Hunting instinct

“ Interest in hunting is almost universal, so deeply is it rooted as an inherited instinct ever ready to rise and make itself know. Fine scenery may not stir a fiber of mind or body, but how quick and how true is the excitement of the pursuit of game! ”

“ He was concerned with the romance of the thought, with alliteration, and the singular charm of the truth—sunset and the end of the day, the hunter's plod down the hill to the cottage, to the home where wife and children awaited him. Indeed it is a beautiful truth, and not altogether in the past, for there are still farmers and pioneers.
Hunting is a savage primordial instinct inherited from our ancestors. It goes back through all the ages of man, and farther still—to the age when man was not man, but hairy ape, or some other beast from which we are descended. ”

“ Thus the adult fighting or hunting instinct of past generations appears in the young [251] to-day as a fighting-play or a hunting-play. It is open to question, however, whether either the instinctive behaviour or the conscious situation in the one case and the other is so nearly identical that the playful fight or hunt can fairly be called the same instinctive procedure as the serious combat or chase. We may hold, with Professor Groos, that the one is an invaluable preparation for the other without identifying them as the same behaviour under different conditions. ”

“ We depend no longer upon the hunt for each day's supply of food. But the instinct to hunt which still remains we use to amuse ourselves while upon our camping trips. Some people even made a living by hunting for the market, although, fortunately for the wild creatures, little of this kind of hunting is now permitted.
The desire to get out of doors and live for a time each year among the wild mountains is another instinct which comes to us from our savage forefathers. This is a beneficial instinct, for life in the fresh air gives us new strength. ”

“ This can be seen clearly in the case of animals whose environment Is artificially changed. In the dog, for instance, loyalty to the interests of the pack has become loyalty to his master's household. In man, too, there has already been obvious modification and sublimation of many instincts. The hunting impulse begins in the jungle, and may end in the philosopher's exploration of the Infinite. It is the combative instinct which drives the reformer headlong against the evils of the world, as it once drove two cave men at each others' throats. ”

“ When we meet with instances of a nature calculated to overturn this theory—such as wild animals attacking and destroying travellers, or preying upon the shepherd as he guards his flock, with others of a similar description—instead of hastily presuming upon the falsity of the above position, we should rather seek for some explanation of the reasons which in these cases checked for the time the workings of the animal’s natural instinct. ”

“ The truth was that he was acting solely by instinct. Men who have lived long in the wilderness learn a very important secret in dealing with wild animals. They know, in the first place, that intimacy with them is solely a matter of sitting still and making no sudden motions. ”

“ But every man can love wild animals. Every man can study and try to understand the intelligence of his horse, the loyalty of his dog. And every hunter can hunt less with his instinct, and more with an understanding of his needs, and a consideration for the beasts only the creator knows. ”

“ Then suddenly there came to my ear the loud sound of voices, human voices, strident and eager, with nothing of the animal growl in them.
“He’s in there. I seen him!” I heard some one call.
Rapidly I dived sideways into the underbrush, my animal instinct strong upon me again, growling as I went. Instinctively I knew that it was I that they were after. All the animal joy of being hunted came over me. ”

“ Their case was precisely analogous to that of the Adirondack calves. The two opposite instincts relative to the same object ripen in succession. If the first one engenders a habit, that habit will inhibit the application of the second instinct to that object. All animals are tame during some phase of their infancy. Habits formed then limit the effects of whatever instincts of wildness may later be evolved. ”

“ The hunt is a contest between intelligence and instinct, where victory by no means always inclines to the human. As I looked down at the nest, I knew just how the talented recluse in “The Gold Bug” felt when, after solving the cryptogram and disposing of every difficulty, he at last gazed into the open treasure-chest.
To-day there was to be no such glorious experience, and we finally gave up the hunt and started back across the meadow. As we moved through the swishing grass, suddenly we heard a curious clicking bird-note. ”

“ I would merely take this occasion to reaffirm with confidence the belief, which I find shared by practically all observers whose lives are passed in the closest relationship with animals,—by such vitally interested observers, for instance, as keepers, trainers, hunters, and trappers,—that the actions of animals are governed not only by instinct, but also, in varying degree, by processes essentially akin to those of human reason. ”

“ A wild animal has three sources of wisdom:
First, the experience of its ancestors, in the form of instinct, which is inborn learning, hammered into the race by ages of selection and tribulation. This is the most important to begin with, because it guards him from the moment he is born. ”

“ Lest the migration of creatures should cease to be a thing of wonder to us, Nature organizes once in a way a monster excursion, sometimes of rats, sometimes of deer, but most frequently of birds, to remind man of the marvellous instinct that draws the animal world from place to place or from zone to zone. ”

“ As applied to the wild things, we often stumble on to the terms, instinct of direction, instinct of migration, instinct of song, instinct of nest building, and so on. Webster gives several definitions as to the meaning of instinct. The following covers the ground:
"An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge."
To gather acorns in the balmy days of October and store them for the cold of winter, is a work of intelligence and knowledge. Can we believe that the blue jays and squirrels perform this work blindly and ignorantly? ”

“ Every one admits that he became a hunter at some time: why not at the earliest? Nothing less than some great change of life, concentrating all his powers and straining every faculty, can possibly account for the enormous differentiation of Man. The adoption of the hunting life is such a change ”

