Why do I hunt?

Why does the shaman hunt?

My youngest son, Angus, went through Hunter’s Ed last fall. In the class they talked about the Five Stages of Hunter Evolution. It grated on me. It grated on me a few years ago when I sent Moose, my older son, through. It rubs me the wrong way every time I read about it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the idea, somebody broke down the evolution of the hunter into five stages:

The Shooter Stage -- Beginners who want to just go out and shoot something. Yep.

The Limiting-Out Stage— People who think a full tag is the sign of success. Yep.

The Trophy Stage – Hunters who are in it for the big rack or something equally special they can hang on the wall. Cool, sign me up.

The Method Stage – Hunters now try to do it with one hand tied behind their back. Rifle hunters try a bow. Muzzleloaders go from percussion to flint. Those Encore rifles start looking less than ridiculous – you get the idea. Been there, done that.

The Sportsman Stage – The highest stage of hunting. These are the guys who get off just being in the outdoors. They are in it for the camaraderie, or the oneness with nature, or . . . or just about anything other than going out and killing something. Huh?

I say BUNK! I don’t see this as an evolution. I don’t see this as a progression. At best I see it as a spiral path, forever curving back on itself.. Where it is leading, I’m still a little hazy on, but I am sure it trails off into oblivion somewhere.

But why? Shaman, why rock the boat? I’ll tell you why. It is because I believe this whole “Evolution of the Hunter” puts the wrong idea in folks’ minds. It gives them a false hope that there really is a forward progression to it all. It puts value judgments on things that have no value. It’s just wrong.

Take the Sportsman Stage. This is the epitome, the hunter’s zenith. Moose and I were out 2 seasons ago on Opening Day of Yute Season. He had a bead on a nice doe, and at the last moment I warned him that she had a fawn trailing along behind. The muzzle of the Garand came up, and my 12 yr old son said “Well, I’d be killing two if I shot.” I was reminded of that last week, when I saw that doe out grazing in the same pasture with her daughter, the grown fawn, and a little 4-pointer buck that is the fawn’s offspring of the next year. Anyway you cut it, that boy is a sportsman, and besides that, by holding off, he recognizes that means we can cap all three this year!!! Good work, Moose.

But does that mean that he has somehow rocketed up the evolutionary ladder? Is he going to be spared the angst of the multi-year dry spell where I swore I’d take a three-legged doe if she would just come into range? Does that mean he is immune from the ravages of the madness that came over me the day I broke cover and ran at the gobbler and got three shots off as he rocketed into the air? I hope not. That is what hunting is all about. It is filled with unfilled tags, blown shots, blown hunts, and endless frustration and boredom. Why should he be immune from that good luck?

What stage am I? By age and length of time in the field, I can probably be judged to be a Sportsman, a hunter emeritus. However, let me tell you that if it gets on towards Noon on Opening Day, that next doe that walks through may very well get it. Oh sure, I can sit back calmly now and bloviate on the tenets of Fair Chase, but give me three hours in freezing rain and wind this Spring and I’m ready for somebody to come through with the turkey on a rope and stake it out. It does not have to be a long rope, and does not even have to be tied out very far—right next to the blind will do fine. Call me a troglodyte. Call me old fashioned.

Old Fashioned? Listen buckaroos, Jack O’Connor used to shoot deer in the butt. Don’t talk to me about old fashioned.

So does this make me a Shooter? Am I a Method Man? I probably am. I am probably all these things. I probably am an old-fashioned troglodyte, and that is why I hunt. When I finish out the season with a tag or two still unfilled, call me a Sportsman. When I am up to my elbows in deer gore, you can call me a naked ape with a gun. It is all the same thing, and it is all the same to me. If I go out for the afternoon with my gun or my bow, and fall asleep in the blind and wake up after sundown, does that make me a Sportsman or just another lazy goof?

It especially grits me that this whole evolution thing suggests that I am going somewhere on this journey. Year after year, I am scratching the same itch. I’ve been doing it for well over twenty years now. It is an itch that has to be scratched. I like to go out in the woods and kill things and take them home and eat them. Trophy? Yeah, I’ll take a trophy. It gives me something to brag about while I’m eating. It feels good to point at the wall and say: “That’s what you’re eating!” It makes some people stop eating. That’s okay. That means I can have seconds.

Method? Look, I’ve hunted with a bow and a muzzleloader. I have shot rifles with 1 MOA accuracy, and shot arrows into arrows. However, somebody mentioned an oatmeal cookie and a claw hammer in relation to deer hunting once, and I’m still trying to figure out if it would be possible. The only method that really intrigues me are the ones that make the animal fall dead in plain sight. I had a stand up a few years ago where every time I shot a deer, they ran towards the stand and fell within a few yards. A method that would take that one step further and get them to run towards my pickup truck would be even better.

Claw hammers? Oatmeal cookies? Staked-out Turkeys? Are these the dreams of a Sportsman? Listen here, shilly: you get to thinking about a lot of things when you’re stuck for hours on the stand or in the blind. If most Sportsmen are anything like me, that inscrutable smile they have is hiding thoughts not of the sublime nature of it all, but rather something like “I’m glad my butt is not frozen to my seat any more!” or “I am shooting the next thing that walks through, period!!!” This is not the happy Buddha of the Outdoor Life. This is an armed and dangerous carnivore that may have snapped and may be sizing you up right now, thinking how you’d fit on a spit.

Where does it end? What’s at the end of this evolutionary progression? I will tell you what lies at the end: some middle aged guy and his wife trying to figure out a way to get 90 year old Pops to come down out of his treestand and give up his rifle so they can cart him off to the home. That is what is at the end of this. If you live long enough, eventually they come and try to pry that rifle out of your hands, or they wait until you fall asleep and saw the tree down, and then Pops gets carted off kicking and screaming. The smart ones use tranquilizer darts and Pops wakes up in the home with a nasty bruise and a hell of a hangover and keeps demanding his rifle and his pack and they have to drug him and drug him and . . .

Get the picture?

Hunting is a manifestation of what we, as humans, really are. Some writers talk about the hunting gene. Some people talk about it as a disease. I think it is an innate part of what we are—a bunch of smart monkeys who figured out that you could bash the head in of something cute that happened to crawl too close to you on the branch. It was fun, it relieved a lot of stress, and what was left was highly nutritious to eat. The Good Lord blessed us with opposable thumbs and a brain, and the rest just flowed from there.

So shaman, don’t be shy. Tell us what you really think.

So maybe I’m the odd one here. I don’t hunt for meat, or for sport, or trophy, or to surround myself with nature or the joys of camp. I just hunt. I hunt so that I can go out in the still of the pre-dawn and hoist my rifle at Orion and feel that I know what he knows. I hunt so that after a long day of putting up with the sniggering turkeys, I can return home and toast Orion as he sets.