Most of the Beginner's Hunting Series has focused on the tools of hunting, but understanding the essence of hunting is vital.
What is hunting? What does it mean to hunt and to be a hunter? What is a hunter's relationship and responsibility to his or her quarry?
Taking game is the result of hunting, the result of a process. Shooting a deer with a rifle is not essentially different than running over a deer with a car. The process is different, but the result is the same. I recall a 1989 column in the Arkansas Gazette written by a columnist whose father "hunted" deer with a car. He had a hoopty that he kept for this very purpose. When the venison stash got low, he went for a little drive.
Most of us would not dignify that as hunting, and running down deer with a car is not a legal means of taking, but one could argue that the methodology was as legitimate as that of an elite bowhunter. Through experience and familiarity with his "hunting grounds," the driver knew the roads where he was most likely to see deer and the times at which he was most likely to see them. It was a process with a desired end. It remains the most entertaining "hunting" article I've read.
Hunting has no concrete definition. The meaning of hunting is personal, spiritual, individualistic. I relate it to an incident that occurred in Lorenzo Smith's band class at Henderson Junior High in 1978. Smith was exasperated with the band's lack of energy. He stopped us mid-song, smashing his baton repeatedly on his music stand. In his customary combative, bellicose style, he demanded, "Do any of you know what music is?"
Silence ensued, so Smith called us out. A trombonist recited Webster's definition of music. A saxophone player said music is a sound made by a musical instrument. Smith seized the kid's sax, struck its bell with his baton and asked icily, "That's a sound made by a musical instrument. You call THAT music?"
Smith called on me, his first-chair trumpet, a long-haired ninth-grade hippie kid with frayed bell bottoms, black T-shirt, tattered red flannel shirt and dirty sneakers. I was Kurt Cobain before Kurt Cobain, minus the talent. Actually I was Neil Young (minus the talent), my idol at that time, and also Cobain's.
"Music is something you feel, man," I said. "It's how you make people feel what you feel when words aren't enough."
Smith gave me a long, piercing stare. His face remained angry, but his eyes softened. He paused a few moments for the rest of the band to absorb the thought and then counted us back into the music. We played better.
Hunting is a lot like that. Hunting is an indescribable sweetness you taste in the fall when you take a breath of crisp morning air. It's your awareness of changing seasons when acorns crash against a tin roof. It's the chill in your veins when you hear the clatter of dry leaves in a wind that are too stubborn to let go of their branches. It's the mental poetry you speak silently when oak and leaves glitter in midair after being blown free by an autumn zephyr. It is the jolt of electricity that stabs every nerve when the crackling of leaves on the ground signal an approaching deer.
Hunting is the melting of your heart when you see the bellies of white-fronted geese glowing pink in the morning sun. Hunting is your breath that catches in your throat at the sight of a drake mallard's green head glowing like neon. It's the giggle you try to stifle when a mallard hen answers your call.
Hunting is your guts turning to jelly when a gobbler spreads his backlit fan. It is your silent gasp when he throws out his neck, stretches his tail and bellows an earth-shaking gobble.
Hunting. Do you live for it? If you couldn't hunt, would the loss be unfathomable?
Hunters progress as they mature. In the beginning, you just want to shoot the gun. Later, you focus on the game, and ultimately the experience as an essential part of life. You can tell a lot about a hunter by his trophies. More accurately, a hunter will tell you a lot about himself through his trophies. For some, the size of a deer, elk or sheep rack is the story. They can recite the exact measurements, and they often express disappointment about racks that did not qualify for Boone and Crockett or Pope & Young recognition.
Always I ask, "If the animal wasn't up to your standards, why did you kill it?"
Always the answer is, "Well, he was as big as he was ever going to get." And therefore, he did not deserve to live. It's like culling livestock.
Others delight in telling the stories behind their mounts. They relive the entire episode, from scalding their lips on morning coffee to the first glint of sunlit ivory as a deer's antlers materialize in the brush. They'll give an embarrassed chuckle about getting so excited that they forgot to deactivate the safety before pulling the trigger. Their voice rises over the miraculous recovery that allowed them to take the buck as it nearly completed its escape.
Writers often express remorse over killing an animal. That particular literary device was somewhat canonical, promoted among groups like the Outdoor Writers of America, to demonstrate to anti-hunters that hunters are sensitive and compassionate.
I am remorseful when I've done something I regret. I never regret killing game, but I do feel profound gratitude and respect for the life I've taken. I have shed tears upon killing game, but they are tears of thanksgiving. It happens mostly with turkeys because turkey hunting is so personal. From first contact to the shot, a hunter establishes and nurtures a brief but intense relationship with a gobbler. That is why turkey hunters name their gobblers. My hunts conclude not with regret but with a prayer.
Hunting videos have reduced hunting to the kill. Instead of showing respect for an animal we kill on video, we celebrate. We do a "sack dance." We spike the ball and talk trash. The game is an opponent, and modern sports have conditioned us to disrespect and abase opponents. That is killing, but it is not hunting. On this I will not yield. Hunting is a suite of spiritual and sensory intangibles, including the intense gravity of taking a life. Taking a life in the absence of the intangibles is merely self gratification.
For new and novice hunters, this awakening is a destination. You will not get there immediately, but if you do it long enough, you will get there eventually.
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Seventh installment in the Beginner’s Hunting Series.