Second installment in the Beginner Hunter Series
For all our musing about savoring sunrises and the nip of cool autumn air, the point of hunting is to kill and eat game.
As with all pursuits, experience will teach you that all hunts do not result in game on the table. For those that embrace hunting and all it entails, however, unsuccessful hunts will help increase the odds of success for the next hunt.
Hunting is, above all, sensory. It engages sight, smell, hearing and even the so-called "sixth senses." These are your undefined intuitive receptions that enable you to feel what you cannot see, smell or hear. Engaging them takes time. It requires melding your mind and body to the sights, smells, sounds and rhythms of the woods.
Novice hunters naturally fix on the result. They are so determined to justify the effort and the expense, no matter how modest, that their sole objective is putting game in the bag. If this is you, don't feel bad. It is natural for hunters and travelers alike to see only the destination at the expense of the journey. Keep hunting. It will begin coming to you quickly.
First, accept that you belong in the woods. Your Native American ancestors gleaned their sustenance here. If you are of African descent, your forbears were primarily hunters. Even if you are of Nordic or of central, eastern or southern European descent, your ancestors originated as hunters. Hunting is hardwired into your DNA. Modern living has dulled your instincts, but they are still there, latent, waiting for the whetstone of experience to sharpen them. In Arkansas, we understand this intrinsically to such a degree that Arkansas, along with several other states, constitutionally recognize hunting (and also fishing and trapping) as a fundamental right.
My father taught me to hunt squirrels as a child in the early 1970s by leaving me sitting against a tree at Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area. I was not to move until he returned for me hours later. That sounds irresponsible in today's helicopter parent world, but it instilled a number of key skills that I retain and employ nearly 50 years later.
For starters, sitting alone taught me courage. Initially, it is scary for a little boy to be deposited alone at an undisclosed spot in the woods in the dark. A pre-adolescent mind imagines untold perils. He hears things walking around, and they all remind him of his uncle's close encounter with a black bear. That was, for the record, my uncle Earl Dukes, who admonished the bear with an authoritative, "Shoo! Git! Go on!"
To exert a degree of control over my anxieties, I established a mental perimeter. The tree was my citadel. It protected my rear and my flanks. As the sun rose, I identified landmarks. That hulking shadow in the distance was actually a downed tree and its exposed root wad. There were assorted stumps and other things. What's up with that sapling over there with the shiny ring rubbed around the base? I took a mental inventory of everything in sight and memorized every element of the environment within sight.
Of course, telling a young boy to sit still is ridiculous. The boy is curious. He gets up to examine things. He wonders what's over there. And over there. He expands his perimeter, and he learns every twig within it. He doesn't go far at first, but soon he advances 25 yards and then 50. Instinctively he knows that about 100 yards is the limit, and the paths back to the tree -- home base -- are secure. A 100-yard radius at Bayou Meto is a generous hunting perimeter.
Before the day was done, I knew the area like the back of my hand. And since my dad never deposited me at the same tree, every hunt was a new mental mapping experience. I also memorized all of the routes back to the car. This is how I learned my way around Bayou Meto.
As morning overtakes the woods, a symphony ensues. Nuthatches clamber up and down tree trunks with their skritchy-scratchy sounds. Pileated woodpeckers shriek and pound trees with resounding echoes. Other birds plow through the leaves in search of food with such volume that a single wren or wood sparrow can sound as loud as an armadillo.
It all has a distinct appearance, too. You see leaves flipping around as birds comb the forest floor, and you see the flutter of wings as birds glide from tree to tree and settle on limbs.
It all has a distinct rhythm, but the ears and eyes are adept at detecting inconsistencies. At some point while sitting against a tree, you will hear a crash of leaves that sounds almost like the splashing of water. Or, you might see a cluster of leaves shake like a pom-pom. It will snap you from the deepest reverie. Your eyes tune to the sound, and your eyes fix on the shake of a squirrel abusing a cluster of acorns or hickory nuts, or merely running along a limb. Just like that, the squirrel has activated your predatory conscious. If you have been still and quiet, the engagement might be very close. If it is distant, you will, like a cat, begin stalking to get closer, taking short, even steps between trees to shield you from sight. You learn to distinguish the silhouette of a squirrel hugging a tree branch or sitting upright at a limb-trunk junction.
A lifetime of hunting began just like that for me. Being deposited in the dark in a foreign environment were terrifying at first, but I quickly came to embrace it. I sensed that I belonged there, and even though my only armament was a Marlin bolt-action 20-gauge shotgun and a box of No. 6 lead duck and pheasant loads, I fancied myself the king of the woods.
I came to feel at home there, and I loved it so much that I made a career of it.
