusk of an elephant and once embellished with silver. Despite the recession, it sold for $194,950 / 139,250 GBP, considerably above the estimated price of 50,000—80,000 GBP.

Catalogue description:

The word ‘oliphant’ is a loanword from old French meaning ‘elephant’, which is first documented in the English translation of the Song of Roland in the 12th century. It described the ivory sounding horn with which the hero Roland summoned aid during the batter of Roncesvalles, shortly before his death at the hands of the Arabian enemy in 778. Carved from a whole elephant tusk and originally banded with silver and hung with cord, these horns would have produced a low but loud call. They were prized symbols of wealth and power, passed down through the centuries in Europe’s treasure houses.

Few oliphants from the eleventh and twelfth centuries survive. They are a fascinating witness to a unique period of cultural exchange between East and West on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. Oliphants were carved from African ivory and were probably prevalent in Fatimid Egypt, although no example has survived. Until 1071 Sicily was part of the Fatimid empire. However, quarrels within the Muslim regime gave the Christian rulers of southern Italy an opportunity to send in Norman mercenaries as a conquering force. Roger I, who became Norman Count of Sicily and the first in the line of Norman rulers of Sicily, led the invasion. The Norman genius was not only in capturing this Islamic stronghold but in maintaining it successfully, by keeping Muslims and Byzantine Greeks in positions of influence. Using the heterogeneous nature of their society, the Normans in Sicily capitalised on their geographic location as a nexus of culture and trade. In the twelfth century, when the island became a kingdom, it was one of the wealthiest states in Europe, wealthier even than England.

The decoration of oliphants, most often with animals and scrollwork, sits within the tradition of Islamic imagery, without over-reliance on the human form. Oliphants carved by Muslim and Byzantine craftsmen for their new Catholic rulers continued in this style. The present Oliphant is very simply decorated and can be most closely compared to another in the collection of the Louvre Museum, Paris (OA 4069). The foliate designs on the two bands close to where the mouthpiece was originally secured, are carved to the same pattern and the body of the Oliphant is shaped in simple flat planes along its length. The Louvre oliphant is dated to the end of the 11th century. The twisted rope work design along the upper length of the present oliphant can be compared to a similar design on a twelfth century oliphant in the collection of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.

Model 1841 12 pound Mountain Howitzer

This web-site explains how to hunt white-tailed deer using a Civil War-era Model 1841 12 Pound Mountain Howitzer.

This method of hunting seems likely to provoke criticism, but, after all, the hunter is restricted to a single shot before having to undertake an elaborate and time-consuming process of reloading. There can be no second shot at the same target. And just look at all the effort required to transport, maneuver, and aim the weapon! Besides, the unreasoning prejudice of today’s authorities toward any kind of seriously innovative approach to reducing game to possession makes the project still more sporting by introducing a distinct note of hazard for the sportsman.

If the idea makes you squeamish, or you start getting all liberal and statist, just repeat after me: Rats with hoofs! Rats with hoofs!

I do kind of think myself that a real artillerist could get his buck with an exploding shell, and someone really good could do it with solid shot. If those darned Civil War cannon were just a little cheaper…

Run for your lives!

This month’s Garden & Gun has a feature on the turkey call collection assembled over 15 years by Bill Jones III, including more than 7000 examples of box calls, yelpers, and scratchers.

Britain’s Government has banned ownership of pistols, rifles, self defense, and hunting. Participants in the Countryside March against the Blair Government’s Hunt Ban wish Britons had defended their liberties before it was too late. Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer jailed for defending his home, certainly wishes so even more.

9:07 video

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

Hillary had better be careful. Efforts to embrace false images of red state lifestyle are easily overdone, and there has gotten to be a journalistic tradition of ridiculing bogus claims of personal prowess in the hunting field. Hillary’s recent reminiscences of gun handling —

“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught be how to shoot when I was a little girl,” said Clinton.

“You know, some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are. Not because they are bitter.”

She later added, however, that she is not herself an expert with firearms: “As I told you, my dad taught me how to shoot behind our cottage. I have gone hunting. I am not a hunter. But I have gone hunting.”

— have a hollow ring coming from Janet Reno’s former patroness, and a long-time champion of civilian disarmament like herself. If Hillary isn’t careful, she is going to wind up crawling around in full camouflage with a shotgun in the Cape Cod mud in futile pursuit of non-existent and out-of-season deer with that mighty hunter John Forbes Kerry.

or fishing, before it’s too late.

If America’s increasingly aging sportsmen don’t make more of an effort to recruit members of the younger generation, in the years to come, hunters and anglers will become a smaller minority increasingly outnumbered and out-voted by anti-field sports advocates and gun control supporters. Britain’s ban on hunting with hounds is a sample of what we can look forward to here.

AP:

Sales of Vermont hunting and fishing licenses have dropped more than 20 percent over the last 20 years, leaving the Fish and Wildlife Department pleading with lawmakers for extra funding.

Other states report similar drop-offs:

—Arkansas hunting license sales dropped from about 345,000 in 1999 to about 319,000 in 2003.

—Pennsylvania sold about 946,000 hunting licenses in 2006, down from just over a million in 1999, and a peak of 1.3 million in 1981.

