ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses human interaction with 'wild' landscapes, plants, fungi and animals in regional areas of Australia and Sweden. It presents empirical and ethnographic data to connect with discussions about wild food, nature and belonging in two particular regions of Sweden and Australia. In a context of declining engagement with nature and increasing commodification of experience, hunters have unique relationships. In Jamtland's declining rural populations their activities help maintain social networks, with other hunters and consumers of wild food, and also with the non-human others of the forest. In the national consciousness though, Australian hunters are marginalised. A combination of the historic division between an inherited right to hunt and poaching; hunters' resistance to regulation and a 'socialised' hunt; and many hunters' political tendency to advocate the US model of gun (un)control - all frame hunting as a marginal and dangerous activity.