When and where did the long-running hunting tradition of 'blooding' originate?

Saint Hubert, the patron saint of hunters.

My nine-year-old son, James, made me real proud this week when he killed his first deer.

A few weeks ago, Butch Adams, one of Conecuh County’s finest outdoorsmen and my longtime colleague at the newspaper, invited James to go hunting down in Brooklyn, and James could hardly wait for a chance to bag his first deer. We met up with Butch and his son, Jake, on Saturday afternoon, and Jake drove us deep into the backwoods of Brooklyn, where he put us out at a shooting house a couple of hours before sunset. (Riley Worring, a tight end on the University of South Alabama football team, was also in our hunting party.)

James, who’d been deer hunting a number of times before, knew the drill. He knew he had to be quiet and still, so as not to scare off any deer in the area. And even though it was windy and cold, he knew that he had to tough it out and be patient if he hoped to kill his first deer. We sat there and watched the shadows grow longer, and just before sunset a doe walked out into the green patch.

We could see two larger deer off to our left, but the wood line prevented a good shot at them. Eventually it became clear that those two deer weren’t going to come closer, so James shot the deer in the food plot, bringing it down with his first shot. Not long after that, the deer was on the back of Jake’s truck, and we headed back toward civilization to show off James’ first deer.

Back at the camp, Butch and “Little Paul” Harden reminded me to put some of the deer’s blood on my fingers and streak James’ face up good before taking a picture for the paper. This was a tradition I’d forgotten about, and James endured it all with good humor. On the way home, he asked me why people put blood on their faces after killing their first deer, and I honestly had no better explanation than to say that it was a long-running tradition.

I thought about this rite of passage more and more over the rest of the weekend, and I presumed that the tradition of “blooding” had its roots in Native American beliefs. However, after a little research, I was surprised to learn that most sources say that it’s a custom that actually originated in Europe. 

Sources I read said that the blood smearing tradition is believed to have been started by fox hunters in England during the 1500s, when as a rite of passage, a master hunter would initiate a new hunter by smearing the blood of his first fox kill on the new hunter’s cheeks and forehead. They would often use the dead fox’s tail to apply the blood, sources said.

Others sources say that this tradition traces its roots to Saint Hubert, the patron saint of hunters, who was born in France in 638 A.D. Hubert died in 727 A.D., and hunters honored his memory by applying cross-shaped blood smears from fresh kills on their foreheads and cheeks with a hunting knife. This was done to evoke the blessings of Saint Hubert.

In the end, I really appreciate Butch, Jake and “Little Paul” affording James with the opportunity to kill his first deer. I know that it’s something that he’ll never forget, and I’m glad that all of them were part of this happy memory.