The Sacred Hunt II: Rite of Passage

According to Randall L. Eaton, Ph.D., "there are only a few paths a young man can walk that allow him to link up the instinctive with the spiritual. They include sex, war, sport and hunting. Only hunting profoundly connects a young man to nature." Drawing inspiration from Robert Bly's Iron John, this awkwardly constructed tirade combines long, often rambling, interviews with seemingly arbitrary nature footage in an effort to bludgeon viewers into subscribing to Eaton's theories. Among the weirder but by no means isolated examples of call-me-when-the-shuttle-has-landed assertions are an interviewee's claim that when a deer blinks in your direction, it means the deer has made his peace with the Earth and is ready to be taken; that "hunting" is "genetic" (unless the term is being used loosely to incorporate Safeway shoppers roaming the refrigerated sections, I think the correct word here is "eating" not "hunting"), and--librarians, take note--"you don't find yourself in a book." Swipes at "New Age parents" who abhor hunting or jibes at the "illusory power of technology" (um...that "illusory power" surely made this video real) are, respectively, uncalled for and naïve. The proselytizing (by hunters, for hunters) is briefly interrupted for a vivid description of an Idaho program in which juvenile delinquents were taught to hunt. A follow-up survey showed that "85%" of the boys did not get into trouble again, though, later, when hunting was eliminated from the program, the recidivism rate once again climbed. The not-quite-Socratic conclusion drawn from this example is that hunting reduces young male violence--an intriguing assertion that certainly warrants further study but is hardly proven here. Now, before every reactionary hot-headed editor of a hunting magazine goes knee-jerk berserk with letters, postcards and e-mail crying foul over our "anti-hunting" bias, let me make this perfectly clear: one of my all-time favorite documentaries (on the record, Library Journal, Sept. 15, 1990, pg. 112--look it up) is George Butler's powerful and moving 1989 film In the Blood, which chronicles his then 13-year-old son Tyssen's initiation into hunting. Not recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)