Personal Failings

So.

I’m not going to turn this blog into some sort of confessional, there are plenty of blogs like that out there, and I’m willing to bet that a good many of them do it better than I could.

Still, there have been things in life keeping me out of the fields, forests, and marshes, and I’ve been hearing it through my email, Twitter, and from friends about my recent disappearance from the hunting world.  And I can only fight back with stilted, painful attempts at humour.

You see, there are a good many things that I am terrible at when it comes to hunting.  Sitting still is one of them, and I am certain that this is why I’m a generally unsuccessful turkey hunter, despite what could be argued are marginally above average abilities as a turkey caller.  Being observant is also not my strong suit…I’m often day dreaming or humming a tune in my head or trying to come up with the next clever and witty blog post when I should be watching for game, and I have a suspicion that I’d be a better deer hunter if I paid closer attention to the woods around me.  My friends, hunting mentors, and so on don’t seem to have these failings and it is a constant source of shame for me, but also has instituted somewhat of a tradition of ‘ripping on Shawn’ which I find both charming and emotionally crippling.

With that in mind, I’m always seeking to upgrade my skills.  Since my recent move to a new town sidelined my annual duck opener excursion last weekend, I thought I’d leverage my time at the mall and in the hardware stores to illustrate the ways that I spent the last four days improving my hunting skills, even though I wasn’t hunting.

Lying

Lying is a critical skill for all hunters, and I got plenty of exposure to lying this past weekend.  In the hunting world, some common lies that are popular include fabricating what you were doing when you botched a shot, lying about how big (or small) a given animal was, making up the distance of certain shots, or telling your friends that you missed a shot at a running coyote when in reality you hurriedly blazed two shots nowhere near a standing deer because you were surprised and really shouldn’t have been shooting in the first place.  In the world I was residing in this past weekend, some of my go-to lies included feigning enthusiasm over bathroom cabinet styles, pretending to be happy to spend nearly a grand on paint, lighting, and tools, and telling people that I didn’t really mind organizing my unpacking and organizing my basement while my buddies had some laughs and shot a pile of ducks and geese.  I lie so well now, that I’m considering a career move into municipal government.

Being Silent

While I may not be observant or stealthy, one thing I am good at being (when necessary) is quiet.  Of course I can make a whole lot racket on a goose, duck, or turkey call when the mood strikes me, and it is true that I never shut up when I’m with my buddies in the waterfowl blinds (I like to make jokes…so sue me), when sitting on stand alone, silence is simple.  I’m also working on navigating the woods more silently as well, and it is coming along.  To that end, I got some great practice this past weekend.  For example, I mastered the skill of silently slipping away from my wife while she perused paint colours, and I became an expert at not saying a word when my name was called to assist her with painting the hallway while our son was being a nuisance.  Navigating the soul-crushing pandemonium of Bed, Bath, and Beyond will hone any hunter’s ability to move silently and swiftly through narrow, constricted spaces.  I feel the effort put in now will serve me well come November.

Decision-Making

Being decisive is so important to hunters that it is second nature to many.  Take the shot or don’t?  Left-hand trail or right-hand trail?  12ga or 20ga?  Go the toilet in the woods or hold it?  These are all vital decisions that require timely and committed decision making, and sometimes in the hunt these decisions figure themselves out.  In the dog-eat-dog world of moving and home improvement, there are decisions that carry as much (or maybe more) gravity, and none of them are going to sort themselves out.  Ivory Palace paint for the living room or Currier Cream?  Does the TV look good in the corner or should we hang it over the fireplace?  Should we hang the mirror here or there?  Gas line BBQ or propane?  You see how intense it could be.  For those who say that hunting decisions are more important because they can be life-or-death has never tried to tape and paint trim with my wife.

These are but a smattering of the skills developed this past weekend that will no doubt make me a more lethal and efficient predator in the woods.  If I could only find a way to apply my skills of procrastinating when  it comes to blog updates or of alienating self-proclaimed ‘serious’ hunters, there would be no stopping me.  But at least not showing up at the camp gives my buddies more ammo to torch me with the next time we get together, which should be in about two weeks’ time.

Right after a friend’s wedding next weekend and only once I get my pesky guest bedroom in order…

Minor Pleasures

The fact that I’m itching to get hunting is apparent to all, and that I can’t stop yammering about calling contests, waterfowl weekends, and gear that I need to buy is not helping matters.

