A Jager Bomb of a Different Sort

I am a bit of a nature buff. I wouldn't go much further than that really. I dig the outdoors, I like camping, I find animals interesting. What I enjoy most about nature is the sense of oneness that I find when I am out on a trail or a lake or along a river. Occasionally I'll come across a quote or a piece of poetry that captures what it is that I feel in the wild. Recently it was the label on a bottle of Jagermeister that connected me into the oneness of all things again. There is a German poem on the label, which, upon translation comes out as: "It is the hunter's honor that he protects and preserves his game, hunts sportsmanlike, and honors the Creator in His creatures." As you can imagine I dug this very much,mainly the part about honoring the creator in his creatures. It had a very Namaste-esque ring to it. It also illustrated for me a notion that has been growing in strenth in me that hunting might in fact be a cleaner and more humane way, more human way of sourcing food. More on this in another post... Back to Jagermeister, which btw means master hunter or hunt master. I wondered what other secrets might lay hidden in the label after finding this bomb and did a little more digging. This is some of what I found; The deer on the label is the St. Hubertus stag. For centuries, St. Hubertus has been the patron saint of hunters. According to the legend, in his youth, Hubert was a wild and unrestrained hunter, without responsibility towards the creatures that he hunted and captivated by the drive to kill. Even on the holy day of Sunday, he set off into the forest with his dog and rifle and cared little about the day of the Lord. Until one holy day, emerging from the dark woods, a large white deer carrying an illuminated cross between his antlers confronted him. From the moment of his vision, he devoted himself to good works under the banner of the antlered stag. He died in 727 AD, and centuries later he was venerated as a patron saint. It is from this story’s inspiration that the Jägermeister trademark derives. The name Jägermeister itself is German for “Master Hunter”, and incidentally it’s not made up. Even in Germany today, there is a position called Jägermeister, which is an employee of the district’s hunting authorities who is responsible for the region’s hunting regulations. Another more recent urban legend has it that the logo is a circle or letter O, containing a deer head, and a cross, and means simply O Deer God, an utterance often heard the morning after. So there you have it, more than you ever wanted to know about Jagermeister.