Kyle Baker

Perhaps those with social concerns, who consider bowhunting an affront to civilized behavior, could imagine sitting motionless in some tundra or deep forest ambush, holding a stick and taut string, waiting. . .until nothing but darkness comes and silent cold sips their blood. After they warmed themselves and fed themselves, maybe they’d remember that before there were knobs on the stove and thermostats on the wall, the bow that made meat once made the friction fire to cook it and the tool community to surround it. It was not possible otherwise. Could they now dismiss the root but prize the fruit?
Perhaps those who aspire to elevate man with great music and grand art, who congregate with formal wear and reverent thought, who think that their path should be ours when we are sufficiently awake, perhaps they’d understand that before there were arias, before there were choirs and orchestras, before fiddles or even gourd guitars, the gently plucked string of the braced bow accompanied solo prayer and relieved the lonely silence of night. I know the music at its source. I carry such a bow with me, chained through time, and hear the song and whisper some form of that prayer with each mortal shot.

And of those spiritually refined who value creatures great and small, who sound alarms for mother Earth, that her water is fouled, her fruits and vegetables poisoned, her forests and their animals evaporating under a lethal sun, who urge us that we put away bows and arrows and barbaric pursuits? Perhaps they might realize that we first loved this Earth and its contents and all things free and wild, and have always lived close to the bone in celebration of that love.

Maybe they’d remember.

I do. I know where we’ve come from—I carry a key with me and I don’t forget. I know where we’re going, too—I’ve dropped blood to this Earth, not much different than mine, and seen it rise from the grass again. I can’t forget.

Hunting the Osage Bow, Chapter 10, pp. 153