Of course for every thing that really makes me downright giddy about the approaching hunting seasons (waterfowl, fall turkey, and deer specifically), there are about a hundred things that the non-hunting people in my life think is negative, or at least weird, about my passion for the outdoors.  Most have long ago given up trying to convert me, and truth be told, most of them don’t think hunting is ‘wrong’…particularly when they see me making and eating delicious things out of game animals.  But a sad symptom of our ultra-modern, urbanized, smart-phone culture is that scads of people that I come into contact with on a daily basis in my personal and business relationships that have no appreciation for all the tiny, esoteric, and absolutely exceptional experiences that are to be gained from spending long hours afield.  And that’s fine…I don’t derive my self-esteem from whether they find me somehow “different”.

But in the spirit of conciliation, and in an effort to further reduce the ridiculous clichés that people ask me on a daily basis, here’s a list of some things that non-hunters think of as inconveniences and irritations that are, in a hunter’s mind, simple pleasures to be savoured.

Wood Stoves

I always get “But what if the stove goes out?  Don’t you guys freeze?”  The answer is, yes, if the fire goes out, it gets cold.  The trick is to not let the fire go out…and I happen to hunt with a group of guys who are adept fire-stokers.  By 1am or so the camp is downright tropical, in large part thanks to my father and uncle who seem to be cold-blooded reptiles of some sort.  In our deer camp it is not uncommon to wake in the night and lean out a window or walk out to the porch in one’s underpants, just for the sweet relief of a brisk November night.  Early fall goose camps are even worse, because it is usually pretty mild already without someone literally ‘putting the wood to’ the camp stove.  At least it is a dry heat.  On the plus side, we can all, for the most part, bond over our constant berating of anyone putting wood in the stove.

Mattresses (Air or Otherwise)

Another question I constantly hear is “What do you sleep on?  The ground?  The floor?” and to that I usually shake my head and remind people that although roughing it is a key component of the hunt (and I have nothing but respect for the high country hunters who operate with canvas tents and pack horses), for us, we do have a modicum of comfort.   One of our camps has dedicated bunkbeds with old, generally feculent mattresses on them.  In the other, most of us use air mattresses.  Last year, I got tricky and got a synthetic camp cot, primarily because I wanted a bed that I could fold up (since everyone was either walking on or flopping down on my air mattress as they pleased) that was likewise not going to develop a slow leak and deflate in the night.  Unfortunately for me, this cot proved a little too comfortable and some certain individuals in camp took to unfolding it for me and resuming to sleep on it as they saw fit.  In the bunkbed scenario, lower bunks are prized possessions.  Owing to hot air’s natural tendency to rise, and given our healthy cabbage consumption (in the form of sauerkraut, cabbage rolls, Brussels sprouts, and coleslaw) mixed with the tendency mentioned above for certain camp elders to keep a raging inferno going in the stove at all hours, sleep (if it can be called that) on a top bunk is memorable to say the least.  Waking up in a sweat surrounded by a cloud of miasma used to be a rite of passage in our one camp.  Since we took to draping heavy sheets over the doorframe a few years back the heat issue has improved slightly…the noxious odour, not so much.  Still beats sleeping on the floor though…barely.

Hygiene

“Don’t you guys all stink after staying in camp together?”  Okay this one is partially true.  Yes, after a day of hiking the backwoods or carrying decoys in and out of fields we are generally sweaty, hungry, and dirty.  And yes, a shower is not always an option, although we are lucky enough to have an outdoor shower at one deer cabin we hunt out of.  Our fingernails get grimy, or feet get wrinkly, and we itch in places we don’t always itch.  But that is not to say that hygiene is completely out of the question.  Almost everyone in camp at least brushes their teeth, and a steel pail of water gathered on a short trip to a lake or stream can be heated on the glowing steel of one of our blazing wood stoves to provide enough hot water to at least splash down the most offensive nooks and crannies.  I choose not to shave while in camp, others do.  It’s no big deal.  In deer season, when scent control becomes somewhat important some individuals become a bit more fanatical about cleanliness…me, I steer clear of that cyclical argument and just let myself smell as ‘natural’ as possible.  Keeping a shaved (or more apt in my case, balding) head of hair addresses the need for frequent use of shampoo and if you can locate the one man in camp who is cleansing, conditioning, and moisturizing their hair I’ll be you I can point out a hunter that just isn’t appreciating the experience on as many levels and senses as I am.  I even have an uncle who came up with a clever use for Penaten cream one year.  I’m not sure if it was stranger that he was using it or that he packed it with the foresight to know he’d need it.  In the end it is okay to get kind of gross.  It means you are doing more important things than fretting over what your cabin-mates think of your appearance.

