Stalking Horse: a person or thing that is used to conceal someone’s real intentions. I heard this phrase used to describe a tactic used by Woolworths Australia, who installed a digital mirror at some self-serve check outs. They said that they were not retaining any images, and if customers don’t like it, customers were free to use the staffed check outs instead. Then it turned out they were indeed (allegedly) retaining customer images after all. More literally: the stalking horse is a screen (traditionally made in the shape of a horse) behind which a hunter may stay concealed when stalking prey.
Notice the absence of women and girls in the illustrations below.
Because at present it is the males in most societies who do the hunting and fishing, the division of labor has for a long time been seen as between man the hunter and woman the nurturer and gatherer. Yet women still hunt in some societies: The Agta of the Philippines, some Aboriginals — the Shoshoni, for instance. Mbuti women go net hunting with the men; Chipewyan women hunt when the men are away; Copper Eskumi and Ainu women hunt large mammals alone, and the Agta women — superb hunters — hunt, like Tiwi women, accompanied only by a dog. (The Tiwi live on Melville Island, off the coast of northern Australia.)
Fishing is even more variable. In some societies it is a communal activity, in some exclusively female, in some exclusively male. The collecting of fish — that is, gathering it along reefs and shoals — is generally the job of the very young and the very old. But in most groups men do both the hunting and the fishing. They also make the weapons, and smelt and treat metals. In only one known society is the mining of ore a female job. Woodcutting is usually a male task; carrying heavy loads a female one. In ‘primitive’ societies women do most of the housebuilding. And in almost all societies women work harder than men.
Marilyn French, Men, Beyond Power: On Women, Men & Morals p20
Georg Pencz, The Hunter Caught by the Hares, c. 1535NOVEMBER 1927 AMERICAN BOY MAGAZINE ~ COVER BY WALTER BEACH HUMPHREYHunting & Fishing Magazine February 1938AUGUST 1929 NATIONAL SPORTSMAN MAGAZINESlovenly Peter, or, Cheerful stories and funny pictures for good little folks illustrated by Hoffman HeinrichThe Juvenile almanack, or, Series of monthly emblems c1822-1824Schnick schnack trifles for the little-ones by Oscar Pletsch 1867 play huntingWinchester The Rifle That Will Stop Him 1909. Gun advertisements are always disturbing, I guess.National Sportsman Magazine February 1924 (cover detail). Notice he’s grabbing a tree rather than his gun, creating an optical illusion.National Sportsman Magazine September 1936Hunting & Fishing Magazine October 1938September 1934 BOYS’ LIFE MAGAZINE cover art by WILLIAM SOARENational Sportsman Magazine November 1928 by Anton Otto Fischer (February 23, 1882 – March 26, 1962) Trending INTO MAINE illustratred by N.C. Wyeth 1938Elenore Plaisted Abbott (1875 – 1935), The Monkey Resumed His Place, ca. 1914Nikolay Ustinov from the life story of the Russian journalist & naturalist, Mikhail PrishvinThe Carnaval A Book Of Poems by Sef Roman Semenovich and Leonid Roshidaev 1994Charles James Folkard (6 April 1878 – 26 February 1963)Cover by Thé Tjong-Khing for a Dutch edition (1960) of Daudet’s TARTARIN DE TARASCON1935 July OPEN ROAD FOR BOYS MagazineThree Jovial Huntsmen, 1974 Caldecott Honor Book, Susan JeffersBonomi Edward Warren – Sportsman and dog on a wooded pathA Walk in the Country, 1935 by Norman Rockwell
Whenever I see pheasant hunting I think of Danny The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, an influential middle grade novel from my childhood, and unlike the other middle grade novels Dahl wrote.
Abe Birnbaum New Yorker cover pheasantNew Yorker cover hunting by Garrett PriceIllustration by A.B.Frost wood engraved for Harpers, 1883 huntingMichal Elwiro Andriolli (1836 Wilno – 1893 Naleczow) for The Last of the Mohicans 1881The Trapper (1921) Rockwell KentArthur-Fitzwilliam-Tait-The-Life-of-a-Hunter-A-Tight-Fix-bearPETER-UND-DER-WOLF-1958-Frans-Haacken-huntersmid-19th-century-plate-of-hunting-scenemid-19th-century-plate-of-hunting-scene-2Vojtěch-Kubašta-1914-1992-The-Day-Of-The-Bison-Hunt-pop-up-book-1962-4Where’s that kid going with that rifle? I’d like (not really) to see Joan Walsh Anglund depict the moment of slaughter.Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elders-Hunters-in-the-Snow-pond-detailCharles Edmund Brock from ‘The Knights of the Flowers’ circa 1890Frank C. Bensing (1893-1993) c1950, ‘Three Men Hunting’House & Garden Magazine October 1930. Two men hunt for something, but who knows what? Are we supposed to think that’s a gun? The flowers in the foreground suggest instead a rake. They are probably hunting for flowers.Arkady SherArkady SherFarmer Fox and Other Rhymes off to hunt the buffalo, illustration by L.J. BridgmanHunting & Fishing Magazine March 1937 adverisement for bullets KleanboreNational Sportsman Magazine September 1936 Upland Hunting Fishing Goose advertisement for Nitro Express bullets
These bullets look disturbingly like lipsticks.
Hunting & Fishing Magazine February 1934 bullet advertisement
Header illustration: The Story of Siegfried illustrated by Howard Pyle (American, 1853-1911)
CONTEMPORARY FICTION SET IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (2023)
On paper, things look fine. Sam Dennon recently inherited significant wealth from his uncle. As a respected architect, Sam spends his days thinking about the family needs and rich lives of his clients. But privately? Even his enduring love of amateur astronomy is on the wane. Sam has built a sustainable-architecture display home for himself but hasn’t yet moved into it, preferring to sleep in his cocoon of a campervan. Although they never announced it publicly, Sam’s wife and business partner ended their marriage years ago due to lack of intimacy, leaving Sam with the sense he is irreparably broken.
Now his beloved uncle has died. An intensifying fear manifests as health anxiety, with night terrors from a half-remembered early childhood event. To assuage the loneliness, Sam embarks on a Personal Happiness Project:
