Read Online Shatner Rules by William Shatner - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: William Shatner
Ads: Link
the hell am I thinking?
Perhaps it was a control issue? My marriage had crumbled, my job had ended, and my daughters were living somewhere else.
Perhaps my desire to go out and hunt my own food was a primal urge to control my destiny, my survival. But once I got out to the island, I began to think that a safer way to act out my primitive man urges would be to rediscover fire or paint a picture of a horse on a cave wall.
So I’m trudging, and slightly trembling, around the island, and before long a massive male boar emerges from the underbrush. A giant. I pull back the string on my compound bow, aim, and release the bolt. A direct hit!
A hunting arrow works with three cutting blades, and your prey bleeds to death. You lodge an arrow into an animal, and then you don’t move. You sit down and wait for an hour, for nature to take its course, for the animal to bleed out.
(NOTE: When hunting with a bow and arrow, bring a book. Or, if you have a sense of irony, a copy of
Vegetarian Times
.)
Unfortunately, no one hipped my pig to the whole “fall and slowly die” thing.
After the hit, he took off into the underbrush, my arrow in his massive flank. My guide ran after the beast. I stood there for a second, surprised, not sure what to do. It was then that I noted an entire pack of wild boar had emerged from the bushes, some even bigger than the one I hit. The guy with the .45 was gone, and I ran after him as fast as I could.
The guide came running back to me and said, “The pig went through this hole.” There was a very neat—and small—tunnel in the underbrush.
He said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to go around this brush. I’ll go around and get to the other side; you go in and flush him out.”
Before I could say, “Maybe I could borrow that .45 for my flushing,” he was gone.
And I was crawling through the densest thicket, being pricked and poked, breathing in earthy air, my bow and arrow over my shoulder. Even if the pig did come charging after me, there would be no way to arm the bow and use it.
I was a sitting duck for a wounded pig and my goose would soon be cooked, or something like that.
Luckily, it turned out the beast had just made it out of the tunnel of brush, collapsed, and died. All my apprehension and terror was quickly replaced with the joy of the kill.
We field dressed the pig right then and there. I gave the guide a share of the meat, and headed back to Los Angeles. I dropped the kill off with Al Francis, and the wonderful and warm Mrs. Francis. Primal Shatner had hunted well.
The next day, Thanksgiving, Mrs. Francis informed me that the meat was no good. Spoiled. After I left the day before, she dutifully went to the public library and researched the proper method for preparing wild boar for consumption. Who knew the library even had a “Wild Boar Preparation and Consumption” section? She stayed up all night, taking the temperature of the flesh every two hours, bleeding it out, and to no avail. The only thing to be thankful for was that we all didn’t perish from trichinosis.
I brought twenty steaks to the celebration the next day, and they were delicious. I had a wonderful time with my surrogate family.
But I couldn’t help thinking about the implications of so much meat being consumed. The boar was dead, now a cow was dead. Perhaps hunting wasn’t something I was entirely comfortable with? Perhaps Primal Shatner wasn’t a fellow I wanted to be.
So in the 1970s, like many people, I hitched a ride to vegetarian enlightenment. I became a strict herbivore. I swore off the meat stuff. In fact, I even became a bit of an anti-meat zealot.
Vegetarian Times
magazine? I was on the cover in 1983.
Bill celebrates vegetarianism, albeit briefly, in 1983.(
Courtesy of
Vegetarian Times)
My interview with the magazine promoted a documentary I hosted and narrated called
The Vegetarian World
, which also featured Pulitzer Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and actress Betty
Perhaps it was a control issue? My marriage had crumbled, my job had ended, and my daughters were living somewhere else.
Perhaps my desire to go out and hunt my own food was a primal urge to control my destiny, my survival. But once I got out to the island, I began to think that a safer way to act out my primitive man urges would be to rediscover fire or paint a picture of a horse on a cave wall.
So I’m trudging, and slightly trembling, around the island, and before long a massive male boar emerges from the underbrush. A giant. I pull back the string on my compound bow, aim, and release the bolt. A direct hit!
A hunting arrow works with three cutting blades, and your prey bleeds to death. You lodge an arrow into an animal, and then you don’t move. You sit down and wait for an hour, for nature to take its course, for the animal to bleed out.
(NOTE: When hunting with a bow and arrow, bring a book. Or, if you have a sense of irony, a copy of
Vegetarian Times
.)
Unfortunately, no one hipped my pig to the whole “fall and slowly die” thing.
After the hit, he took off into the underbrush, my arrow in his massive flank. My guide ran after the beast. I stood there for a second, surprised, not sure what to do. It was then that I noted an entire pack of wild boar had emerged from the bushes, some even bigger than the one I hit. The guy with the .45 was gone, and I ran after him as fast as I could.
The guide came running back to me and said, “The pig went through this hole.” There was a very neat—and small—tunnel in the underbrush.
He said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to go around this brush. I’ll go around and get to the other side; you go in and flush him out.”
Before I could say, “Maybe I could borrow that .45 for my flushing,” he was gone.
And I was crawling through the densest thicket, being pricked and poked, breathing in earthy air, my bow and arrow over my shoulder. Even if the pig did come charging after me, there would be no way to arm the bow and use it.
I was a sitting duck for a wounded pig and my goose would soon be cooked, or something like that.
Luckily, it turned out the beast had just made it out of the tunnel of brush, collapsed, and died. All my apprehension and terror was quickly replaced with the joy of the kill.
We field dressed the pig right then and there. I gave the guide a share of the meat, and headed back to Los Angeles. I dropped the kill off with Al Francis, and the wonderful and warm Mrs. Francis. Primal Shatner had hunted well.
The next day, Thanksgiving, Mrs. Francis informed me that the meat was no good. Spoiled. After I left the day before, she dutifully went to the public library and researched the proper method for preparing wild boar for consumption. Who knew the library even had a “Wild Boar Preparation and Consumption” section? She stayed up all night, taking the temperature of the flesh every two hours, bleeding it out, and to no avail. The only thing to be thankful for was that we all didn’t perish from trichinosis.
I brought twenty steaks to the celebration the next day, and they were delicious. I had a wonderful time with my surrogate family.
But I couldn’t help thinking about the implications of so much meat being consumed. The boar was dead, now a cow was dead. Perhaps hunting wasn’t something I was entirely comfortable with? Perhaps Primal Shatner wasn’t a fellow I wanted to be.
So in the 1970s, like many people, I hitched a ride to vegetarian enlightenment. I became a strict herbivore. I swore off the meat stuff. In fact, I even became a bit of an anti-meat zealot.
Vegetarian Times
magazine? I was on the cover in 1983.
Bill celebrates vegetarianism, albeit briefly, in 1983.(
Courtesy of
Vegetarian Times)
My interview with the magazine promoted a documentary I hosted and narrated called
The Vegetarian World
, which also featured Pulitzer Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and actress Betty
Similar Books
