Rudner, R. 2000. A chorus of buffalo. A personal portrait of an American icon. – New York, Marlowe & Company

Abstract

Wildlife should not be on display. It should simply be. Yet we all crave connection with it. It’s why we drive vehicles called Cougars and Rams and Eagles. It’s why we call our schoolteams Bobcats or Grizzlies or Panthers or Hawks. It’s why we wear shirts with wolves embroidered on them or buy paintings of lions and falcons. There are a hundred ways in which we take the emblem of a wild animal to represent us. We may think it’s style, but, in fact it’s connection. “You are what you eat”, my mother told me when I was little. So I wanted to eat bears. When, years later, I was finally offered bear meat, I ate it as a holy ritual, knowing what it was I took inside me, whose flesh I made my flesh. I feel the same way when I eat buffalo meat. We hunt because we identify with the animals we hunt. We are anti hunting because we identify with those same animals. Anyway you do it, you never get away from the connection. (p. 129). Read more