ABSTRACT
Nature has been blamed for being either seductive or indifferent to man. Siren-like, she beckons and invites hooks and guns in the same way women are said to lure men and ask for rape. Or, like the cold, uncaring ‘bitch’, nature does not respond to man’s plight and must therefore be punished. In simple terms, romanticism is a function of the idealisation process whereby brown paper is turned into holiday wrapping. A romantic removes the ‘love object’ from the reality of its being to the secret places of his mind and establishes a relationship of power/domination over it. Hunters often pose as conservationists who love nature, giving rise to yet another contradiction comfortably entrenched in this culture. In point of fact, hunters do not love nature as such but rather how they feel in nature as they stalk and kill her animals.
