Ritual

For traditional duck hunters of the South, the hunt is an intricate ritual of reconnection with the circle of life.

It involves everything from hand carving duck decoys as painstakingly as their ancestors, to the slow simmer of duck gumbo to complete the cycle that started at dawn.

The ritual begins in the dark morning.

Later, there will be drops of blood and scattered feathers, and thanks given for a successful hunt.

Seeking sustenance from wild lands is a rare source of abundance that is open to all, regardless of socioeconomic status-though hunting still costs plenty of time and energy.

The hard work and physical discomfort that goes into the process might make duck hunting seem like a tough sell to the younger generation.

But there is no replacement for the lessons learned through initiation into one of humanity's most ancient rituals.

To hunt is to observe firsthand the ties between life and death, and the cost of survival for all creatures, big and small.

Today, I am going to take a deep dive into all the different elements that make up the complex tradition of duck hunting, to see how it illuminates the great web of life.

In early human history, few aspects of our existence had more ritual importance than hunting.

Ancient people often saw it as an agreement voluntarily entered by both predator and prey, and the killing of the animal was always followed by a ceremony of gratitude.

"The hunt is a ritual... it turns life into a mythological experience," the scholar Joseph Campbell explains.

"[The hunted] animal becomes a messenger of divine power."

Today, the ceremonial aspect of hunting may no longer be at the forefront, but hunters still bear witness to the web of interconnection represented by the relationship between predator and prey-especially when compared to people who have only ever gotten their meat from a grocery store.

And while there are plenty of stereotypes circulating about who hunts and why, the hunting community has always been too diverse to fit into one category.

For Jonathan Wilkins, founder of the Black Duck Revival Lodge, understanding this history is crucial for expanding how we see the Southern duck hunters.

We don't normally associate Black culture with hunting, right?

I think that I mean, if you look at the history of Black people in this country, they've always been involved.

If you look at the original hunting guides in the American South, they were all Black people.

There's this myth that black people don't hunt.

Black people don't exist in the woods.

Black people don't work with their hands, when in fact all those plantations were built with Black hands.

The White House was built with Black hands, the swamps of the South and Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana.

They were all cleared by Black people and then they were planted by Black people.

And then they were harvested and tended and processed by Black people.

You're a Southerner.

I'm a Southerner, all Black people are only three generations out of the South, Right?

And like, everybody's got grandmas and aunties that understand herbalism understand tinctures, the idea of like a communal hog killing or any of that stuff, like that's that's rooted in who we are, that's rooted in our American experience.

Then why are we so far removed from it?

The period after the Great Migration where you have Black people moving from the South up into these economic centers of the North.

Where you're seeing Black people in popular culture is in these urban centers where they are disconnected from their agrarian and naturalistic roots.

Do you see yourself as being as the act of hunting, as being an act of resistance?

I think that self-sufficiency as a Black person in itself can be seen in some ways as an act of resistance.

Especially this particular space where you are told that that's not something that we do in our culture, that, oh, that's for white folk.

That's not for us to literally do something that is so natural as getting our own food and preparing it and sharing it with our family.

Can hunting be spiritual?

I mean, absolutely.

I think it's inherently spiritual.

The closest I've felt to God have been times when I've been hunting.

Feeding my kids with it and their understanding of the natural world and like, where their food comes from is is tied into that.

And then it's something I can pass on to them like they can they can distinguish animal tracks, they can distinguish animal calls.

the least important part is pulling the trigger.

It's all the other stuff.

It's the journey.

It's like being someplace before the sun comes up, you know, and navigate in the dark, identifying what's happening in the natural world.

It feels it feels incredibly natural.

It feels like what I'm supposed to be doing.

Are hunters protecting the environment?

Yeah.

So, absolutely.

I mean, you're talking about the funds that come from license sales, of every gun sale, every bullet that sold, part of that goes towards conservation.

So that goes towards research about animals.

It goes to scientifically based management.

That's like when you can hunt, how many animals you can hunt, and then also the preservation of landscapes as they exist.

And that's like one of the biggest things, right?

So like all that money comes from hunting or the vast majority of it comes from hunting, So how is hunting ritualistic?

You know, I would say, like, the most important ritual of the whole thing to me would be like the processing of the animal and the turning that animal into food and sustenance and then the storytelling that comes with that, like telling them about your adventure, but also like preparing something.

Knowing where it came from it, and then serving that to people that you care about.

That's a form of storytelling, right?

And that's like an incredibly human, spiritual, ritualistic activity.

One of the biggest rituals involved in duck hunting would be the association with calls.

Right?

So I hear that you play a little music, right, Tank?

Oh, just a little bit.

So like a duck call is a reeded...

This is a woodwind.

You could trace it back to, like, the original instrumentation And so people trying to recreate animal calls, you know, would find that, hey, that sounds a little bit like a turkey.

That sounds a little bit like a duck.

and then you introduce place to it.

Like where I'm at from Arkansas, we have a really loud staccato, kind of like rhythmic way of calling because we're hunting in flooded forest where there's a lot of covers.

We have to punch the sound through all that stuff that's absorbing the sound.

Can I hear it?

Sure.

[Jonathan blows duck call] Now you musical with yours.

I hear a little beatboxing in that You put a little thing on it.

