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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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endurance mostly in the ability to sweat to cool down while other less sweaty animals overheat, this is a process that might take hours on the absolute long end, not long enough to require this kind of distances. Gazelles can go something like 5 miles before needing to rest.

I'm always kind of skeptical of this story, for practical reasons -- a gazelle can do the five miles (at which point it is well beyond the horizon, even on the savanah!) in like 5-10 minutes. Which is like twenty minutes faster than even a very fast, unencumbered person.

So how long does it need to rest? How long can it go for if it only needs to average 15 mph to keep away from the humans, rather than top speed?

My suspicion based on personal interactions with furry animals (and documented hunting tactics of North American Indians) is that the way to hunt without great ranged weapons is either herding (see buffalo jumps) or hiding -- this is what lions mostly do, for instance, and they are way faster than people! (with built-in weapons, to boot)

Wolves are an animal that can sometimes run prey to exhaustion, but only in specific circumstances AFAIK (crusty snow that will hold them but not the deer), and again, they can run a lot faster than people.

I believe endurance hunting is mostly done by tracking, after the animal has already been wounded by the hunter- it’s blood trailing as is taught to hunters today, but over much longer distances. The limiting factor here is not so much the range of the weapons as their destructive impact; 30-.06 puts animals down better than broad heads better than flint tips better than pointy sticks. I can tell you from experience that when a wounded animal stops to rest, it will probably not get back up and won’t move very effectively if it does(and usually hits the densest thicket it can find which encumbers quadrupeds handily- a good thing if hiding from coyotes, but not from human hunters. AFAIK blood trailing dogs work by surrounding game in thickets until a hunter arrives to take advantage of the bipedal mobility advantage in heavy brush, but I’ve never used them).

Modern day hunting has a eccentric and hardcore subset who hunt by stalking, tracking a game animal and sneaking close enough to shoot it with a bow, pistol(30-50 foot effective range), or shotgun. If I ever manage to meet one I’ll certainly ask more questions along this line. But it’s definitely possible to sneak up on a deer or hog close enough to throw a spear into it, even if very difficult.