It's all a matter of how different tribes ornament themselves and their hunting tools, and is as old as humanity.
Take a look, for example, at some of the customs associated with hunting and shooting and how they vary across national lines. Look at the way the Germans traditionally honor the game - on a bed of boughs - at the end of the hunt. Put that into the totality of the context with the German preference for deep relief game-scene engraving on their guns (and the carving on the older gunstocks) and it all makes a lot more sense. It's not that far removed from paintings of aurochs, hirsch, chamois, horses and bears on the roofs of caves.
I suspect a cultural anthropologist or semioticist could make a lot out of the dominance of rose-and-scroll engraving on English guns, too. (Where's Umberto Eco when you really need him?) I'm just not that culturally educated or astute.
Last edited by Dave in Maine; 08/26/11 02:23 PM.
