Scary hunting stories will always glorify the hunter, Until the Lion tells its own

“You always get the best of them, well done sir.”

“What a skilled hunter you are! My husband could learn a lesson or two.”

“Your wife is the luckiest. Look at that majestic animal! Welcome home brave man.”

Around the soup pot, while eating the choicest part of the meat, he will regale his large family with scary hunting stories of how dangerous his expeditions are. “I have learned to cross a crocodile infested river, and walk through the territory of a pride of lions. Also, I have mastered how to read and follow the tracks of dangerous predators in order to track prey. When a young male lion tried to steal my catch, I mimicked the roar of an older lion to chase it away.” On and on, he will go, with each prowess told, his audience’s respect and admiration multiplies in folds. The power of the gun he totes will not mentioned neither would the number of bullets wasted be accounted for.

The Lion, With No Way Of Telling Its Tales Of Hunting

The lion stalks its prey patiently and meticulously for a long, long time. But the wind changes direction and gives its scent away. The gazelle, with its slender neck and palatable limbs scurries away, warning all others on its way out. What a waste of precious time! Again and again it tries and fails, because no one wants to willingly be lion dinner. Alas, the lion spots a limping buffalo and tries to isolate it from its herd, but the buffalos gang up against him, the poor lion ends up with a sucker punch to its ribs. It licks the shame off its hide, what lion returns to its cubs and pride reeking of shame and failure?

Determined to feed its cubs, the lion tries again. This time, its sights are set on an old wildebeest. It successfully separates it from the herd and a hot chase ensues. The lion gains ground, with brute force and a determined instinct to live, it leaps on its hind legs, claws shoot out of its forelegs, then it tackles the wildebeest to the ground. It gets another hefty blow to the head from the wildebeest’s thrashing limbs, and yet undeterred, the lion pins its prey firmly to the ground with claws and teeth. And snap goes the prey’s neck. Success at last!

Predator drags prey uphill, to the den where its hungry cubs await. The family of lions tear into flesh, and nature becomes velvet red in tooth and claw. They clean bones with tongues of sandpaper and tear muscle with razor sharp claws. As the cub’s bellies balloon with satiation, mother lion knows it is only a matter of time before hunting will be due again. There is no point hiding the leftovers of the wildebeest, the vultures have given it away and in no time, the hyenas arrive. Hyenas who don’t know care how the catch was made, in-fact, nobody will know how the mighty lion did it, it cannot tell it, it neither writes nor read and it has no historian.

Tell Your Own Hunting Tales

How many times have you silently and modestly watched another take credit for your talent and hard work? Ever done that? I know I have, in the workplace. Sometimes it is due to social conditioning; “don’t toot your own horn, let others praise you, learn to be modest, and, and, and.” I am not doing that anymore. I have a jaw bone, and i intent to use it! If I did it, I am claiming it. Period.

I remember being taught in Junior High School how some European Evangelists were the first to climb the Kwaku Mountains. I later asked my father, “who did they climb to evangelize to? And if there were people already living there, how are they the first to climb those mountains then?” My father said, “the people living there did not write down the history of who first completed that feat, the historian who wrote it, favored the Europeans.”

How sad! Learn to control your own narrative!