Archery Tactics for Deer

For the Frigons, hunting is a family affair that forges and solidifies the bonds between generations. For many autumns, Louis-Henri has been tracking moose alongside Sasha, his grandson. On the other hand, at the dawn of his 81st birthday, old age reminds him that his career as a hunter is behind him. This year, Louis-Henri will not go hunting and Sasha will go without him for the first time. Goodbye, Hunter offers an intimate look at the moment of the passing of a long family tradition.

An ethnographic documentary following four Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) men during a multi-day giraffe hunt in the Kalahari Desert, filmed during the Smithsonian–Harvard Peabody expedition of 1952–53.

This grisly documentary presents horrifying journalistic footage of suicides, assassinations, bombings, mob hits, decapitations, and more in bloody detail. Not for the faint of heart.

A dive into the world of a theatrical tradition with riders in classical costumes, hunting horns and bloodhounds. The drag hunt is a hunt without guns, where you do not hunt an animal, but a piece of cloth. It seems to be something of this time, but drag hunting is still under pressure. Can this age-old tradition survive in modern society? How do the riders view this spectacle full of etiquette?

One last time, Hubertus Meckelmann sounds the horns for a big drive hunt in the wild. In the central area of the former military training ground, hunting will soon be prohibited. For the hunting grounds in the area, this is quite an imposition: the populations of red deer, fallow deer and wild boar, limited only with great effort, will get out of control. Nor will the return of the wolf change anything – according to the hunters in the area, the wolf has no place here, anyway. The film accompanies three hunters in their forests and in long, tranquil shots provides insights into the hidden world behind hunting terminology and loden coats.

In 1995 I conducted my safaris in one of Tanzania's most remote and beautiful regions called Mlele. Located along the northeast boundary of Katavi National Park, Mlele holds a wealth of game including great maned lion, heavy leopard and truly big buffalo.

Le peuple de l'aigle et moi

Every single day in South Africa at least two to three captive bred or tame lions are being killed in canned hunts. And hundreds more are slaughtered annually for the lion bone trade. The Blood Lions story is a compelling call to action to have these practices stopped.

In the Faroe Islands, hundreds of pilot whales are slaughtered each year in a hunt known as the “Grind.” This gruesome tradition has drawn outrage from activists, most notably the international conservation group Sea Shepherd, who routinely sail to the islands to try to block whaling boats. Yet the Faroese are equally determined to maintain their tradition, defending the practice as more sustainable and less cruel than getting meat from slaughterhouses. Director Vincent Kelner spends time with both Faroese hunters and Sea Shepherd crusaders, building to a nuanced look at a disturbing event with much larger implications for the way humans relate to other creatures.

Wildgnorance

A young boy from the Dakota prairies grows up heeding the "call of the wilderness." He hunts for pheasant in the Illinois cornfields; ducks and geese in the northern lakes; deer in the Dakota Bad Lands; mountain sheep, goats, caribou, moose, and mountain lions in British Columbia and the Yukon; and brown bears on the Alaskan peninsula. He fishes in British Columbia's mountain streams for grayling and along the Bering Sea coast for trout. The film includes footage of swans, eagles, cnd ptarmigans; a beaver colony repairing a dam; battling rams; and sheep at rest in the mountains.

A group of outdoorsmen demonstrate duck hunting as a preliminary to traveling the various hunting and fishing centers of the world. They begin their journey with a trip to the Rocky Mountains to hunt elk and mountain lions and to fish in the freshwater lakes. They travel to Lac la Ronge in Saskatchewan and to Anchorage and the Katmai Peninsula in Alaska to fish for trout, salmon, and grayling and hunt moose and bear. In the Arctic, the hunters go with a group of Eskimos for their biggest catch, the polar bear. The hunters travel south by plane, to the Fishing Club of Panama to fish for marlin, tuna, shark, and dolphin in the Gulf of Panama. In South Africa and the Zambesi River basin, they often hunt with only a camera. Accompanied by native beaters, they hunt elephants, antelope, buffalo, crocodiles, and hippopotami. As conservationists they capture some almost extinct white rhinoceros and take them to a game preserve for protection.

Two hunters set out on safari with their African guide. They observe zebras, an ostrich, and a hippopotamus, capture a monkey, and camp for the night. After a lion kills their goat and horse, they shoot it by the water’s edge and later kill a second. The animals are skinned, and the hunters relax with cigarettes beside their trophies. (Note: Produced by Nordisk Film in 1907, Løvejagten gained notoriety because founder Ole Olsen purchased lions from Copenhagen Zoo, released them on an island, and filmed their killing. Supplemented with zoo footage to simulate Africa, the film caused public outrage yet drew huge audiences, establishing Nordisk’s reputation worldwide.)

This documentary focuses on the lives of American hunters, presented as an honest exploration of the controversies, emotions, and traditions inherent to this most primal human activity.

Prey

In 2015 a lion in Zimbabwe named Cecil was killed by Walter Palmer, an American dentist, provoking a global outcry. The story of Cecil’s death turns the gaze back on to us and our behaviour. The simplicity of the outrage is a stark contrast to the complexity of the reality.

Amateur film of fishing and geese-shooting trips by a British party in India.

Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.

This in-depth look into the powerhouse industries of big-game hunting, breeding and wildlife conservation in the U.S. and Africa unravels the complex consequences of treating animals as commodities.

Hunters have disappeared from wildlands without a trace for hundreds of years. David Paulides presents the haunting true stories of hunters experiencing the unexplainable in the woods of North America.