Did you read the article in Outdoor Life, about the Ultra Marathon Runner, who attempts to run down a antelope, and shoot it with his longbow,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Native Americans have used that tactic in the past. Funny how a man in good shape can run down a horse or other large animals, that seems our only physical advantage, we are nowhere near as strong per pound as most any other animal. Our ears and eyes and nose fall far short in one contest or another.
Most guys today can't run from the kitchen to the living room so I'm sure it would be an interesting read. Physically, unless something else comes into play, a man can approach the speed of the large animals so good luck to anyone who attempts it. I caught a box turtle once. I'm working my way up.
I believe I read Paul Schafer made a shot on a pronghorn that made a no lethal wound and he ran and kept it in sight until he could make a killing shot,
All kinds of tales for sure, but talking healthy animals...it's not happening that a man will run down an antelope...or deer or bear for that matter. Makes good fodder for a cold day's read maybe.
I had some connections at the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah back in the day, who talked about the youth “running the deer” in the foothills above the school. As I recall it was a seasonal ritual and done in relays, likely with permission or agreement from governing wildlife officials.
The school was closed in 1984 and my sources are gone. I tried to google it but came up empty. Maybe someone here will come on with more concrete information than my conversational recollections.
And somewhere I saw a video of African bushmen jumping a cow and large calf kudu and tracking/jogging it down until they could close and then speared the calf at the end.
The article was an interesting read. He's attempting to run the animal to exhaustion and then arrow it. Not my style of hunting plus I hate to run. I'll give the guy credit, he's dedicated. I'd be interested to see if he's ever successful.
Not to rain on the parade, but the build up of lactic acid produced by hours of the running hunter pushing the prey would render the meat unsuited to anything but jerky and 'yote food.
The endurance of an ultra runner would certainly make this possible. The speed to outrun and catch an antelope isn’t what this is about. Im guessing the difficulty for the human would be finding the geography conducive to exhausting an antelope while not being injured in the chase.
Some humans can legitimately run down game. Deer etc.
The idea that people are actually better at endurance running in general is bunk though.
An actual endurance horse can run 100 miles almost twice as fast as a human. A great horse can do 100 miles in under 8 hours. In fact a horse is pretty much twice as fast at any distance.
I ran a deer to a standstill a number of years ago in good tracking snow.
There was a documentary on a bunch of guys trying to run down a pronghorn in relay fashion and they were unable to completely run it down but they did manage to certainly get within almost spear range of it.
Scientists working with the African bushman speculate that is what separated homo sapiens from the neanderthals. Neanderthals were bigger, stronger, and earlier had bigger brains. They spot and stalked hunted and were successful 1 in ten stalks.
Homo sapiens on the other hand regulated their heat through their skin not their mouth. That enabled them to run down their prey. Gave them better access to protein and enabled us to develop our brains.
The 'run down' hunt was pretty interesting. They hunted in groups with a 'rabbit' out front and some carrying water. They'd choose one specific animal and chase it. It would run out of sight, but they'd track it and jump it until it didn't run out of sight. This continued until they got within spear range.
Being lazy (smart) as we are, you can see how that made us develop the bow and arrow so we didn't have to jump the animal the extra two or three times to get it in spear range.
The book I read had pretty good 'proof' on the idea. They actually interviewed the oldest Bushman they found and he talked about his ancestors. I feel someone who lives on meat, would be better than 1 in 10 stalks, but I'm not a neanderthal. Don't really know if that kills their speculation.
I also saw something on Public TV that a huge segment of todays population has the neanderthal gene. So there was interbreeding going on.
Years ago somewhere I read that if a Deer is not allowed to rest and chew its cud(sp?) You could push it to the point of dying...its something I read, I don't know if its true or not.
“Not to rain on the parade, but the build up of lactic acid produced by hours of the running hunter pushing the prey would render the meat unsuited to anything but jerky and 'yote food.”
That was my first thought even before reading all the reply’s. The guy may as well sauté his boots in olive oil and garlic, as they would probably taste as well and maybe be more tender than the meat!
Same tactic coyotes and wolves use to take adult size healthy animals especially whitetails in this part. Only they take turns running the animal and when one gets tired another fresh set of legs jumps in to take over until the animal finally gives up and faces them.
I don’t care how good of shape your in. As George said it’s never going to happen.
