Wednesday 3 October 2007

Counting coup on moose

The week before last week I had a most wonderful vacation. I dropped everything at home and work, and went to the family farm. There, my father, a few of the landowners and me went moosehunting.(This and the following picture are not mine, just there for illustrative purposes.)

The way it works is that most of the hunters are posted on natural paths or areas the moose move along. Then, one or two hunters start "herding" the moose towards the posts. If the posted hunter gets a clean shot, he takes it. As I'm not familiar enough with the terrain, I got be a posted hunter.

The timing was absolutely perfect. The weather had been depressive the last couple of months, but just as the hunting period started, we got a window of suberb sunny autumn weather. Sitting there, half exited, half bored, enjoying the sun and my surroundings, I had a very satisfying experience of Norwegian nature.

My first real encounter with a moose was also quite special. I sat at the outskirts of a small grassed opening in the forrest, as I heard on the walkie talkie that a post near me had seen a moose. I snapped to attention, and really stared at the little plain. I heard rustling noises to my right, and wrongly assumed it was one of the "herders" coming towards me. I looked up, and saw straight in the eyes of a big moose, perhaps 10 meters away, which, on the sight of me, almost jumped around and ran the way it came. The forrest was so thick, the encounter so short and I was so startled that there was no good opportunity for a shot. Nothing to regret, rather a very nice experience. Afterwards, we called the place the "pistol post", as there is not very much point in having a rifle with a telescopic aim at such a place. (Of course, it's not allowed to use pistol while hunting in Norway).

I had two other close encounters with moose as well, but as they were not on the quota, I let them pass. I just enjoyed the sight of them instead. I also got a few good looks at the biggest forrest living birds we have in Norway, the storfugl, or tiur. One actually flew straigth towards me and tried to stop in the air 3 meters in front of me, resulting in a comical strafe to the the side and out of sight. There's a lot of tiur in the woods nowadays; when the moose hunting is over, my dad and I will probably go after some.

I occasionally hunt (and fish) because I feel it's a natural thing to do. It is both challenging and fulfilling (pun not intended). When you buy meat at the store, you get it nicely packed in plastic. It's of course comfortable not to be involved with the killing and preparing of an animal before eating it, but you're sort of shutting yourself away from nature. In a way, I feel I respect the animal more when I'm directly involved with it, instead of just being a consumer of it.
Perhaps a bit naïvely, I think that if I eat a wild animal, there is less need for a domesticated one, wasting away in a stall somewhere, just being a consumer product. (And I won't go into reasons for not being a vegetarian here. =)

A step up, or a step sideways

That's what I get for sticking my neck out.

I've just been promoted to group leader of the group for structural modelling at Reinertsen, main office. After a bit of joking to and forth with my colleagues, we've found out that I'm actually a group servant. That describes most of what I'll actually be doing, anyway.

I'm quite exited. I can't complain about my career ladder so far. =)