“ The hunter’s instinct is the one most deeply rooted in the mind of man; it is among those tendencies which persist after the conditions which called them forth have disappeared—even from memory. It is the true basis of that original sin over which the theologians fumble, for in the absence of other available game men hunt each other.
But I had, incontinently, to sleep. And hey—for a gallop over the plains in the morning.
Chapter Seven. The Springbuck Drive—The Bushman Caves—Return to Gamoep. ”

“ That instinctive actions can be modified or inhibited by intelligence and will is proved by any trained beast of prey which masters its hunger and the impulse to snap at the piece of flesh held before it, because it knows that if it does not control itself painful blows will be the consequence. In a later lecture I shall return to the connexion between will and instinct; all that concerns us here is to regard instincts as the outcome of the processes of selection, and as an indirect proof of the reality of these. ”

“ Thus we call the sentiment which leads the Birds to perform so many admirable actions, instinct. The tenderness of the mother for her young for instance—a tenderness so full of delicacy and foresight, is, we say, only the result of instinct. It is agreed, however, that this instinct singularly resembles the intelligence called reason. ”

“ One cannot but think that creatures so sagacious must learn in their wild state. Indeed less clever animals seem to some extent to teach their young, birds to sing, wolves to hunt, although it is most difficult for naturalists in such cases to judge what comes by instinct and what is consciously learnt. ”

“ The answer is, that there is no connection between these two things--the universal mythic faculty of the mind, and that bold and violent instinct of social animals of rushing to the rescue of a stricken or distressed companion, which has a definite, a narrow, purpose--namely, to fall upon an enemy endowed not merely with the life and intelligence common to all things, including rocks, trees, and waters, but with animal form and motion. ”

“ Some writers regard them as "inherited habits," while others, with apparent justice, doubt if mere habits or voluntary actions repeated till they become a "second nature" ever leave a trace upon heredity. Such investigators regard instinct as the natural survival of those methods of automatic response which were most useful to the life of the animal, the individual having less effective methods of reflex action perishing, leaving no posterity. ”

“ As we ascend higher in the scale it becomes apparent that life has gathered force. That primitive speck of jelly, the Amœba, with which we started, gave but two signs of animation—the power of movement, and hunger. Whether these responses to internal stimuli can be called instinctive is open to argument. But there can be no question about the instinctive nature of the behaviour of these higher animals. After the instinct to feed the two most powerful are the desire for self-preservation—the avoidance of danger—and the desire to mate. ”

“ There is nothing strange in this self-directive faculty. Is not man capable of following where animals lead? One of the objects of my special study has been to ascertain the nature of the instinct-power of animals, the sagacity of brutes. ”

“ An animal, even an insect, thinks, remembers, reasons, and wills. [1] Few naturalists will now support the doctrine that all the mental operations of brute or insect are to be exclusively referred to instincts; and, even if they do, the word 'instinct' is a very vague word,—loose and large enough to cover an abyss which our knowledge has not sounded. And, indeed, in proportion as an animal like the dog becomes cultivated by intercourse, his instincts grow weaker, and his ideas formed by experience (namely, his mind) , more developed, often to the conquest of the instincts themselves. ”

“ It appears to me that instinct should be defined as—“the performance by an animal of complex acts, absolutely without instruction or previously-acquired knowledge.” Thus, acts are said to be performed by birds in building their nests, by bees in constructing their cells, and by many insects in providing for the future wants of themselves or their progeny, without ever having seen such acts performed by others, and without any knowledge of why they perform them themselves. ”

“ See the caged animal try to escape, or the tethered one try to break its tether,—how long the struggle continues! A rational being would quickly be convinced, and would desist. But instinct is automatic, and the reaction continues. When the animal ceases its struggles, it is not as the result of a process of ratiocination,—'this cage or this chain is stronger than I am, therefore I cannot escape,'—but because the force of instinct has spent itself. Man, too, is more or less the creature of habit, but the lower animals are almost entirely so. ”

“ It is not so much what you do, when you go out hunting, as how you feel. You have to be subtle and cunning and absolutely fatally ready. It becomes like a fate. Your own fate overtakes and determines the fate of the deer you are hunting. First of all, even before you come in sight of your quarry, there is a strange battle, like mesmerism. Your own soul, as a hunter, has gone out to fasten on the soul of the deer, even before you see any deer. And the soul of the deer fights to escape. Even before the deer has any wind of you, it is so. ”

“ It would seem, then, from this that the fighting must bear some relation to the particular area of ground in which it occurs; and unless it can be shown that there is some other factor in the external environment of the male, that is the direction in which we must look for the condition under which the instinct is rendered susceptible. ”

“ I shall say only that while instinct does not appear in the lowest animals (whose action is all of the reflex type) , and is for a time a sign of rising rank in the scale of life, it reaches its culmination with the insects, and as we approach man it is the breaking up of the instincts that is in its turn a sign [33] of advancement to higher life. ”

“ But animals, and most woodsmen, have a sixth sense upon which they rely, an intuitive faculty we call instinct. It is more infallible than their conscious reasoning or physical senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. ”

“ When the migrating bird finds its way without difficulty, untaught and unaccompanied, to the South it has never seen, we call its guiding principle instinct—but what is the definition of the word instinct? No man can give it. It but removes the difficulty one step backward. Call this instinct an inherited memory and the matter becomes clear. Such memories, it is plain, are more definite with the animals than with us; but so are many of their faculties, hearing, smell, and sight. ”