“ All kinds of tales for sure, but talking healthy animals...it's not happening that a man will run down an antelope...or deer or bear for that matter.”
George - you are disputing established fact. In Africa, men have been running down large antelope for millennia; they just keep after them until the animal dies of heat stress and dehydration. Endurance is our one super-power.
The same could be done here, in a hot/dry season, especially with something like bison, horses, camels or one of the many other species which we drove to extinction, but I believe that those humans who evidently walked over from Russia brought archery with them.
And dogs. A lot of animals are still taken with Hounds, which does involve - to a degree - running them down. Just with help.
Running down a Pronghorn may in fact be an unprecedented feat - certainly for a non-indigenous person- because our speedgoats have some pretty amazing distance running capabilities which are not seen elsewhere... Usually an animal will have great speed OR great endurance. One of the Profs at UWyo was studying the hell out of them in the mid-‘80s, and even had some which he had figured out how to get them to run on a treadmill. Very cool stuff....
The whole lactic acid thing is erroneous. Also apparently the "bad" taste of stressed meat thing is not universal. In plenty of cultures it's a thing to torture animals for a long time before killing them as they believe it makes them taste better.
I shared those videos from you tube without thinking. I didn't watch the whole video on the first one and it is pretty brutal and second one may be inappropriate for young eyes. The mods can remove them if needed since there is no edit feature here.
My first day elk hunting ever in 1983. Let out a loud eeeeoh sound. A cow elk responded and the whole heard came in, I was hiding behind a large deadfall tree. There were about ten animals no bulls except a spike. The lead cow walks by at thirty five yards. I tried to lead the animal but the arrow appeared to barely miss the back leg. The whole heard scatters every where. I go to retrieve my arrow and I see one tiny drop of blood I look up the trail and see the cow looking at me. We both take off running. I could really run in those days, close to Olympic speed .I'm running behind her for about 800 yards. I'm not losing ground but not gaining either. We come to a heavy blow down poll patch. We are hurdling the blow down. The elk trips on a pole and goes down in a heap, She can't get up . I catch up and finished her.
A hunting buddy of mine is Bernd Heinrich, who wrote a book called "Racing the Antelope" that was all about this particular question, and endurance running in general. The funny thing is that a year or so after his book came out, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released an album by that same name. Their lawyers threatened a meritless but nonetheless expensive lawsuit over the rights to that name, so Bernd's publisher changed the name of his book to "Why We Run".
Bernd was a champion ultramarathoner himself, and I think he always had a hankering to give it a try.
When I was young I did it with a rifle on deer but would sometimes get close enough a bow would have worked. But it relies on knowing the area you are hunting like the back of your hand. Knowing what the wind is doing and figuring how the deer will respond. And then cutting then taking short cuts.
One time I ran about 500 yards, crested the hill and found myself in the middle of the herd of deer who had all quickly laid down in high grass trying to hide. I shout one at 10 or 15 yards.
I think it works mainly because deer simply arent used to being chased hard. maybe think have changed now with all the coywolves around. But IM not in shape to do that anymore so I dont know.
Yup my running days are over. With my short legs I was never much of a endurance runner but pretty quick in the dash.
I never tried to run down wild game, but reminds me of my brother in law and his chickens. One year he decided to raise some chickens. He had a couple dozen in a small building. I figured it was about time he would be butchering them so I asked him how they were doing. He said they were doing fine because he couldn’t catch the dang things. They zig and zag and all he would come up with is a handful of chicken pop. I had to laugh. We both grew up on farms but he had never raised chickens and we always had them. I got a coat hanger out . Straightened it out and put a hook in the end of it. I told him to make one of these with form wire and hook them by the legs. Next time I saw him he smiled and said the chickens were all in the freezer. That worked great.
I bet that if your hungry enough to try it, they taste just fine…
Personally, though…
It seems to me that no matter else happens, if they get a good stress response going (lots of her adrenaline which diverts blood to the major muscle groups) then the meat ends up with a lot more blood in it, and that does not taste as good to me as when they bleed out quickly and completely.
On a typically short death run, it doesn’t seem to be a problem at all, even though the adrenaline kicks in very, very quickly. Just one more reason to get close and shoot well!
And I just kind of seems like the right thing to do.
Over on both side, there are a bunch of guys complaining that this guy is going to run entire herds of pronghorns to death, which is pretty absurd. If he doesn’t target a single animal the way every other natural predator has to do, he’d never get close to any of them, so i’m not at all convinced that the entire herd would suffer. It’s kind of an interesting science project, and I wish him well with it.
