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How to Hunt Like a Caveman

PM's Jeff Wise tries his hand at hunting—without technology—and finds that primitive hunters
need more than skill to bag a meal.

BY JEFF WISE Email Print RSS Share

August 19, 2010 6:00 AM TEXT SIZE: A . A.A

A mist hangs in the forested valley as dawn

approaches. Somewhere a lone bird calls. I sit on
my haunches, listening. There are wild pigs in
this forest, somewhere. Daylight might draw them
up through this thicket to the ridgeline behind me.
My quarry is a razor-tusked beast that can weigh FEATURED VIDEO
several hundred pounds and is famous for
exacting violent revenge on hunters. I check my
weapons—a wooden bow and a single stone-
tipped arrow—and find myself wondering: Is this
really a great idea?
Illustration by Grant Coghill
Ahead of me, a rustling in the bushes. I sink
lower. There’s the sound again, the scritch-
scritch of an animal rooting through leaf litter.
Whatever it is, it’s close, no more than 4 or 5
yards ahead through the undergrowth. The noise
moves closer. Is it a pig? If so, I’ll have just one
chance to inflict a mortal wound.

The rustling grows closer, then stops. I catch my

breath. The Santa Cruz Mountains are home to
more than pigs. There are mountain lions, too.
Judging from the racket, this thing is big. I’m not
packing a gun or even a knife. My God, I think.
What have I gotten myself into?

The scritch-scritch moves closer still. I strain my

eyes trying to peer into the undergrowth. At last, a flicker of motion, and it emerges. It’s . . .

A robin.

I’ve survived this close call, but my struggle is far from over. I’m in Northern California to participate in a
ritual that many assume has been extinct since the frontier days. My guide, 30-year-old Cliff Hodges, is
one of a few dozen people in the country who hunt pig, bear and other big game with weapons made
only of natural materials—wood, flint and feathers.

Hodges grew up near Silicon Valley and earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT,
but then realized that what really spoke to him was the great outdoors. He turned his back on high tech
and started a wilderness-skills school, Adventure Out. Primitive toolmaking, he says, is a way to feel
closer to the natural world. “We rarely get to experience our food as living things,” he says. “Only when
you see an animal moving in its environment can you understand its sacrifice.”

Primitive-skills hunting is incredibly difficult. Each bow requires weeks of work, as a rough stave is MORE FROM POPULAR MECHANICS
gradually whittled and sculpted to a sinewy, springy arc. Even so, the end product has a lethal range of
just about 15 yards. To take out a pig, a hunter has to get close and set up a shot from just the right 10 Great Cars that Time Forgot
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angle, so the arrow passes through the rib cage behind the shoulder blade. Hodges says he bags a kill
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Before Hodges went on his first hunt, he spent years honing his skills. I’m on a tighter schedule, so he
starts me with a one-day primer. He hands me a chunk of obsidian and shows me how to hammer it
with a piece of antler to knock razor-sharp chips from its edges. Flake by flake, the piece slowly FROM OUR PARTNERS
assumes a rough oval shape, called a biface. Hodges then employs a more precise technique,

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Bow and Arrow Hunting – Primitive Hunting Techniques - Popular Mechanics Page 2 of 4

carefully pressing a small piece of copper against the edge of the stone to flake off chips until the blade
reaches its desired form. Purolator AutoFilers: Be Car Care Aware
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The finished piece is lightweight and surprisingly sharp. This is the original human technology; our Cub Cadet’s All-New Series 2000
ancestors began using sharpened rocks 2 million years ago. With time, techniques became more
sophisticated, so that eventually distinct cultures could be identified by the unique patterns of their
stonework. Archaeologists can tell how modern humans moved into Europe around 30,000 years ago
by the way dainty Aurignacian blades replaced the more bludgeon-like Mousterian hand axes of the
Neanderthals. Flint knapping is an art, but it also requires a kind of science. “You need a high level of
understanding of the physical properties of the rock,” Hodges says. “It’s comparable to the fluid
dynamics I studied at MIT.”

At left, the author knapping an obsidian biface into an arrowhead. Right, Cliff Hodges doesn’t just hunt with primitive weapons—he also
gets into the indigenous spirit, fasting, saying prayers and sitting in sweat lodges before he hunts.

That evening, Hodges shows me how to fasten the stone to the arrow shaft using a mixture of eggshell
and pine resin. This, I hope, will be my fatal implement. I gnaw on strips of dried elk sinew, softening it
so that I can use it to lash the stone more tightly to the shaft, and then seal the assemblage with a foul-
smelling glue made of boiled hide. Once dried, the result seems surprisingly similar to modern synthetic
resin. The finished arrow is plausibly lethal-looking.

The next morning, we drive up winding roads in the predawn darkness to a 200-acre parcel of private
land. Hodges has scouted it only once, which puts us at a disadvantage: What indigenous hunters lack
in firepower, they make up for in patience, skill and cunning. They have to know the land intimately to
understand the habits of their prey. As newcomers, we’ll be relying to a large extent on luck.

We settle in just below a ridgeline, 100 yards apart, then move slowly down the slopes. After my run-in
with the robin, I break free of thick underbrush and find myself on the edge of a grassy glade, alone,
the morning sunlight filtering through the oaks. Now I understand the appeal of hunting: It’s a great
excuse to go into the wilderness and just sit.

Hodges once spent a week hunting a single buck, learning its habits so that he could position himself
within firing range. Another time he went bear hunting, and on the first morning a 450-pound black bear
appeared within feet of where he was sitting. He spun, drew and fired in one motion, sending an arrow
through its rib cage. It was, he believes, the first bear killed in California by a stone-tipped weapon in
over 100 years.

That kind of outcome isn’t in the offing today. I spend the morning gradually working my way down the
ravine. Near the bottom, I again hear a large animal moving through the undergrowth. This time, it’s
Hodges. By now the sun is high enough that any pigs that might be around are hunkered down for the
day.

We hike back to Hodges’s truck and retreat to a diner in Felton, a little town tucked amid towering
redwoods. One of the things the day has brought home to me is just how demanding primitive
technology is. Stone Age hunters had to constantly hone their craft. The price of failure was starvation.
Nowadays, cosseted by civilization, we don’t have to be nearly as tough or clever.

“We live in an age when so much is done for us,” Hodges says as the waitress sets down steaming
plates of bacon and eggs. “And that certainly has its advantages."

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Jeff Wise is a contributing editor for Popular Mechanics and the author of Extreme Fear: The Science Bomb Shelters
of Your Mind in Danger. For a daily dose of extreme fear, check out Jeff Wise's blog. Wind Turbine Design
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1 comment / Post a comment 1

Oh My 4:56:29 AM

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Posted by: f2e53fd7e79d52571b7840a51d09f79c Report Abuse
That is lovely. Dirt man with arrow. Thats my kind of Cave Man.

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