Nicole Moore: Connecting with our hunter-gatherer roots and lowering the barrier to entry for fieldsports
From an intrigued onlooker to a fully fledged hunter-gatherer. Nicole Moore shares how her journey into fieldsports has enabled her to connect with her instincts, and her ancestors...
The tale of Nicole’s introduction to shooting resembles a meet-cute, the beginning of a love story. She described the first day she picked up a shotgun:
“I first actually shot a gun when I was about 25…and I absolutely loved it. I remember the pain in my shoulder that day because I must have shot about 120-130 cartridges because I just couldn't stop. I just loved it”.
But it's clear that her passion grew far beyond the sport itself. Somewhere in her pursuit to learn more, to shoot more, she realised that she was seeking a connection to her ancestors. Nicole reflected on a recent conversation with her mother, where she’d had a revelation about her seemingly random curiosity about the natural world:
“I was talking to my mum about this recently and she was like, ‘you know you are a country girl’ and I was like, ‘what? I grew up on a council estate’. And she said ‘y’know, our family are from the countryside in the Caribbean’. And that’s where I was born, I didn’t move here until I was 3 or 4 years old. We’re country people-we had chickens and goats. We lived in the country; we lived on the farms”.
Her revelation highlighted the deep-rooted connection we have to our predecessors and our innate desire to act as custodians of our land. Nicole drew a contrast with the perception of these communities in the Caribbean compared to in the UK: “country people are kind of looked down on as these weirdos with guns”. This is perhaps the converse of the stereotypes associated with the British fieldsports community, often perceived as the tweed-clad gentry.
Nicole shared that, as a child eager to learn more about the natural world, she watched television programmes, such as Michaela Strachan’s The Really Wild Show. She reflected on the limitations of television for educating people about wildlife management:
“There are programmes for fishing but they get a lot more nervous when it’s around furry animals, and guns. That’s why, as a society, we are so detached.”
Perhaps the watered-down insights into the countryside and its management are doing a disservice to viewers. Nicole shared that, as somebody who wasn’t involved in fieldsports in her earlier years, she was at risk of falling foul of misinformation because she cared about the countryside, but perhaps didn’t yet understand its intricacies:
“I recently attended The Great Outdoor Expo…and it was a completely different audience. It wasn't a fieldsports audience. There were a lot of people there that were on the periphery; they were people that enjoyed the outdoors: scouts, hikers, cadets. But they still didn't know anything about fieldsports. They're the people that are most at risk of being given misinformation and then believing it. And I was one of those people.”
It’s interesting that, despite our mutual proximity to nature and our shared concern with the preservation of our wildlife, there is polarity in our perceptions of the role of hunting in our endeavours to conserve the natural world. Nicole’s experience at the Outdoor Expo serves to emphasise the work that needs to be done to educate those outside of our echo chamber and to bring people in.
Nicole suggested how she thinks we might begin to change this and make this education more accessible:
“I think it needs to be less about shooting and more about the management around shooting. That makes it more accessible and safer. A gamekeeper doesn’t want to be going through DBS checks and looking after kids. The important part is getting people interested. They get to come regularly on a proper farm, not a play farm. They can come and see the pigeons eating the crop and hear the gas guns going off and they can have a whole conversation over why that’s happening. It keeps them in touch with the countryside, and the gamekeeper gets a bit of help. As a single-mum myself who didn’t have any money, If I had known about things like this going on I would 100% have done that. I know that is something I would have wanted to do and my son would have wanted to do’.
Nicole explained how she believes that this would not only prevent financial roadblocks but would also ensure that new participants are not running before they can walk and, rather, are learning from those with more experience in a way reminiscent of ancient times:
“You’ve got to learn the fieldcraft before you get to the killing the animal bit. You’ve got to learn about the environment, weather and animal behaviour, before you’re in the position to hunt. I hate the education and theory part. I’m more old fashioned and the reason I continue to do this is because we’re connected to our ancestors. They didn’t have someone next to them with a checklist…I don’t like the fact that someone can go from zero to thinking they are ready to shoot just because they have a certificate…you need to be able to get out there with people that have decades of experience and knowledge”
Nicole shares that her approach to shooting is largely driven by her innate hunter-gather instincts:
“I think all animals are sentient beings… It doesn’t matter what I’m hunting, I go into hunter mode. There’s a switch. It’s afterwards that I have the feelings. When I’m shooting I’m making sure I’m on target, I’m controlling my breath, I’m making sure it’s safe. It’s afterwards when I’m up close to the animal that the emotion comes. But it’s limited because I have the joy of knowing that I’m doing something that my ancestors did and I have the joy of knowing that my freezer is going to be full for a month”
Despite her passion for hunting, Nicole also emphasised that it’s not necessary to “pull the trigger” to be a part of the fieldsports community:
‘‘One of my big things is people not feeling like they have to be a hunter to be part of the fieldsports community. If you don’t ever pull the trigger, that’s okay. I think it’s important for people to know that they don’t have to like everything in the fieldsports world to be a part of it. I shoot to eat so I’m not interested in shooting predators, for example, but I can understand why others do it. I’m not so keen on driven pheasant and partridge shooting because I want it to be wild… but I love what it does for our communities”.
In fact, she encourages being more hesitant to pick up the gun and instead suggests that newer participants spend time learning and understanding the process beforehand:
“I didn’t pick up a rifle to shoot a deer myself until after two years of going out with friends. It’s more about seeing it. I did about five or six trips with friends before ever picking up the rifle myself.”
Follow Nicole on Instagram @theshootinggirl_with_an_afro or read her blog Shooting Girl With An Afro.