Who needs luck?

I recently finished an academic tome entitled 'Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs.' One of the things which struck me while reading, was the process a hunter goes through while engaging in hunting his or her chosen prey. Basically there are three stages.

Stage one is the preparation stage when the men undergo sweat baths, refrain from sex and limit their use of language. This is in order to distance them selves from their humaness and become more in tune with the animals they hope to hunt.

Stage two is the hunt when those taking part will stop limit language, only referring to the animal they are hunting obliquely and the places they are going to hunt by a sort of code. When hunting they try and identify with their prey and seek to mimic in order to fool the prey into giving itself up to them.

Stage three consists of re humanisation, when the hunters will tell stories of there hunt to those around them.

It struck me that those of us who hunt, fish and shoot do very similar things. We may not couch it in terms of animism. But a lot o fishermen I know have a particular set ritual they do which they consider will bring them luck. Hunting is highly ritulised at almost every stage, From wearing hunting clothes to not using 'everyday' language while hunting, if you think about it, the language used is more atavistic, horns, whistles, and halloo.

Story telling is still an important part of the hunt, fishermen are by popular tradition known for there stories. I think because hunting is such a natural thing to do, its easy to drop language, and because whether you are successful or not is so variable we tend to try and replicate anything that has made us a success in the past and our rituals are born.