A few months back I had a comical interaction with one of our newer clients. This Cincinnati area homeowner called us because she had some concerns about chipmunks on her property. 

I arrived and went to the door to introduce myself and inform her I would be starting work on her property. I pushed the “Ring” doorbell and within 15 seconds the door opened and the first thing out of the client’s mouth was, “Well you sure aint Chris Hemsworth”

It took me a second to put two and two together. In case you have never met me in real life, I am six feet tall, 250 pounds, slightly balding, with a scruffy half beard. I look nothing like the chiseled, towheaded, hammer wielding norse god of Marvel fame, or in his lesser known role as “Eric The Huntsman” in “Snow White and The Huntsman”.

So, to settle the score once and for all, did I in fact name my company after a Disney reboot?

Kinda.

One of the endearing things about Hemsworth’s portrayal of “Eric” (the huntsman) in the Disney reboot of Snow White was the character arc he took through the film. Starting out down on his luck (partly his own doing) after losing the love of his life, Eric saw very little hope for the future. Reluctantly he was forced to take on a job in hopes to get his old life back. While performing that job, he finds his truth, and I won't spoil the ending, but things end up pretty okay for the Huntsman.

That story matches a bit with mine. One of my passions in life is pest management, and due to unfortunate circumstances (some of my own doing) I had to leave the industry I spent so much of my life in. I was forced to make ends meet doing work that did not bring me the same joy, until one day, I took a big risk and abandoned that forced career, and followed my heart back to my passion. I am looking forward to my own professional “happily ever after” 30 years from now when I retire. So there is the kinda.

The nail in the coffin though was when I was looking for a name that would exemplify the mission of the company I was creating. I knew I wanted my company to have a different set of priorities than the other “trappers” in the Cincinnati area

I wanted first and foremost to protect my community from the damage and dangers that come with nuisance wildlife, but I also wanted to ensure the work we were to perform was done ethically and responsibly. I wanted to show my fellow Quen City neighbors how to PREVENT nuisance wildlife from affecting their life in the first place by providing effective exclusion and deterrent techniques in place of trapping in cases it called for. I wanted to be firm in the belief that every call does not necessarily mean lethal ends for the animals I was being tasked with handling, and I wanted to create a legacy in Cincinnati that my company not just removes nuisance wildlife from homes and businesses, but also works to protect and defend wildlife in our community.

Many neighbors have called asking us to trap squirrels in their bird feeders, raccoons getting in their trash cans, or coyotes walking through their neighborhood. And to them I say the same thing everytime, “Unless the animals are damaging property, or are a threat to the safety of pets or humans, let's take a look at what we can do to make your property less attractive rather than trapping them for doing what just comes natural.”

I found a definition online of “huntsman” being “a person who manages a hunt”. Not always the actual hunter, but the one who locates the animals, determines which animals will be taken, and which will be left for future hunts, plans the method of taking the animal, and coordinates the harvest. That is what we do. 

We do not indiscriminately trap any and all wildlife on our client’s property. We determine which animals need to be removed, how to remove them, and ultimately, remove only the planned animals. We are the Huntsman.

So we had the name, now how do we create an image of a Huntsman? That was where I continued my search within norse folklore and found “The Stag”. The stag is the king of the forest, the protector of all other creatures. 

I combined the stag head with the “H” in Huntsman to symbolize the intersection of hunter and protector. We will protect our clients AND the animals in our charge, while facilitating order and structure in the “forest” of our community. The nine tines on the stag antlers represent the nine foundational principles Huntsman Wildlife operates under. But that explanation will be next week’s blog post.

Till Next Time… see ya folks.