Diet

“So do you just bring enough bacon, beef jerky, and beer to last you the week?”  I wish…I love bacon, beef jerky, and beer, and if that was all I consumed for a week of hunting I might lose some weight.  I think if anything has really changed about the modern hunting experience it is that I would wager very few hunters just pack in essentials and rely on their woodsmanship skills to provide their sustenance.  Gone are the days (for many of us I bet) when eating on a hunting trip meant that you ate what you killed or else you nearly starved, and I’d bet double that those days expired many years ago.  I don’t think I’ve ever been to camp that didn’t have enough food to feed everyone in it twice.  Now some camps are better than others in terms of selection and quality; for every camp I’ve been to where the menu is exceptional (like our deer camps for example) I’ve to as many others where hot dogs, chips, mixed nuts, and beans were all there was all the time.  Most camps fall in the middle, and frankly I couldn’t care less what is on the menu, as long as there’s a lot of it.  Hunting is exertion for most of us, and that relative level of exertion varies from hunter to hunter, but nonetheless when the sun goes down and the guns go away, I’ve never met a man or woman alive that wasn’t ravenously hungry after a day’s hunt.  Bacon, beef jerky, and beer would cut it…but I’d rather have more.

The Toilet

So we’ve come to this.  Nothing is more misunderstood or more commonly reviled, misrepresented, and joked about than what a bear, or in this case a hunter, “does in the woods”.  Call it want you want, from outhouse to shitter.  It is ubiquitous and simultaneously revered and feared.  That is the one stereotype I cannot shake, and that is the view that we as hunters all have to either use a hideously depraved outhouse or alternatively brave baring our sensitive bits to the wilderness and going in the forest.  Now I’ve visited many outhouses from the rankest and most vile (which I encountered when I wasn’t even hunting…it was at a punk rock festival concert in mid-August, the odour haunts me still) to one’s that have a fair modicum of creature comforts, but I still cannot say that I’ve had an outhouse experience I would define as ‘pleasant’.  I even, at a young age, contributed man-power to actually digging and installing an outhouse.  You learn a lot about yourself in moments like that.  All this said I have no real problem with the outhouse at the end of the day…even the two-man version at one of the deer camps I go to (picture it!).  It is the conundrum of biology that makes it so; that ‘any port in a storm’ approach that sometimes occurs when your stomach is bubbling and you’ve been without running water for a few days.  Making sure you exercise good timing is important too in any outhouse adventure.  It pays to be the first one into an outhouse the morning after ribs and sauerkraut for dinner.  Anything other than first and you may as well hold it for the woods, and this alternative is likewise not without risks.  While I will keep this G-rated (both out of respect for the reader and to protect the guilty…you know who you are and I know that you read this) I have stories in my repertoire about the disasters that occur when you either wait too long and then lose control while peeling off multiple layers of pants and long-underwear or if you get excited and don’t quite get the pants out of the way before squatting.  I’ve already shared one example of the logic that must be employed if emergency strikes and you find yourself without toilet paper (hint…bring an extra pair of socks).  Regardless, the exigencies of our need to eliminate waste make us all equal.  I feel particularly sorry for female hunters in this respect…the one time I took my wife hunting she made me well aware of the intricacies of that particular interface and it is (I argue) the one compelling reason that she won’t take up hunting with me on a full time basis.

So there you have it…a far from exhaustive, but hopefully still informative list.  I am aware in re-reading this that I’ve made all of the above points seem negative through some sort of tongue-in-cheek narrative, but I can assure you that the sum of these component parts do make up what the hunting experience as a whole is.  Just like there is not a catch-and-release component to hunting as I define it, there is likewise no extricating the above moments and experiences from hunting as I know it.  To be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way…even the outhouse, but only if I’m first to use it.

