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Chapter 5: The Community of the Hunt
- University of Virginia Press
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5. The Community of the Hunt It is such trips as these that give new energies to the mind and body; they bring about social feelings, and a day or two’s relaxation from business arouses inclination to attention to it, and to work on in anticipation of new sport. Excursions of this sort bring out the character of man; they tend to warm his heart and soul. A Baltimore hunter, W chose their companions from the pool of possible associates, they created and refined their personal image of masculinity. When hunters banded together into a fraternity, they combined these individual notions into a shared image of masculinity, which manifested itself in the composition of their criteria of exclusion. When they synthesized from personal experience, tradition, and the sporting press their particular definition of masculinity and an accompanying vision of the ideal companion, most fraternity members valued flexibility over sporting dogma. Although many fraternities adopted the standards for exclusion that appeared in the sporting press, few followed these guidelines rigorously. A variety of social forces, including personal idiosyncrasies, kinship networks , and land-use patterns, created a wide range of acceptable behavior . Some fraternities elevated the daylong pursuit of a single, inedible fox to the zenith of masculine experience, while others dispensed with the rules of sport and emphasized killing a large amount of game. These standards depended upon geographic location and the character of a given fraternity’s members. Demographic variables like duration of settlement, supply of game, proximity of towns, and intensity of agriculture created tremendous diversity in the composition and orientation of hunting fraternities across the South. Whatever their structure at any given moment, fraternities remained almost infinitely malleable in terms of their numbers , intensity, and composition. Rather than denoting weakness in the Bathed in Blood organization, strength, or importance of hunting fraternities, this mutability proved their resilience and universality. Fraternities expressed ideas about masculinity and exclusion in different ways. Although distrust of urbanites, ethnic whites, and pothunters provided many fraternities with sufficient criteria to limit the pool of possible candidates, initiates faced a final test. Hunting companions in the end were judged, not by their hunting prowess or their standing in the community, but by the expression of a rather subjective quality: congeniality. This sense of affinity and mutual agreeableness played a decisive role in the construction and maintenance of fraternities across the South. It bound men together and provided the critical ingredient that transformed groups of hunters into fraternities. Letters of reference, fine marksmanship, and an encyclopedic knowledge of sport might help initiates make some important connections, but neither wealth nor ability trumped congeniality . An initiate might present impeccable credentials and kill with ease, but if no one enjoyed his company, neither of these otherwise useful signi- fiers carried much weight.1 Hunting nurtured the development of congeniality by providing a venue for the deepening of trust, the promotion of homogeneity, and the expression of intimacy. Once these were attained, the stridently professed criteria of exclusion faded in significance. Each of these factors played an important role, but trust was of paramount importance. Every manifestation of congeniality included the presence of trust. Group hunts made excellent proving grounds for this admirable quality because they forced interdependence upon its participants. Replete with guns, shared hardship, and the challenge of the kill, hunting depended upon a measure of cooperation between the participants. A typical drive for deer provided numerous opportunities for the deepening of trust. Before casting the dogs (who were directed by their owner or one of his slaves), each hunter manned a stand that overlooked a game trail leading away from the drive (the stretch of ground that would be coursed by the dogs). Most stands were nothing more than a gap between thickets, and enthusiastic hunters usually knew every stand in their neighborhood well. Many even named their favorite stands and ranked them according to preference. The hunt began when the dog drivers released the pack and directed them through a section of woods in the hope that they might rouse some deer. If everything went as planned, the deer, driven by [18.191.21.86] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:00 GMT) The Community of the Hunt the sound of the pack, would begin running toward the stands. This brought the deer well within the effective range of the hunters’ waiting guns. Every hunter hoped that at least one deer would attempt an escape through his particular...