St. Hubert

Who they were

Hubert was a Frankish courtier who, the famous tradition says, went hunting on Good Friday itself, and between the antlers of the stag he was about to take saw a crucifix and heard himself called to a different life. The vision is legend, and it migrated to Hubert's story from that of St. Eustace, but the conversion is history. The worldly nobleman gave his goods to the poor, studied under Bishop Lambert of Maastricht, succeeded him, and spent decades as the Apostle of the Ardennes, travelling that vast forest region to reach people no one else went to.

He moved his see to Liege and died in 727. European hunting culture took him permanently: the Order of St. Hubert, hunters' Masses in November, and the ethic attached to his name, that the hunter answers to God for the animal. That is why his patronage reads today as the conscience of the sport rather than its mascot.

Why people turn to St. Hubert

Hunters, and here that is not an abstraction. His feast opens November and the firearm deer season opens two weeks later, which makes the first week of November his in this state more than most.

How to ask their intercession

Before the season and before the shot: for safety, for respect for the animal, and for the woods themselves. A St. Hubert medal carried in a blaze orange pocket is an old and living custom.