In my opinion, in nature we find perspective of ourselves in this world. To watch a fox hunt for mice in the woods, to watch a hawk take a squirrel from a tree or a snake from a prairie, to listen to raccoons screaming and fighting, to hear great horned owls hooting from nearby trees; these are the “little reminders” of our own place in the world. You will not find a comparison in a video game, a sporting event, or a party. It is only in immersing one’s self in nature that these things are observed.
The time alone in a blind or on a river is time spent focused on a quarry, on a life aside from our own. It is a time of self-examination when the prey is sparse. It is a time to watch songbirds, to detect the motion of a fluttering moth in a stray beam of sunlight that has penetrated the canopy above us. It is the splashing of spawning brook trout in the fall while still hunting deer along a coldwater stream.
Time in nature can be exhilarating in a way that urban life cannot match. Poor is the man who has never awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of coyotes yipping outside his tent. A national championship in any sport will never stand hair on the back of your neck as the primal fear when one hears the howl of a wolf or the bawl of a nearby bear cub. Nothing screams life like hearing the sound of heavy breathing outside your tent. Moose, bear, dog? Crazy human? You may never know, but you will never forget.
A billboard or scoreboard will never inspire or fire your imagination like a star-filled sky, away form the light pollution of the city. The sound of a paddle slipping in, against and out of the water, only to repeat itself time and again as the canoe glides quietly across a glacial landscape can only be experienced in person.
These experiences teach us about ecosystems, about the world we inhabit, about ourselves. Hunting and fishing takes us to a place we will only find in nature. Most urbanites and suburbanites have lost this perspective. For many of us, hunting and fishing have become the only link we have to this part of our biological inheritance.
I hunt to kill. But even so, success is not based on killing, but on the sum of the experience. The killing is the anticlimax of the preparation and the hunt. The ritual of preparation, the selection of gear, the practice, and the hunt culminate in a single moment when we kill, we miss, or the shot never quite presents itself. I hunt and fish to find my place in the world.
For all the magnificent art work in the world, for all the beautiful architecture, inspiring literature, the work of mankind pales in comparison to the natural beauty in the world around us. No painting has ever captured the song of the western meadowlark, the gobble of a turkey, or the scream of an injured rabbit. You will find this only in the solitude of a Nature.
This is why I hunt.
Topic: Question from my little girl"why do you hunt"? (Read 826 times)