The Lesser Known Skills

On newsstands, the “big mags” are soon to be publishing their turkey hunting run-ups, and that is fine.  Great actually, because I love to read them.  At various times of the year, every hunting publication that you’d buy in a bookstore has what I call their “Get Ready!” issue and they all feature articles with catchy tag lines like “Fool Wary Late-Season Geese!” or “Sure Fire Tactics for Greenheads!” or my personal favourite “Your Best Rut Ever!”…like I’ve ever had a ‘bad’ rut.  That’s as redundant as “good orgasm”.

These articles and features do become formulaic after a time…after all how many different times can we be told how to call to a hung up gobbler?  Deer will always be deer and I think by now I know how to use rattling horns.  Likewise there are not a lot of differing ‘strategies’ for deploying a pop-up blind or a trail camera.  But again, that’s fine because every once in a while I find a hidden gem of wisdom.  For example, last year in either Field & Stream or Outdoor Life (I can’t frankly recall which, and my wife has since recycled the magazine) there was a nifty piece about how to make a ‘wingbone’ style of turkey call out of a pen and a spent shotgun shell.

How very MacGyver.

But that’s not the point of this post.  This post is about what has been missing.  For all the promise, exceptional photography, and flashy splendor of these institutions, they’re missing out on what I would call the ‘unspoken fundamentals’, which I consider the basis for making any hunt enjoyable and the key skills to becoming a successful hunter.  So with that in mind, I humbly submit to you a list of some of the lesser known aptitudes that truly define what makes “a hunter”.

Lying

Now this is admittedly a cliché, and we’ve all seen the shirts and hunting camp placards that say something like “Liars and Hunters Gather Here” or some permutation thereof, but in every joke there is a kernel of truth, and hunters are exceptional liars.  Now I alluded to this in an earlier post, but that dealt with a certain segment of the hunting community.  To put it simply, to hunt you must develop the ability to lie.  Now I’m not talking about the kind of double speak and manipulation that politicians and power-brokers use.  No, no…in this respect I’m referring to both the benign, passive lies that make you seem like less of an abject failure or the broad, open lies that grease the wheels of conversation.  If you meet a hunter that tells only the truth, beware.  He or she is not to be trusted as they are either a far too upstanding citizen to associate with, or they are a hunter par excellence and has never had any reason to lie because they always experience glowing success.  Either way, those are people that you do not want to live in a cramped shack with for a week.

Excuse Making

Of the same vein, but distinct from, lying is excuse-making.  To be a successful hunter this is a must-have skill and once developed it will carry you far.  It has a multi-faceted range of applications from practical use in getting out of doing dishes and sweeping floors through to actually helping you harvest game.  Don’t believe me?  I would argue that we all know someone who through excuse-making and laziness (laziness being excuse-making’s deadbeat progenitor) decided not to walk ten miles cross-country and instead sat on the porch with a gun and cigar and killed a huge buck that had the temerity to stroll out onto the front lawn.  Heck, in 2009 my own excuse-making and laziness led me to sit in hardwood opening not eight minutes from the front door of the camp.  Shot a deer ten minutes later, if I wasn’t such a poor shot I would have shot two.  Don’t tell me it isn’t an essential skill.

Arguing

Being a generally objectionable person is not a prerequisite to being a good hunter, but it helps.  I’ve met a lot of hunters that were accommodating, friendly, and willing to listen to your opinion on anything.  But I don’t really remember them fondly or as being particularly successful.  The ones that I do remember as successful and memorable are the irascible, gruff, opinionated SOBs that did things their own way regardless of what the camp consensus was because that’s what they thought was right, even when it clearly wasn’t.  These people are not the best camp-mates when trying to nail down a dinner menu or debating the merits of gun caliber, political affiliation, or governmental tax mandates…but by gar do they know how to hunt.  The underlying trait of argumentativeness is self-confidence, and to be a successful hunter, you’ve got to have that in abundance to go where no one else will, to try what no one else will try, and to believe in your abilities when everyone else doubts them.  Hunters with that trait are inherently, and inexplicably, successful.

