Gone are the skills needed to be woodsmen and women. Gone are the days when men and boys would go into the woods for days at a time with little for provisions other than a can of Vienna sausages and canteens of water, slices of jerky and a cold biscuit. Replaced with camel back packs, trail mix and power bars. Gone are the days when we would sit on a stump all day so still that spiders would build a web between your legs. Replaced with condo type stands with carpet and heaters. Gone is the ability to distinguish the difference between a squirrel running through the leaves and a doe trotting for cover. Gone is the childlike excitment at the sight of a squirrel, or listening to the calling of a murder of crows in the distance. Replaced with an iPod blaring Lady Gaga into our minds while the natural world’s wonders go unnoticed. Gone are the days when fires were made with kitchen matches and fat lighter logs, piled with dead branches and lined with rocks. Replaced with propane heaters, and duraflame processed logs. Gone are the days when coffee was made in porcelain pots on an open flame with the grounds dumped into the boiling water. Replaced with automatic drip makers plugged into generators inside campers. Gone are the days when men could pick up a deer track in a forrest of leaves, or a squirrel nest in the popular hollow. Gone are the meat poles that proudly displayed the harvest of a successful day afield; replaced by processors, who for a fee, will skin and gut your deer for you.
I am concerned not about our heritage, rather about the legacy we will leave behind to our children. I am concerned that as sportsmen and women, we are recruiting people into the fold who know very little about the art of hunting much less the out of doors. And whose desire to learn is forever relegated to the guides they pay. We have replaced the art of reading signs of travel corridors and rub lines, wallows and coverts with well established food plots, automatic feeders, game bird preserves and fenced animals. We have traded our knowledge of orienteering, for a GPS, satellite imagery, and Google maps. We are training our youngsters to become clients instead of sportsmen. We are training our children that it is “hunting” when we pay for a pen raised preserve pheasant instead of walking the miles through the plains in search of wild birds. We are teaching our children that trophies are judged in antler size rather than the experience of just being there.
It concerns me that my sons watch professional hunters on TV and never see the work that goes behind it, believing it really is that easy. Their idea of hunting is sitting in a box over a food plot waiting to shoot an “acceptable” animal. It concerns me that the joy of the out of doors is no longer sitting by a fire and watching stars, it is no longer listening to the chirps of birds as the sun cracks the horizon, or the beaver slapping his tail in the near by pond. Rather it is wanting to place piles of corn or alfalfa in large piles and waiting to see what happens by. It concerns me that the killing has replaced the hunting. – The game of trying to outsmart an old buck in his home is replaced with manipulating the landscape to get an unfair advantage.
Don’t get me wrong, I use modern rifles and tree stands, I use camouflage and some of the commercial scents, and I own a GPS and binoculars but in my estimation the line has been crossed when we replace skill for convenience, when we replace the desire to learn about the game animals, with the killing aspect of the sport. The line is crossed when the emphasis has moved from the experience to the harvest.
I want my children to understand the skill of hunting, understand what the sign means, what trails to look for, what it is like to sneak up on an unsuspecting deer, or squirrel. I want them to experience the thrill of a covey rise and watch as a flock of geese circle the well placed decoys and the art of calling them into shotgun range. I want them to know how to build a fire in a snow storm, and what the glow of a moon means. To understand the animals they are pursuing and to enjoy the pursuit more than the harvest. – A harvested animal is a great accomplishment when done well. It satisfies the core of who we are as hunters, it completes the journey that began in some instances years before.
When we find a buck’s bedroom and area able to sneak into range and harvest him cleanly, we have accomplished something. When hunting skill takes precedent over marksmanship, we have become a part of the out of doors not merely a spectator. I want them to be good outdoorsmen, not merely good clients. I want them to become woodsmen not just hunters. If you are as passionate about hunting as I am, you would too. You would want the next generation to learn and know what the woods tell you about the game you are pursuing, all of the information is there, we have to learn to read the signs.
As a young hunter in my early teens, I was not privileged to have a father who shared my passion. After weeks of begging I convinced my parents that I needed a .22 long rifle so I could hunt. It was in those early years that I learned how to listen to the sounds of nature and determine what my next move was. It was in thousands of failures that I learned to become successful. It was in gaining understanding that a barking squirrel can be successfully harvested while they are distracted. It was in my experience in being there that I learned what sounds were and what they meant. Getting snorted at by hundreds of deer taught me that sound and how to avoid it more often than not. It was in getting lost that I learned how to pay attention where I was going so it wouldn’t happen again. It was in wading creeks that I learned to find a better way around unless you wanted to hunt in wet clothes the rest of the day. It was in harvesting animals that I learned about anatomy and the importance in good accurate shots.
I learned to properly clean an animal after I harvested my first one and and asked: “now what do I do?” my dad said, “you killed it, you clean it.” “But I don’t know how?” I protested. “If you are big enough to take that animals life you owe it to the animal to take care of it properly.” He said and walked inside the house. I have held on to that philosophy and I have never paid someone to clean an animal I harvested. I never will. It is my responsibility. Sadly I know many well versed sportsmen, who have harvested more deer than I and who have never cleaned their kill, they take it to the processor and pay him to do it for them. I don’t understand that at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to progress, and the use of technology but in my estimation the lines have become so blurred that the purity of our sport is quickly being lost, I fear for good. And this is evidenced in many areas: High fence estates, game preserves, GPS, ATV’s, night vision, compound bows shooting 350+ ft/sec. rifles shooting over 1000 yards, your list may be different from mine. Regardless of where you are, and what is on your list, we all must do what we can to ensure that the great sport of hunting maintains its integrity, and its lore. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. Just because you “can” do something does not mean you should.
We each must decide for ourselves, but for me, the purity of hunting is in the small things that make the times afield special, putting the pieces of the puzzel together to find that covert full of migrating woodcock. Or discovering the hideout of the buck you didn’t know lived on your land until you found his shed while scouting in the spring. Listening to the trukey’s gobble on a cool spring morning and feeling the chills run up your spine. Take the time to teach those coming after us, what it all means take the time to learn yourself what it means to be a woodsman and you will never look back.
