As the title suggests I feel called out to talk about my love and passion for working my dogs and the joy we share in nature.
I am the daughter of a man who has hunted his whole life. My father is a farmer’s son and his family had to work hard to have any food on the table after the 2nd World War being small farmers. He started hunting at 16 years of age – helping my grandfather to provide for his family. My father kept hunting and build his lifestyle around this “hobby”. As a child I ate more game than any other protein source.
When I was in the hunting cabin with my father I used to make little burial crosses for the individual animals that had been shot. I took great pride in thanking them and honoring their lives and natures gift to us. I remember how the hunters smiled at me and talking about the fact that I had a burial ceremony for their prey, their laughter never felt as if I was ridiculed but rather sympathetic instead.
Since then quite some time has passed. I have had periods of being vegetarian after learning how our society has arranged how we eat and use animals as production units and feeding ourselves with them, often offering them poor living circumstances. I have also learned about the cutting down of ancient forest grounds for having soy beans growing and palm oil. These products are used in many (vegetarian) food products. For some reason my farmer’s and hunter’s genes have been pressing me forward to have interest in food and our food systems- the so called “bio-industry”. Since many years I have my own biological vegetable garden and being non chemical has let our garden to become refuge for several bee swarms, insects and hedgehogs- next to our vegetable supply.
Even though I have not had the ambition to hunt from an early age, my love for nature and eating game has slowly grown over the years – via the horses and later the dogs.
Working the dogs when hunting requires focus and lots of training in advance, same goes for a hunter – it takes years to become a skilled and good hunter. In order to acquire game to the table – one puts an enormous investment in time and effort and this builds a certain value and respect towards the meat that in my opinion has been lost due to the fact that we too easily can buy meat from the supermarket at any time we wish. Taking a life yourself – will without doubt add weight to the value of the life taken and the respect it deserves.
The past weeks my dogs have taken me through at least 50 different shades of green so to speak. On different hunts in Belgium and in the Netherlands I have worked my dogs with and without the gun. All for the purpose of bringing home game for the table.
We are merely at the beginning of the season but I am already utterly thankful for the journey the dogs are bringing me. From learning to shoot and hunt, learning about nature and taking the first steps into hunting and preserving.
I am very grateful for the opportunities offered to me by hunters and friends, but most of all the all loving Mother Nature. She is giving to the extend one could consider it to be the ultimate love declaration for us humans. In humble thankfulness 💚🍃🍁☘️
Flatastic flatcoated retrievers 