When an idea gets in my craw, I often turn to the keyboard and mind dump. Most of the time, I soften and mold the idea until something not quite so abrasive is ready for public consumption. A few days ago, while cruising facebook, I saw a post from a guy that said how glad he was hunting in his pop-up ground blind because it was cold and raining. The heater was keeping him warm and the roof was keeping him dry. In comfort he waited for a deer to walk by.
Climbing up on the Soap Box
I opened the laptop and banged the following: “Leave that fancy portable hunting blind in the store and go sit in the woods without a roof over your head. You just might get to feel and experience the warm of a winter sun on your face while your toes shiver off the cold. You might get to feel the running of rain down your neck under your shirt collar. You might get to feel nature and not just watch it from a comfy chair under a roof.”
Then I thought about it and wrote the following hoping it may be a better way to get the point across:
Back When I Was A Kid (did I just say that?)
When I was a kid, my mother would joke that my father and I were “Getting back to God and nature” when we went deer hunting. Dad and I would drive a couple of hours in the dark to public hunting land and hunt from dawn to dusk. We did not have tree stands stationed in the woods. We did not have or use portable tree stands. With two sandwiches, an apple, a can of soda, compass, short drag rope and knife in my cargo pockets, I would take off and spend the day in the woods. A normal day consisted of finding a previously scouted spot in the dark and sit watching the day begin. By sit, I mean tucked into some deadfall or against a large tree sitting on the ground. At some point in the day, I would get up and walk around the woods slowly searching for deer and a good spot to hang out for the rest of the day.
Seldom did I kill a deer on these hunts. I did learn how to navigate and trust my compass. I learned how to find, read and hunt via the signs left by the deer and other critters of the woods. I learned the importance of wool socks. I learned the importance of thinking twice about crossing a creek by walking on a log where one slip meant being wet and cold all day. I learned how good a warming morning sun feels. I learned much about the forest and myself on these days in the woods.
At some point deer hunting changed. Now we have comfortable chairs hanging twenty feet in the trees where we sit and watch the woods and the world below. Then came along the portable ground blind; a virtual little home away from home where one can escape the weather sit and watch the outside world. Sorry, but I go to the woods to a part of it, not be a voyeur. Ok, so that may be a stretch, but is it?
The Hunt
Yes, I understand that when one goes deer hunting the end mission is to kill a deer, but at what price do we give up the experience for the end rewards? I’ve seen, and I’m sure you have too, a video of a hunter who rides his ATV to an elevated custom build deer hunting house posted on a field edge and after a few minutes he shoots a very large buck at 200 yards across the field – a field planted to feed the deer. Was he a successful deer hunter? Sure he was, just look at the photograph of him with his buck. But how much of a natural world experience did the hunter really have?
I could go on and on about what is hunting; how the pursuit of large antlered bucks and the intervention of items that separate the hunter from the world around him have lessened the hunting experience. But instead, I’ll just make one suggestion. Try going on a day long hunt to an unfamiliar area with just a lunch, compass, knife and drag rope. Use your woods knowledge to find the deer. Enjoy the day in woods as part of the woods and not just perched watching. Will you kill the largest buck of your life? Probably not. Will you have an experience well-remembered longer than the last evening you spent in your tree stand watching the world go by? Just maybe.
