{"id":347,"date":"2019-07-05T13:45:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T17:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=347"},"modified":"2022-04-14T17:05:26","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T21:05:26","slug":"pig-hunting-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/pig-hunting-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Pig Hunting: What&#8217;s It Like? One Man&#8217;s Story &#038; Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Lots of people go pig hunting, but many others don&#8217;t have the opportunity to. What&#8217;s pig hunting like? Why do people do it, and what skills do you gain? Learn one person&#8217;s story when he went pig hunting for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Since <strong>wild pigs are a nuisance and damage the environment <\/strong>\u2014 and are known to taste particularly good \u2014 Pollan decided to go pig hunting in northern California. He initially had anxiety about hunting a pig, but ended up enjoying it.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As he stalked the woods, his attention to signs and sounds became acute, and shut out everything else. He developed \u201chunter\u2019s eye,\u201d which is a sharp focus on any movement that filters out distractions.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He had these insights from the experience.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Hunters achieve a mental state similar to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/eckhart-tolle-meditation-mindfulness\/\">meditation<\/a>, <\/strong>of stillness and emptying their head of everything, but also clarity. This is similar to the state induced by smoking marijuana.<ul><li><strong>It originates in the cannabinoid network<\/strong>, a series of receptors in the brain enabled by a group of compounds in the brain called cannabinoids; one is THC, also found in marijuana. They intensify sensory experiences, shut down short-term memory, and stimulate appetite. <strong>This could be an adaptation that helped hunter-gatherers to survive.<\/strong><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The hunter\u2019s energy goes into readying himself for the encounter with prey. He instinctively becomes more like the animal, trying to render himself invisible.<\/li><li><strong>Hunting looks and feels different as a participant than it looks to outsiders. <\/strong>Pollan felt he had become a full participant in nature rather than an observer.&nbsp;<\/li><li>The pig hunter is connected to nature through the animal he pursues. A tourist doesn\u2019t experience this type of connection, because he remains a spectator. (Pollan had previously disdained the macho conceit of hunters \u2014&nbsp; the talk about feeling connected to prey, and killing as a gesture of respect \u2014 until he experienced the reality for himself.)<\/li><li><strong>Hunting calls into play the hunter\u2019s animal side<\/strong>. It connects us with our paleolithic origins.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Pollan ended his first day of hunting empty-handed because he wasn\u2019t ready to take a shot when the opportunity presented itself. He had neglected to pump his rifle there was no bullet in the chamber when he spotted pigs. Pumping the rifle at the moment he located several pigs would have alerted and scared them away, so he let his companion take the first shot, and get a pig.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every hunt results in the creation of a story. It starts taking shape immediately after the first shot. Hunters tell each other the story to make sense of the chaos of the moment and to resolve ambiguous feelings.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end, the story was that Pollan wasn\u2019t ready this time. He felt he had to go pig hunting again; he couldn\u2019t truly hunt without firing his gun. Plus his goal was to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/accepting-responsibility\/\">take responsibility<\/a> for killing an animal he ate.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They went pig hunting again about a month later and he shot a pig. He considered it a gift, and felt gratitude. He didn\u2019t feel remorse as he had expected to, but rather felt elation and accomplishment \u2014 and he posed for a photo with the kill. Field dressing the animal, which weighed 190 pounds, was a messy and somewhat disturbing process.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later, when he looked at the photos of himself with the pig, he felt shame because the photos reflected his joy in the killing, which was one of the things he had always despised about hunting. His different feelings immediately after killing the pig versus those later on reflected <strong>the ambiguity of hunting: hunters feel accomplishment at succeeding in a role humans are biologically designed for; but they also identify with the animal they killed.&nbsp;<\/strong><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lots of people go pig hunting, but many others don&#8217;t have the opportunity to. What&#8217;s pig hunting like? Why do people do it, and what skills do you gain? Learn one person&#8217;s story when he went pig hunting for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","tag-omnivores-dilemma","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pig Hunting: What&#039;s It Like? One Man&#039;s Story &amp; Lessons - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What&#039;s pig hunting like? Why do people do it, and what skills do you gain? 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