FOLLOWING THE TRACK

by Laura Collard

It is 3:25 and all we can see from the kitchen window is a thick darkness. Under the weak bulb above the counter, Ulrik pours yoghurt into a large bowl and sprinkles it with oats. His face is still crumpled from his short night. But there is no room for tiredness. Today is the 16th of May. It is the opening of the hunting season for male roe deer. It is almost 4am when the 57 year-old hunter throws the remainder of his coffee in the sink. It’s time to go. The night before he has prepared everything, so that he won’t waste any minutes in the morning. The cover of the rifle as well as his brown and green fluffy sweater await on the living room table. The rifle is still in the safe. In the car, he has piled up his hunting clothes by order, from the thick woolen socks to some pants with branches patterns, ending with the camouflage jacket and his khaki binoculars. Sorting his gear with precision like this allows him to dress quickly and in silence just before entering the hunting field.

At 4:15 am, he turns off his car’s lights. The hunting spot is close by. Two sprays of mosquito repellent and 48 minutes later the sun rises over Strands‘s cold field, where Ulrik is lying as comfortably as he can with his rifle in the high grass.

Know Your Nature

Ulrik Jacobsen is reflective, wise, soft and tough at the same time. He has been hunting for 40 years now. From as long as he can remember, he has felt the necessity to be outside. In the wild.

“I won’t live in a place where I cannot see the sea everyday”, he says, a few days before the first roe deer hunt, while touring around the yellow and hilly fields in his blue Seat Ibiza to search for animals. Before the start of the hunting season, he will tour almost each evening around the lands he rents from a local farmer. At 10 km/h and with his binoculars in hand. This habit allows him to learn more about the environment he is going to hunt in.

How many animals are living on it and what are their habits? He mainly observes from his car to spread as little of his scent as possible and not disturb the nature. Respectful is his main adjective when it comes to describing his relationship with the environment.

“You owe it to the animals. In the shot you take, in sparing the youngest and the females, in your way to enter the field. You are allowed to kill but you need to be respectful. Disturb the environment as little as possible.“

That’s also what the Danmarks Jægerforbund, the Danish hunters’ association, teaches the young hunters in their hunting classes. In Denmark, almost four percent of the population are hunters, according to Danish Ministry of the Environment. They are aged between 21 and 59 and are mainly men. They can legally start hunting alone at the age of 18 and can pass the hunting exam at 16. To obtain the permit to hunt, they will have to take classes that will prepare them for the written exam and a rifle test.

Family Pattern

For the beginning of the hunting season, Ulrik has taken a week off his pest control job. His life will mainly consist of an early hunt at sunrise, breakfast at 7, a nap until noon, lunch, walking the dogs, preparing for the evening’s hunt, dinner and then the last hunt of the day from 7 to sunset. In the Jacobsen house, everyone is used to it. The two dogs, Rolf and Hamer, lay in the sunny part of the living room. Birthe, Ulrik’s wife, a special education needs (SEN) teacher, makes pottery or watches tv lying on the worn-out brown sofa. Often, the now grown-up children, Johann, Zacharias and Asbjørn who also hunt, and Anna, who will complete her hunting exam soon, come to share a spaghetti Bolognese at 6:30.

Despite his busy schedule and as if aware of his own struggles, Ulrik is eager to spend time with his children. Showing them the way, not leading them astray, like his father’s absence in his youth did. “I think it is very important to tell my children when they do something wrong. I didn’t have that kind of presence when I was doing very bad things at 15,” he says, getting slightly emotional. Since his kids were born, he has worked hard not to repeat his own family’s patterns.

Transmission Season

The 16th of May at 05:54 am, Zacharias pulls his old red Toyota over into a small bushy alley near Ulrik’s hunting field. A timid smile on his face. His father grabs his shoulders and brings him into a hug, clapping his back as they talk about his kill. Last year, he traced roe deers during the whole season without getting any. Today, on the first day of the 2023 roe deer hunting season, he got an 18 kg one. Zacharias’s first hunt happened when he was four. Back then, it mainly consisted of observation and following the footsteps of his dad. He really got into hunting when he was 12. He would ask to go into the wild with his father more often than what Ulrik had planned. It grew into such a big part of his identity that he became wildlife instructor for Danmarks Jægerforbund (Danish hunters’ association) at Jagtens Hus in Kalø, and even fell in love with and married a hunter. His siblings have been raised around dogs, fields and rifles, too.

Smell Of Mosquito Repellent

It began by asking his children to dice carrots all the way to skin a roe deer and mince it to make sausages. From an early age, Ulrik showed them how to be part of an environment and get in touch with themselves. “To sit alone in the middle of nowhere for hours away from civilization with no one to talk to and no phone distracting you will allow you to get to know yourself more”, their father says. He would teach them how to walk alone in the wild, trace animals, recognize which plants are which, how to train the dogs and cook, how to remain absolutely quiet, almost meditating. “Going into myself”, as he calls it.

Being outside in the nature allows Ulrik to be in tune with himself.

“Those hunting months will fill me up with energy for the rest of the year”, he says. And in winter when human disturbances and the greyness become too much, he will open his lemongrass mosquito repellent and smell it. And it will feel like the 16th of May again. The profound quietness of nature, leaves rustling in the wind, two cuckoos that talk back to each other, the tall grasses starting to turn golden, hundreds of buzzing mosquitoes and cows lowing in the distance.

Sausages And Diced Carrots

It’s in the fading sun of the late afternoon of the 16th of May that Zacharias and Ulrik take the dead roe deer out of the neighbour’s humid and warm cellar. It took two pairs of hands and a grimace to hang the animal from the carport of the Jacobsen family’s house. Zacharias got rid of the contaminated parts like the genitals and the bladder. He gets to the limbs, cutting them into parts. Then he skins the animal and separates the meat from the bones. The dogs eat their kibble loudly, while Birthe and her daughter-in-law chat on the porch. Out in the hunting field, the roe deers digest ivy lying in the grass, and the leaves rustle in the wind.

A sharp noise arises from the kitchen. Ulrik cuts the roe deer’s shoulders into cubes while Zacharias removes the nerve from the tenderloins. Soon, they will turn the meat into sausages to eat with diced carrots during family dinner. •