Ancestral Hunting

Hunting has been calling me for years.

This blog is long overdue. I’ve been holding this close to me for a while and I’m finally ready to share how and why hunting is a deeply spiritual and ancestral experience for me.

I will segment this topic into three blogs.

This first blog will outline the reasons I began hunting:

• Ancestral Memory

• Basic Life Skills

• Healthier RAW foods

A critical resource in my journey has been "Sacred Hunting" by Mansal Denton. Choosing this book felt like it chose me. Mansal was able to put into words a lot of what I was feeling but couldn’t express. So I plan to quote his words in my writing.

Ancestral Memory

It always begins with a spark, doesn’t it? The calling to hunt started when I was around 10 years old. No one in my immediate family hunted, yet I still had this primal longing to follow this path.

I do however remember taking a sneak peak through the blinds to see what my parent’s forbade me to watch. Heads up- If you’re extremely sensitive about animals, I get it. Skip the paragraph in italics and continue reading after it ends.

So after I had a chance to get out of my mom’s sight, I would sneak over and take a peek. I was curious, can you blame me? If you tell a child not to do something…chances are they are going to do it. My memory of this is a little blurry, so all I remember is seeing a goat hung upside down on our back porch. I could hear the goat Ba-ah-ah-ah… Then silence. Blood was washed off the porch and dinner that night was barbacoa (goat meat slow cooked over an open fire). I never saw the act, but I knew what he was doing. I never felt scared, nor disgusted…just curious.

That curiosity has always remained with me. I now realize that it was a memory imprinted from my ancestors. And I followed it...

“When I think of our Ancestors, looking for the same food and employing the same tactics in the same territory, I have created a portal where I can meld my mind and psyche with those people. What I’m doing in that moment aligns with what these people have done for thousands of years. The stronger the bonds I have with the people who walked the Earth before me, the better man I become. I’m more connected to the Earth, less selfish, more collaborative, more open and supportive. Hunting is an embodied activity that allows me to feel the way our ancestors felt.” Denton, Mansal. (2021). Sacred Hunting.

I remember begging my brother-in-laws to take me hunting, but I was never taken seriously (& I don’t blame them. I wasn’t ready!) The desire to hunt never left me, but life became busy with nursing school and the transition into stepping into the real world. Fast forward, at the age of 27 I began to start questioning the path of my life. I like to joke and call this my quarter-life crisis.

So aside from questioning my entire existence, no big deal… I’d say the thought of hunting only became stronger and stronger.

It became apparent that this urge within me was persistent. So on Christmas Eve in 2021, I presented a top-notch, hilarious yet educational slideshow on why my brother-in-law should take me hunting. As humble as possible, I think I’m kinda funny. Not like a Dave Chappell or Comedian Theo funny but I was blessed with a little sense of humor. So here’s my slideshow below.

5 minutes of laughter, and 1 month later, I was on my way to Rocksprings, Texas about 80 miles from the border of Mexico.

The details on my first hunting trip will be posted in another blog post..stay tuned. For now, I want to keep the focus on what my intentions were to hunt in the first place.

Basic Life Skills

Take a look around you. We have been conditioned from mainstream media, consumerism and societal standards, that it’s normal to have our hands glued to our phones, sitting in fluorescent lighting 8+ hours a day, eating “food” from a can, drive-thru, or letting computers to think for us.

Excuse my language, but what the f*ck?

We are becoming WAY too dependent on the system that we don’t even know how to function without it. Do ya’ll remember when the world shut down during the Pandemic? And we had to wait in line for hours to buy food at grocery store? Yeah…. me too. It was insulting and embarrassing when I really thought about how none of us would survive an apocalypse.

This led me to think about my ancestors. They were hunters & gatherers. They cooked over wood-fire, and made shelter. Generations later, they began making bread from scratch and preserving foods. With time, their life-navigation skills improved. Imagine their reaction if they knew their future generation would be scrolling Tik-Tok waiting in a line to buy processed foods in a can, fruit and vegetables that are not in season, and meat grown with additives.

How have we become so disconnected with real food, basic life skills, meaningful relationships, and fulfilling purpose in life?

Mansal hit the nail on the head. “Conditioning from our parents, the media, and our civilization creates noise and confusion, and with no connection to life-navigation skills, we even forget what the path looks like.” Denton, Mansal. (2021). Sacred Hunting.

It’s simple..we’ve forgotten. We’ve lost ourselves in this modern world. We’ve lost our ability to grow our own food or butcher our own meat. We’ve lost our path.

I don’t know about you, but I feel strongly about being able to provide for my family and I. I no longer want to be fully dependent on a system that serves us low quality “food”, and one that can fail at any moment in time.

Healthier RAW foods

Sadly, we often take food for granted..treating it as a chore rather than something to appreciate. I remember my days working as a Nurse in the ICU..scarfing down my food in the break room because I had to rush back to my sick patient. Sometimes I wouldn’t even smell, taste, or remember what I ate. Not only was it a disservice to myself by eating fast (our body can not properly digest food when you’re in that state) but I never showed gratitude for what I was eating. My perspective changed when I moved to the country.

How did this happen?

• I started raising chickens from six weeks old and waited patiently for their first egg at seven months. We fed them, gave them fresh water, loved them, and patiently waited. So you can only imagine the reward we felt when we were finally able to have farm to table scrambled eggs.

• I harvested honey at my neighbor Mary’s farm, experiencing everything from suiting up to taking home a jar of fresh honey. I also had the chance to milk her Mama cow.

• I started buying organic meat-chickens from another neighbor Jamie who raises, and processes them herself. Free from hormones or antibiotics.

• Bringing home a deer to provide high-quality, ethically sourced meat for my family was an incredibly rewarding experience.

Honestly, we can’t take full blame for being disconnected from food because it’s not even real food to begin with. Food isn’t food anymore. It’s filled with food fillers which help bulk up the weight of food, helping keep the prices lower and antibiotics to make the livestock grow faster and survive the crowded, dirty, conditions of factory farms. -Those PETA ads you come across are real. It truly breaks my heart.

“Reading the book The Body Keeps the Score, I recognized how much trauma humans store in their bodies. I realized that if humans experience this, so do the animals we eat. If I was eating an animal full of trauma from factory farms, that trauma was literally becoming a part of me and my body, and I wanted nothing to do with that.” Denton, Mansal. (2021). Sacred Hunting.

This is why I strive to buy regenerative meat or products from local farms. My favorite is Force of Nature, available at Whole Foods and HEB or 1915 Farm.

As a Holistic Nurse Coach, I will always give it to you straight. I am on your team, and I’ll walk with you every step of the way with patience and grace….but there are some things that I won’t sugar coat because your life life depends on it.

You WILL end up in the very own ICU I used to work in if you continue this path. You will suffer from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes that are PREVENTABLE with the right lifestyle changes.

But here’s the good news… it’s not too late.

It’s not too late to transition back to a lifestyle that will buy you more days on earth.

It’s not too late to reconnect with our ancestral wisdom and skills to be self-sustainable.

It’s not too late to take an active role in your health, and feel alive and vibrant as were intended to be.

It’s not too late to turn your labs and vitals around to the point where you can wean off your prescriptions.

YOU are part of something bigger. Much..much bigger. Take care of yourself. Don’t get so caught up on the latest and greatest wellness trends or magic in a pill. It’s really simple. Just eat real food. Reconnect with your family lineage. Be kind to others. Walk. Have dinner with your family without the distractions such as your phone or T.V.

& I promise you…. your health and happiness will drastically improve.