—Oregon had 100,000 fewer licensed anglers last year than in 1987, and 70,000 fewer licensed hunters.

—West Virginia sold 154,763 resident hunting permits in 2006, a 17 percent decrease from 1997.

The nature of the problem can be seen in the ignorance, bigoted animosity toward field sports, and implicitly Disneyfied perspective of Drew Curtis’s 3/29 link to the story on Fark.com:

Interest in hunting and fishing dropping among Americans, who are finding other things to do than inflict pain and death on nature’s beautiful, innocent creatures.

Taigan chases wolf at festival

The event was near the village of Bokonbayevo, some 186 miles east of the capital Bishkek, August 24, 2007. More then 20 hunters with dogs and eagles took part. The slideshow illustrates exhibitions of hunting with Taigans and Golden Eagles using domesticated wolves as the quarry. The Salburun (hunting) festival has been held annually since 1997.

Hat tip to Dr. Milton Ong.

The Wall Street Journal observes a classic case of government policy-making in action. Based on rumors of someone starting a business in Texas which would allow hunters to shoot game remotely over the Internet, advocacy organizations and government have leapt into action.

The Humane Society of the United States last year mailed more than 50,000 people an urgent message, underlined and in bold type: “Such horrific cruelty must stop and stop now!”

The cruelty in question was Internet hunting, which the animal-rights group described as the “sick and depraved” sport of shooting live game with a gun controlled remotely over the Web. Responding to the Humane Society’s call, 33 states have outlawed Internet hunting since 2005, and a bill to ban it nationally has been introduced in Congress.

Read the Humane Society’s letter, plus see the society’s Internet hunting page on its Web site.But nobody actually hunts animals over the Internet. Although the concept — first broached publicly by a Texas entrepreneur in 2004 — is technically feasible, it hasn’t caught on. How so many states have nonetheless come to ban the practice is a testament to public alarm over Internet threats and the gilded life of legislation that nobody opposes.

With no Internet hunters to defend the sport, the Humane Society’s lobbying campaign has been hugely successful — a welcome change for an organization that has struggled to curtail actual boots-on-the-ground hunting. Michael Markarian, who has led the group’s effort, calls it “one of the fastest paces of reform for any animal issue that we can remember seeing.”

Vicki L. Walker, a state senator in Oregon, says she wasn’t aware of Internet hunting until a representative from the society told her about it and asked her to sponsor a ban. “It offended my sensibilities,” she says. The bill passed unanimously this year.

Melanie George Marshall, a Delaware state representative who sponsored an Internet-hunting ban that passed in June, considers her legislation a matter of homeland security. “I don’t want to give ideas to people,” she says, “but these kinds of operations would have the potential to make terrorism easier.”

Even the National Rifle Association endorses the ban. “It’s pretty easy to outlaw something that doesn’t exist,” says Rod Harder, a lobbyist for the NRA in Oregon who supported an Internet-hunting ban that took effect in June. “We were happy to do it.”

John C. Astle, a Maryland state senator, angered animal-rights groups in 2004 when he successfully pushed to allow hunting black bears in the state. Safari Club International, a hunting group, named him the nation’s State Legislator of the Year in 2005. But last year, working with the Humane Society, he sponsored an Internet-hunting ban that sailed through the legislature.

“If you’re a dedicated hunter, you believe in the concept of fair chase,” says Mr. Astle, who once shot a 13-foot crocodile in Africa’s Zambezi river. Internet hunting, he says, “flies in the face of fair chase.”

Still, Mr. Astle worried that the bill’s wording “might extend the ban to legitimate types of hunting, as I’m sure those animal-huggers would like to do.”

Internet hunting was first put forth as an idea in November 2004, when John Lockwood, an insurance estimator for an auto-body shop in San Antonio, launched live-shot.com. For $150 an hour and a monthly fee, users could peer through the lens of a Webcam and aim a .30-caliber rifle at animals on a hunting farm in central Texas. Mr. Lockwood said he wanted to help the disabled experience the thrill of hunting.

Pulling the trigger was a matter of clicking the mouse — rather, it would have been, had a public outcry and concern from state regulators not forced Mr. Lockwood to abandon his plans. At the time, just one person, a friend of Mr. Lockwood’s, had tested the service. He killed a wild hog.

“I thought that would be the end of it,” recalls Mr. Lockwood, whose site now features ads for hunting gear, cars and life insurance.

Hardly. The Humane Society, calling Internet hunting a “sickening reality,” urged state legislatures to outlaw the practice. Virginia became the first to do so in 2005, and others followed in quick succession. California also banned Internet fishing. Nobody is doing that, either. An Illinois bill outlawing Internet hunting is awaiting the governor’s signature. That will bring the total to 34 states. In three of them, regulators imposed the bans.

Ms. Marshall, the Delaware state representative, realizes that nobody is actually killing animals on the Internet, but thinks now is the time to act. “What if someone started one of these sites in the six months that we’re not in session?” says Ms. Marshall. “We were able to proactively legislate for society.”

