Becoming the first undocumented woman to harvest an animal with a compound bow in Peru.
Becoming the first undocumented woman to harvest an animal with a compound bow in Peru.
It started by getting invited to come hunt the Amazon jungle in Peru by one of my friends who is friends with some Peruvian jungle tribes. Words don't even express the feelings and sensations of this experience! We took a taxi from the airport in Iguitos to a jungle city called Nauta. From here we took a 12-hour boat ride via the Amazon and Ucayali river to a small jungle town. This boat ride was uncomfortable and hot, the seats were ripped out of vehicles and placed in the boat tightly together.
We spent the night in hammocks and left the next morning in our hunting boats that barely floated above the water! We followed the river in these for a few hours before arriving to where we would stay while we hunted the jungle during this ride we saw multiple jungle birds and sloths hanging from the trees. On the first day we trekked roughly 5 miles through the jungle and I got my very first bow kill ever with one of the hardest shots you can take also with an animal that's maybe the size of a squirrel! It's called a mono fraile which is termed a squirrel monkey! I had to aim at an incredible incline to shoot into the trees and got 2 of these monkeys. One at roughly 20 yards and one at roughly 25 yards!
The culture here is they eat everything so for most folks from the USA they think how could you hunt a monkey, but understanding the culture in different countries is important. Here they eat monkey a lot, it's their normal. I decided to throw myself into their culture and eat what they eat so I tried monkey this night and it wasn't bad after cutting the skin off. It tasted like chicken like most things, just very chewy.
We slept on the bare hardwood floor so sleeping was out of the question during my time in the jungle. Each morning and evening we would go out via the boat to different parts of land throughout the jungle to hunt. The tribal people we were hunting with would bushwhack through the jungle to create a semi path for us to follow and know how to get back. Anytime we went out on the boats the amazon pink river dolphins would follow us and play in the river.
The tribal people we were hunting with were very superstitious of the jungle and said when you kill something mother nature cries and it would rain. This actually for the most part was true, anytime we would kill in the jungle very shortly after it would start to rain. Not only were we soaked from the rain but we were trudging through swamps up to my butt so we would get covered with mud from the swamps and be on the lookout for crocodiles and snakes. Have I mentioned showers were not a thing here, so not only did we smell like wet dogs, we smelled like wet dogs that had also swam in the sewer.
The tribal people also stated there were gnomes in the jungle that did not like foreigners and would try to play games on them to get them to leave the jungle. My friend and I found this to be true when we did a midnight spotlight hunt. The two tribal guys told us to stay in a spot and they were going to try to flush things are way. We stood there watching our backs and listening and we heard a loud crash that sounded like a large tree falling in the jungle. We looked at each other and then we heard what sounded like something small running through the jungle. A few minutes later one of the tribal people came back and we asked him if he had gone very far and he said no, and then asked if he had heard the tree falling or the noises and he said no it must have been the gnomes.
We were only able to spot light a type of opossum and a huge toad in the night. I took a shot with my friend shining a flashlight behind me to the opossum to light up my bow and a tribal guy shining a light on the opossum at about 25 yards and hit him dead on! It was a difficult shot to make and he was small, maybe the size of a squirrel!
We set out to hunt in the morning and encountered a large Caiman crocodile residing in our path. While we were passing it in our boat it must have disturbed it because the crocodile began pursuing us and eventually emerged from the water about a foot away from me on the boat. Luckily, the guy sitting behind me started yelling, causing the crocodile to rapidly retreat back into the river. All I saw was a big black shadow by my head about a foot away from the boat go quickly under water, talk about an experience that will get your heart racing.
We hunted some birds and then made our way back to camp. We set sail to go back to Lima and hunt turkeys, I was able to successfully take two with my bow! Afterwards we then traveled to the Andes mountains to hunt a ram. We started our hunt by glassing the mountains and spotting an ewe and a ram eating at the top of a mountain. We then started the long trek up the mountain hoping they would not move far by time we got to the top. Thankfully we hustled up and they did not move far! I had to stand directly above them by about 10-15 feet looking down and waited for a shot opportunity. When I was able to take one the ram moved and my shoulder shot ended up going right into the back of his skull plate.
He walked swaying back and forth with the ewe behind him teetering the edge of the mountain top. They finally stopped at the other side and I waited for another shot opportunity. Finally, it happened and he stood broadside at 30 yards and I took the shot and he fell over with a quick death. Some of the Peruvians that lived in the mountains were very thankful to get the meat from the ram. After getting him down the mountain we made our way back to Lima to hunt ducks and doves. That concluded my hunting adventure out there and then my second half of the trip was a hiking and backpacking adventure which is a story for another time. This hunt taught me a lot on what I could overcome and made me realize just how tough I really am!
