By Gordon Rugg
Today’s post shows a little-known Norwegian activity: Hunting the stuffed moose.
Yes, it’s a real, old, photo. Yes, that really is what the caption for the photo said. No, I don’t know the background story. Sometimes, Lovecraft was right about there being things that human minds were never meant to know…
I hope this image brightens your life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jakt_p%C3%A5_utstoppet_elg.jpg
Perhaps it was used as a target moose, for practice? These are sold today, made of plastic though, thankfully: http://redoubtreporter.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/archery-three.jpg
I think that it was probably a staged photo, maybe for the tourist trade. There’s still a lot of staging in natural history photography, because nature isn’t usually very co-operative with photographers, though most of the modern staging is subtler than this example. (Well, almost anything is subtler than this example!)
You’re probably correct that it is just staging… I have several old photos dating back to pre-WWI, and it was very popular to do this. I have one of Stanley, with an African “backdrop” and a African boy… but it was taken in NYC! He had adopted the boy, I think… and he helped him out with these shots.
Pingback: Monday Mood Lifter – YMCA in Cantonese | hyde and rugg