But in a way it’s nothing new… Unfortunately there are plenty of guys who will chase them down on horseback or with pick-up trucks or ATVs or motorcycles...
When I was in the army- I ran my two mile run in 11:35.03. And a boy from North Dakota named Craig Reiger was in front of me!!! Some people can just flat out go- MORE POWER to them. I have done some very stupid things in my 49 years. Trying to outrun a deer is not among them.
Ive never shot a deer that was pushed hard for hours. Hut Ive never tasted a problem with a deer had just run like a 1/2 mile or less.
I knew and older hunter when I was young who told me he once tracked a deer hard (when he was young) for 8 hours or so over many miles. He said it tasted terrible.
He seemed like reasonable guy - but sometimes people exaggerate.
If you are talking about running miles - ya pretty much no one is running down any white tail I think.
But if you are talking about going as fast as you can to cut off a deer for a quarter mile or more to surprise them when they slow down its going to work in WV just like in PA. It requires a lot of tries and it definitely favors guns over archery though.
OK maybe - an antelope in wide open country - - where a top distance runner might have a slim SLIM chance of keeping the critter in sight......and pursue it for ? 3-4-5 miles and walk up on it within 25 yards. SLIM even considering it this way. I REALLY can't imagine keeping it in SIGHT for 6-7-8-17 miles. ANd I think if the runner does NOT keep it in sight, he's doomed to tracking it, and is that part of his portfolio? it would be tough TO TRACK it, running......or even jogging.....in open country, let alone in ditches/draws & trees & brushy cover. ...devil's advocate here, it's what I do. interesting premise.
The story about Paul Schafer running an Antelope starts at the paragraph above the picture of him and his Speed Goat, but the entire page is enjoyable reading.
I believe Davy Crockett he could grin down a bear. Or maybe that was just Fess Parker playing Davy.
I believe running big game down as in persistence hunting was a matter of many hours and at the end both game and hunter might be in near death condition. But primitive hunters were accustomed to near death conditions. I have just been ready about the Mouuntain Men of the northern Rocky Mountains and the Indians of the area. Great hardship and near death experience were commonplace. Persistence seems to be an essential capacity for human survival, even today. If you give up, you die. - lbg
In Virginia we run deer with dogs. They are run fast and far.....sometimes all day before they get shot. I can personally attest that they do not taste any different than any other deer I had the pleasure of eating. Perhaps the deer in the state of Virginia just don't produce this magic acid. Even if they did, I doubt it would have mattered to the hungry guys that could have done this in the past...they were probably not doing it to have a gourmet dinner at their teepee to impress someone else!! I think calling it "run down" is a misleading term. Everything I have ever read was that they did this in the snow and they pushed the animal to the point of being exhausted so they could get close enough for a kill. Everything I have read suggests no snow, not happening. As to doing this in relay fashion, good luck with that one. How exactly do you get "fresh legs" a mile up the exact trail the deer is going to take before he takes it?????
In deep snow with a decent crust on it, it would be a piece of cake on snowshoes. Lapdogs have done it plenty often enough.
And in rough country, the animals often do stick to pretty well established trails, so that could certainly make it a lot EASIER to place your relay teammates in the right places. And there are some animals that stay in their own territory even when chased, like the way a rabbit will generally come back around when chased by a beagle....
And I do recall reading years ago about an attempt buy a bunch of men on horseback to herd a large number of mule deer from one place to another… The deer weren’t having any of leaving their core areas, and the whole thing ended up an exercise in futility.
And FWIW, I ’d wager that those whose lives depended on their knowledge of animals in their movements where a whole lot better at predicting what those next moves would be than we are today.
I've chased after elk after spooking them (and a few deer) several times and caught up to them close enough for successful rifle shots but not with a bow. They never tasted any different than the ones I shot unspooked. The last one I shot I ran uphill a few hundred yards and had to settle in for a quick killing shot before she bolted down an endless wilderness mountainside never to be seen again. I got her though before she did. I was 48 at the time, and my wife said she has never seen me move so fast before or after. She claims the only time I ever do anything quickly is when I'm elk hunting. Not true however...:) I've done alot of running over the years, but the fastest is when the adrenalin kicks in when chasing something.
