Deer Hunting Starts In a Few Days

Wisconsin's traditional nine-day gun deer hunt starts Saturday. In years past I've always experienced strong emotions during the season. One of the emotions has been a deeper sense of grief than usual. Of course, that is usually followed by a nervous tension that I'll find myself standing in a depression and my whole life will fall apart. It's complicated, and I'm sure there are many reasons why the grief's presence is more present than usual. But this excerpt out of Robert Bly's Iron John has always stuck with me when I start to ask what is going on here? Or to put it like the archetypal psychologist James Hillman has: What is Psyche doing now?

"So many roles that men have depended on for hundreds of years have dissolved or vanished. Certain activities, such as hunting or pirating, no one want him to do anymore. The Industrial Revolution has separated man from from nature and from his family. The only jobs he can get are liable to harm the earth and the atmosphere; in general he doesn't know whether to be ashamed of being a man or not.

"And yet the structure at the bottom of the male psyche is still as firm as it was twent thousand years ago. A contemporary man simply has very little help in getting down to it."[Pg.230]

I'm learning there are different levels of hunting.