That's me! The movie version of me, at least -- I grew up as one of the Vietnamese tribesmen it's depicting, the Montagnards. We didn't hunt Communist soldiers on behalf of an aging Marlon Brando, but we did hunt just about everything else we could get our hands on, endangered species and otherwise. We were hunter-gatherers, and that's how I lived until I got out of there around age 14. I don't know my exact age because we didn't keep track of or celebrate birthdays.
We didn't even use currency -- we just traded rice for salt, fish, etc. My grandmother made everything from scratch, even our clothes. We lived off of rice, beans, wild fruits, and berries. For protein, we'd pretty much eat all types of insects and animals, including the types of animals the World Wildlife Fund would spear us for eating, like elephants and monkeys (which were delicious). Most of those monkeys were assholes, by the way -- you see monkeys everywhere in the jungle, and they're furry little thieves. I spent a lot of my childhood as a living scarecrow, waiting for them to get close to our food storage and then flipping out and banging on stumps to make them run away.
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Hello, my old nemesis.
I grew up hunting with a slingshot. I mostly hunted for smaller animals like lizards, and later, I learned how to use a bow and arrow for birds. I came close to bagging a deer once. And by "close," I mean I was sitting in the tree right above it, and my grandma shouted for me to jump on top of it. I was like, "Are you crazy? I'll fall and break my neck." Did your grandma ever tell you to leap down onto the back of a wild animal so you could stab it to death?
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