The serial one-shot column " Captive of " The final part / Part 8 Captive of " Prey " by Fumiyoshi Hattori

Captive of "Prey"

I keep chickens. Our house is built on a slope in Yokohama, so we let them roam free during the day. By chance, we received another chicken. It seems that it was raised in a chicken coop, and when it first came to our house, it only ate compound feed. It seems that it did not recognize that the food waste, insects, and earthworms that free-range chickens eat are food. Chickens also think and learn. They don't eat caterpillars or stink bugs, and they come near when you are chopping firewood or plowing the field. They know that there are tasty insects in the firewood and in the soil. Humans are the same. When my son was four years old and said, "Let's go pick butterbur sprouts," he said, "Oh, that's over there," and took me to the place we went to a year ago. Children never forget their experiences of hunting.

I think even when I'm hunting. What I think about most is how my prey feels. How it feels about the weather that day, and how it is acting. I imagine this from the footprints and droppings left behind in the hunting grounds. It's similar to trying to become the prey. The chickens, the kids, and I all use our brains and concentrate when trying to get food. It's simply because it's fun. Living creatures use their full thinking abilities and their bodies to get food, and they find it fun to get and eat the food.

But what about it? Isn't modern society changing to less and less physical activity directly related to food procurement? Aren't humans confining themselves, like confining chickens to a chicken coop? I don't want to eat only compound feed. I will catch my own food. I am a captive of prey.

Hattori Bunsho
Born in Yokohama in 1969, he grew up in Yokohama. Mountaineer and writer. He practices survival climbing, climbing mountains while procuring food locally and without modern equipment. His recent publications include "Introduction to Survival Climbing" and "Tundra Survival." He is an editor at the mountaineering magazine "Takejin."