That sentiment bothers a fellow representative, Gerald W. Hocker. Of 3,563 state legislators nationwide who have voted on Internet-hunting bans, Mr. Hocker is one of only 38 to oppose them. He co-sponsored an earlier version of Rep. Marshall’s bill in 2005 but took his name off it after doing some research.

“Internet hunting would be wrong,” he says. “But there’s a lot that would be wrong, if it were happening.”

Nevertheless, the Humane Society depicts Internet hunting as an imminent threat. “Sick ideas have a habit of spreading,” the group told members last year in a letter requesting donations “to fight this madness.”

Mr. Markarian, president of the Humane Society’s lobbying arm, concedes that Internet hunting is “certainly not the biggest problem currently facing animals.” But, he adds, “It wouldn’t take much for someone to start an Internet-hunting site offshore or in one of the states that hasn’t banned it.”

I can recall, in a similar vein, San Francisco rushing to ban Segway scooters before they were even widely available.

Paolo Uccello. The Hunt in the Forest. c. 1465-70. Oil on canvas. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK.

(above) 15th century Italian gentlemen hunting the roebuck.

Like the blade of grass pushing through the concrete sidewalk, natural human instincts, well known and understood in the past, continue to assert themselves even in today’s deracinated urban sprawl.

In contemporary Glasgow, for instance, young men are secretly breeding and training dogs (lurcher and greyhound crosses), and going out early in the morning in organized groups, just as their ancestors once did, to hunt the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), who, long unhunted, have adapted to life in modern suburbs and grown numerous and bold.

Being deprived of the right to own and carry more useful and practical arms, they have nothing beyond airguns, pocket knives, and their boots and hands to use to kill a deer. And being unschooled in venery or sportsmanship, these covert hunters dispatch their quarry crudely when it is brought to bay.

Regrettably as well, they evidently have not learned how to unmake the deer and how to prepare him for the table. Nor, I fear, has anyone taught them to reward the hounds, as William Twiti advised, with “bowellis and fete” (bowels and feet).

As one might expect, the organized do-gooder organizations are howling, and the British Press, e.g., the Telegraph and the BBC, is suitably outraged and alarmed by the discovery of sporting activity by British youths.

All this is ironically occurring at the same time in which an excess population of rural red deer is leading British academics, environmentalists, and journalists to loudly advocate the reintroduction of the wolf (!) to curb their numbers.

Deer poaching, in defiance of authority, has a long and famous tradition in Britain, including not only Robin Hood but even Shakespeare himself.

Long may Glasgow’s Geordies divert themselves by the manly pursuit of the swift and ingenious roebuck, say I. Over time, it is likely that with greater experience there will evolve among the more skillful sportsmen the same sort of better practices and aesthetic code which naturally evolved among their predecessors.

Unfortunately, better sportsmanship is far more likely to evolve in circumstances in which sport is openly and proudly pursued, rather than in those in which sport is inevitably stigmatised and equated by bigots and Puritans with crime.

The Telegraph supplies a story indicating just how marginalized firearms and hunting have become in Britain.

A deer hunter who took his photographs to a supermarket for processing was shocked to find himself reported to police.

Although the sport is legal, Tesco gave his details to officers who questioned him for several hours.

Last night the store was accused of “demonising” people who participate in field sports.

“Peter Williams”, who asked for his real name not to be published, said he was “made to feel like a terrorist”. Tesco has no ban on photographs of shooting and its privacy policy says: “We will never pass your personal data to anyone else”, but it contacted the police without telling Mr Williams.

Mr Williams, who is in his early thirties, from north Devon, took his film to Tesco in Barnstaple. Staff deemed photographs of him with his gun and a deer he had shot “inappropriate”, although he had broken no animal cruelty or firearms laws.

Mr Williams said that he was “utterly shocked and stunned” when two policemen arrived at his house on a Sunday morning with a set of prints given to them by Tesco.

After questioning him, the police accepted that he had a firearms certificate and had not broken any laws. Simon Hart, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, which campaigns on rural issues, said: “This is one of the most disturbing and ridiculous examples of ignorance and demonisation, of which Tesco should be ashamed.”

Mr Williams asked the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), of which he is a member, to demand an explanation from Tesco. Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, replied that staff had acted appropriately: “On being asked to view the prints, our store’s management team decided that there was cause for concern and as such contacted the police.”

A second letter on behalf of Sir Terry said: “Tesco does not discriminate against any lawful section of the community… We are confident that the actions of our staff were… within the law.”

Last night a spokesman for Tesco said: “We are sorry for any upset or distress caused to the gentleman. However, if our staff are concerned about the content of photographic material it is right that they should seek advice from the appropriate authorities, in this instance, the police.”

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said: “With any allegation of a possible criminal offence which is referred to the police, we have a duty to the community to make inquiries, particularly with any issues involving firearms.”

The complex human eye harvests light. It perceives seven to ten million colors through a synaptic flash: one tenth of a second from retina to brain. Homo sapiens gangs up 70 percent of its sense perceptors solely for vision, to anticipate danger and recognize reward, but also — more so — for beauty. We use a predator’s eyes to marvel at the work of Titian or the Grand Canyon bathed in the copper light of a summer sunset.

Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise (2002).