Advice to College Student

Advice to College Student


My advice is on finding the time to hunt. Make the time.

Hunters don't usually talk about this subject. However, I took up hunting 20-some years ago, because I needed to retire from caving. Cavers always talked about whimping out. I guess you really had to screw yourself up hard to get down the hole. I never had a problem, but I know other folks did. There was a whole lot of attrition among cavers. I stayed in it for 5 years-- not the shortest stint, but not the longest.

There are going to be all sorts of reasons in your life to stay out of the woods. You need to work hard to make the time. School gets in the way. Job gets in the way. Family gets in the way. Very little actually helps most people get out and hunt any more. My first wife was a bowhunter, but I don't think she understood. Come season, she would start making plans for short trips, dinner with friends, etc.-- always getting in the way of deer hunting. She thought we could always find time later. Then the holidays hit and . . . well, there's next year. When I started going without her, she did not understand why I was being so anti-social.

Start now. Start setting goals to get the roadblocks out of the way. Find a $500 car that will get you home. Take books to study for exams while you're on your stand. Do whatever it takes, or learn to take your place on the sofa, pop a brew, and settle back. The football game is about to start.

BTW: It took dumping wife #1 and finding wife #2, buying 200 acres and giving up vacations to be at the farm every weekend, before it all started to work. Wife #2 does not hunt, but she loves everything else about the lifestyle-- country life, shooting,the woods, nature, and eating venison for nearly every meal we fix.