I put a little, I would reference, I would say I'm referencing like a bass guitar.

That's so dope because it's just like, like, like living in the South or living Midwest, everyone has different accents too?

Yeah.

So the fact that the duck calls kind of have their own little accent in a way just depending on their own region that they're in, I think that's pretty amazing.

I mean, dude, it's 100% that way.

And then you go species to species.

there's a little bit different between everything, right?

So trying to figure that.

I just wonder if the roles were reversed and the ducks were trying to figure out how to call us to them and they'd be like, Man, all you got to say is, "Ay man, ay man" or "What's up shorty" [Tank laughs] Look, that's exactly.

As if they we're trying to reel us in and they was using words that we say No, look, okay, you're joking around, but that's exactly what you're doing.

Dale Bordelon, a duck hunter from Louisiana's Cajun country, appreciates that each aspect of this tradition connects him to his ancestors.

He meticulously approaches the craft exactly how it would have been done when his family first came to Louisiana in 1720.

For him, duck hunting is a way of life that brings together generations past and present.

One he is proud to share with his son and grandson.

How do you keep these old traditions of life from your ancestors?

Well, I was raised with the old people that sold ducks, they made pillows.

As a young boy I witness that.

They made their own decoys.

Their own duck calls.

How do you prepare for the hunt?

Well, to go duck hunting, you got to have decoys.

What's a decoy?

A decoy Is this.

This is a homemade decoy.

Did you make it?

I made it, yes.

How did you make it?

With hand tools.

We built some blinds.

A blind is a structure you build and and you put your decoys in front of the blind, so when the ducks see them, it lures them to you.

And then you have a duck call.

when you see ducks, you call them to you.

so this is a hand-carved decoy made out of cypress root.

That's a big Louisiana specialty right here from the old days.

This started, this goes back to late 1800s.

Now they got plastic decoys, but in the old days, if you wanted to hunt, you had to make your own.

So.

And I do that to keep as part of the heritage.

Are you going to give me one?

We'll talk about that.

[Tank laughs] He said I feel very specially connected to each one I make.

My boys killed that first duck over these.

It's hard to get rid of.

Yeah.

Certain things are a connection.

They're going to go to them.

You keep things a long time.

You're a traditionalist and you have a lot of dates in your mind.

It's just something that does me a lot of good, my heart.

And this is what fuels my flame right here.

Doing this.

Wow.

What's one of your best memories from childhood of duck hunting?

I guess it has to be when I kill my first ducks.

I was all excited.

So, end up going home and going to the barn and plucking the ducks and my mama came and helped me.

And then she cooked a big gumbo for me.

Can't get no better than that.

Yeah I guess so after you, like, literally go out and find your own feast and and you and you eat with your family.

So it sounds more like it's a, a communal thing, you know, a tradition.

So what makes this feel familiar to you?

Like tradition, like family, like spiritual?

It's a personal connection with no one's before me.

So when I go in my pirogue in the morning to the blind, I do this every morning, I jump in the pirogue and I have a thermos of coffee.

When I get halfway to the blind, I stop.

I pour me a cup and I toast to the good Lord for letting me have another day.

A good day.

And to the ones before me that taught me this and honor them.

And I'll.

I'll do that.

It's like a ritual.

It is.

It's a sacred thing.

It's not just killing ducks.

But most people that never done this does not realize that's part of my living room that duck blind.

I see that every morning.

And when you standing in the blind, looking out, watching the sun come up, you see just amazing things you never see anywhere else.

It's a sacred deal to me.

In which ways do you pay respect to the ducks that you've harvest?

We hunt, we harvest ducks to eat and I take care of my property for the ducks.

The ducks get bought home, processed and nothing goes to waste.

But, I have a lot of old friends that taught me how to hunt, taught me how to call, and they can't go no more.

So I give a lot of ducks away to the elderly people Plus there's a strong connection with my pillow making.

I'll save all my duck feathers to make pillows and it's like I'm doing something to honor the old people.

And I've been doing that for 15 years now.

So you basically sleep very well.

The most comfortable pillow you ever had, I can tell you.

That's amazing.

What are some people missing out on?

Because it's a tradition that, you know, it's not as widely known as it used to be.

They may send out on the most beautiful sunrise you ever see.

I get to see that every morning.

I get to witness not just ducks, alligators, deer swimming across the lake It's God's creation.

It's unbelievable.

I get to experience hunting with my family, my friends.

There's a lot of good times in the blind.

A lot of problems have been solved in the blind.

A lot of good things.

It's it's a good place to communicate.

So how are you keeping this tradition alive?

this all started 50 years ago with my daddy bringing me to old camps.

He instilled a foundation in me.

So now I pass that on to my kids and now to my grandkids.

That's four generations in my time.

No matter how far we get from the process of growing or hunting our own food, there is no avoiding the fact that life and death are inseparable.

We are born into the Earth and to the Earth we will return.

Hunting doesn't just acknowledge this difficult, but inescapable truth.

It seeks to bring it closer instead of pushing it away.

The death of the duck brings life into those who have killed it.

Just as the bodies of the hunters will one day break down into the soil, feeding the plants that feed the fish, that feed the duck, that will then be the next generation of hunters.

This is a cyclical ritual of pain and beauty, where life and death are at once, temporary and eternal, and as people are honored by participation in the dance.