Someday, I'll persistence-hunt a deer

I'll probably choose different attire.

I once had a dream that went something like this:

I am in the woods with two of my college track teammates. We are hunting for deer, hoping to chase one until either it or we collapse of exhaustion. Suddenly, we see a strong, many-point buck, and the chase is on. After a long, intense hunt through miles of dense forest, the buck stops, turns around, and charges at me. Thinking quickly, I assume a defensive crouch. Then, when the deer reaches me, I grab him by the throat. I hold fast until the buck's eyes fill with blood, and he collapses on the ground in front of me. Success.

I bring this up not as some window into my budding psychopathic mind (though readers can perhaps interpret it that way). No, what made me remember this dream was the appearance of a video earlier this month of Gwynedd Mercy University senior Justin Deluzio being totally leveled by a deer in the middle of his last college cross country race. Here it is, if you somehow haven't seen it already.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me in a race. I've jostled with other runners, fallen, been spiked--many things, but never this. And I'm happy about that. There's little worse than a major interruption to a race, and little harder than trying to get back into the groove you had so carefully constructed prior to whatever incident has laid you low. And while the incident was a bizarre misfortune, it could have gone a lot worse for Deluzio, according to NPR. With the help of a teammate, he got up and finished his race, bruised and sore but otherwise fine, and with one heck of a fish--er, deer--story.

So yes, I'm glad no deer has attacked me. But part of me--either the same part that still wants to confront a crazed clown on a run, or a part right next to that one--wants to get that close to a deer while running. For the dream I mentioned above was not a bizarre one-off. It was, in fact, a vivid subconscious depiction of one of my life goals: to persistence-hunt a deer.

Persistence hunting, for those who don't know, or who have never been hunter-gatherers, is how our hunter-gatherer ancestors got (and some modern-day humans get) much of their food. They would chase animals for hours, even days, on end, and then, when the animal finally tired, they would have their fill. I first learned about persistence hunting when I read Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. McDougall focuses on the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico, who are legendary distance runners, to make a fascinating--if perhaps exaggerated--argument: that running (specifically, running to hunt) shaped our mental and physical development as human beings. 

Running was basically the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Mentally, running gave us the ability to strategize, to coordinate, and to think long-term; physically, it gave us the ability to be distance runners--and all before anybody had running shoes. Indeed, McDougall even believes that running shoes are bad for us. They hamper the natural ability of our feet to facilitate running by constantly adjusting along whatever terrain they’re on, he claims.

The legacy of running also lingers in our modern obesity epidemic. The running-hunting model trained us to eat as much as we could when food was available, since hunting our prey meant we never knew when we would eat, and, after we ate, when we would eat next. Today, food reliability is nowhere near as big an issue in the developed world. But our bodies are still stuck in the past, and so they tempt us to gorge at all opportunities.

So when I saw that video, after I overcame my shock at something like that actually happening, my mind turned again to persistence hunting. I put myself in Deluzio’s spikes. It's probably for the best that I wasn't he, or that something like this has never happened to me. Because I'm pretty sure the first thing I would have done after I got up is run after that deer. 

I'm aware that this could go badly for me.

Those of you who don't think this is either stupid or dangerous--remember, deer have antlers and hooves--probably think it's just downright impractical. Deer are pretty fast, right? Well, yes. But they are only fast. They're great sprinters. Over a long distance, however, they tire out. Humans are far from the fastest animal, but we are near the top in terms of endurance, as McDougall notes. Which is why my persistence hunting dreams aren't as impractical as they may seem (even if they are still stupid or dangerous).

There are still a few practical difficulties I'd have to work through, though, even if I were in good enough shape to chase a deer to death. For one, deer are quite agile. They can bound effortlessly through densely wooded terrain. To catch one, I'd either have to become similarly agile (unlikely), become an excellent tracker (possible, but time-intensive), or get one in a flat, open area--like, say, a cross country course?--and keep it there (unlikelier still). But even if I figured all of this out, there's one final difficulty: What would I do if I actually caught one? Would it put up a fight? Would it just collapse of exhaustion, leaving no work on my part? Would other deer show up to protect it? All are possible.

Yet something in me keeps this dream alive. Maybe it's the amazing story that would come from it, or my longing for some hard-earned game. Or maybe it's the lingering remnant of the primal spirit of our ancestors, who chased their prey across tundras, plains, steppes, and savannas. If McDougall's right, then it was running--and hunting--that made us what we are today, even if we no longer have to live as our ancestors did. If that's true, then who am I to deny my humanity?

If you didn't run today, are you still a monkey?

Let me know if you want any of the venison.