The Hunt

Deep in the woods of a camping town in Russia, where many deer with their soft, smooth fur gallop throughout the area, lives a man with no name. This man, with his wiry brown hair, beard, and chest fur is no normal man. He could never be a businessman, a camper, or a teacher. This man is feral. He has no home. He is wild and free. He grew up with the wolves of the woods. In his mindset, he IS a wolf; he is an animal.
         Running on his hands and feet, this man has no human relativity. With his dung and mud caked feet, hands, and hair, he runs around the forest. He is growling, a low growl with a snarl at the end. He is hungry; he hasn’t eaten in one week and needs food to survive. Though he has had no human contact, he has developed the ability to reason and to make new ideas. He could be described in similarity to a chimpanzee; smart, but not human-like.
         A small rustle of leaves is heard nearby, the pounding of great, black hooves are coming in the man’s direction. He is not scared. Picking up his primitive spear, made from a pipe and a knife found in a large dumpster smelling of the most grisly things, the man stands at a ready position. As the loud hooves come near, the feral man’s adrenaline pumps, and blood starts charging throughout the man’s valves and arteries.  He is esurient; he will not stop for anything.
         The man can see multiple male moose running at him, very fast, very aggressively. They feel angered, and somehow know that the man does want to kill them. The man has killed one of their own before. It was a day when he was not hungry, but wanted to fashion bedding and a home. It didn’t work out. The skin was flimsy, wet, and smelly. It wasn’t warm; it was cold and soaked with blood. The man was 20 years old then. He had no knowledge of how to preserve skin, to dry it and make it hard. Same with the meat, he simply covered the carcass, stained scarlet, with many strands of muscles and tendons, with leaves. It would have been delicious, but without fire, and no hunger at the time it would have been a waste. So the carcass, in all its beauty, was left for three weeks, raw, covered with dry leaves. The maggots arrived, devouring away at the tough meat available. It was no good. It was the most disgusting thing that man had ever eaten.
A large male moose, broad and with great muscular strength appears to be the leader of the group. He decides that this specific moose was the one to be eaten. A great victory, the man would be jubilant and ecstatic when the kill was finally made. Pride will set in, and this man will feel great about himself and his newly performed kill. The moose seemed to be growling and snarling right back at the man, with great anger and aggression. Noting this, man stuck the spear down this animal’s throat. That second, that moment, the animal dropped dead. His fellow friends stopped. They lapped up the blood, and walked around him in somewhat of a ritual, a funeral. Easily scared away by the man, every single moose sprinted back in the direction they came from. The man did feel pride; he had no sorrow for ending the moose’s life; he was simply hungry.
         In a more grueling pace of the hunt, the man returned to his very simple home. His home was made of tempered animal hides, and was very warm, like a orange and yellow flame.
         The man’s muscles strained, but his peaceful thoughts of a delicious feasting reminded him to call his surrogate parents. Opening his mouth, turning his head up, the man got on his legs like a human. He made a specific howl with all his might, with varied lows and highs, and within minutes, three wolves arrived. With majestic, large black bushy tails, the wolves arrived.They were beautiful animals, and had raised the man ever since he was actually thrown in the garbage by his human parents. Thought to be the devil’s child, because of one small birthmark identical to one in a popular lore told in his village, he was thrown outside in fear. He had to fend off anything by himself, and all of the village people would throw gravel at him and turn their heads the other way. One very late night, a thin, peaceful fog descended upon the village. These three wolves, a female, male, and a male puppy, pranced around the village, scavenging for food. And then they found the baby, soon to be known as the man.
         As his family arrived at his makeshift home, he prepared the meat. Using dried leaves, crumbled into a soft, fine powder, along with the juice of night crawlers, the man seasoned the meat. The wolves had no ability to do something this elaborate; it was through very vague memories of his mother in the kitchen that the man had any idea of how to make such a seasoning. Looking to the right, fifteen feet over, an almost golden raspberry bush was radiant. With a quick thought, the man mixed the juice and seeds of berries with water collected from a nearby stream. A quenching beverage, the man sought to finish the meal’s preparation.
         With a few swift slices using the disassembled knife from his spear, the man cut up the raw, juicy meat into nice slices. With no fire, no knowledge that fire could be made, without the simple resources to cook this food, the man ate all of his food raw, along with his family of wolves. It was how he learned how to do things, but being a human, he still had the gift of creativity, and the ability to teach himself new ways of doing things.
         His mouth watered, like a rushing waterfall; he was ready to eat the food. As told by his seemingly polite family of wolves, they were hungry too. Like a Sunday dinner with the family, every singe living thing around wanted in on the meal. Giving a quick yelp, meaning “Let’s eat!”, the wolves and the man ate their roughly sliced pieces of meat. Instead of just pushing their faces in the meat, they ate politely, aggressively but politely. Using a special type of leaf with a bowl type structure, the meal was followed by a rich, quenching gulp of a berry and water mixture. That was the only sure way to survive. The man is smelly, hairy, and ugly, but he is still alive. Acting nothing like a human being, he is still breathing, his heart buffeting. Finishing the rest of the meal, the man hangs the skin up and takes apart the carcass. Able to use the bone marrow when hungry, able to use the bones to fashion simple tools, this man has pride. He curls up under his dried skin tent and falls into a deep sleep. A good hunt, a good day, a good dinner, is all this man needed for a great night’s sleep.