Calm

In a bizarre, Zen-master kind of way, I’ve found the best hunters to be exceptionally, if not frighteningly, stoic.  Now here in Ontario there is not much that you can hunt that will realistically ‘kill you back’ so to speak…although the “black bear sow when surprised with cubs” scenario lives in an especially dark corner of my nightmares, especially in turkey season when all I have is a shotgun packed with a few 3-inch rounds of paltry #6 lead shot…but calm is more than facing the potential dangers of the woods unfazed.  I’ve never even had the crosshairs on a deer that was more than an average-sized doe but those beautiful ungulates reduce me to a quivering mass of skin and tissue every time I get the gun up on one.  Likewise a wild turkey, a bird that is both beautiful in plumage and hideous in countenance, ratchets up my adrenalin like no other game animal and I can’t make rational or even basic decisions very well.  Now I’m not sure if the calm and collected camp of hunters just has better control of this than I do, but I don’t really care.  All I know is that they ghost serenely through the woods and fields, seemingly attuned to all the nature that surrounds them, and when they do succeed in taking their prey of choice, they always act like they’ve been there before.  Even when I know damn well that they haven’t.

Gluttony

Here’s where things take a bit of a swerve to the left.  I would argue steadfastly that all the best hunters are legendarily gluttonous.  Now I’m not speaking of wasteful game harvesting or boorish, self-absorbed behavior (although I am likewise not discounting it because I don’t know what you do when I’m not looking) but I am talking about their ability to pack back food and drink.  Of all the hunters I’ve known…and I’ve known many…there exists a one way correlation between the ability to have success in the field and the ability to eat and drink.  I say “one way correlation’ because I also know lots of guys and gals that can eat and drink but don’t have a lick of hunting sense.  To put it basically, I’ve found that if you can hunt, you can also eat.  This is not always inversely true.  And before someone emails me with a list of reasons why this is not an accurate or tenable assessment let me further state that feasting has been a part of hunting as long as hunting has existed in a recorded form.  The coming together of comrades after a hard day afield and restoring our bodies with wine, ale, meat, and wild edibles of all kinds is engrained in the hunting tradition and has been in tapestry, song, and literature for centuries.  As a man with an almost fanatical appreciation of history, who am I to say that isn’t important, nay required, in a hunter?  I await your angry emails.

Swearing

Again, speaking strictly from observation and years of compiled empirical evidence, I think to qualify as a good hunter, you need to be able to swear.  Now I’m not advocating the exceptionally crude, low-brow kind of cursing reserved for locker rooms and Comedy Central Roasts, but then again I’m not talking about maintaining a level of dialogue that is purely biblical either.  What I would say is that the well-constructed, exceptionally-timed, and situation-specific use of foul language is a prerequisite to hunting.  Whether used to castigate one’s self after missing a dreadfully easy shot (I do this often), expressed as dismay as you go through the ice, over your boot top, and into the lake up to your knee on a freezing Lake Huron shoreline (looking in your direction Tack), or just to add spice to a humorous campfire anecdote about what witnessing the birth of your first child was like (again, guilty) the use of salty language is exactly that…it is the figurative seasoning that makes conversation interesting.  I’ve always been struck by the irony that language and dialogue defined as “tasteful” was always exceedingly bland, luckily we keep things pleasant seasoned in our camp.  What constitutes appropriate levels of foul language in your hunting camp is a matter of personal preference; all I can say is test drive a few words you might not normally use.  You’ll learn your limit and will operate accordingly.

Tinkering

The last item on this list speaks to a trait that exists innately in every hunter in every walk of life.  Tinkering with things.  Centuries before the concepts of kaizen and other continuous improvements were implemented in the multi-billion dollar world of business, hunters the world over were toying with ways to improve on weapons, game calls, and hunting techniques.  I’m reminded of a Far Side cartoon where a couple of cave-men have felled a mammoth with a single, well-placed spear; the caption “Let’s remember that spot”.  That’s what hunters do, we innovate.  You could be utterly without redemption on all of the above characteristics and still have success hunting if you show some initiative to hone your skills, get proficient with your weapons, and learn the art, so to speak.  Or you could just have a good time playing in your garage with your game calls and decoys and blinds.  Your choice.

Now to wrap this up, one might ask how I define success…after all I refer to it a lot in the above rambling paragraphs.  I’m not sure if being in possession of everything mentioned previously here will make you successful in the sense that you’ll kill more game (although it may; stranger things have come true) but then again maybe you define success differently than the glossy, vibrant articles run by huge multi-national publishing conglomerates.  If you do, then you’re like me and I’ll leave you with a (censored) quote from one of my now-deceased hunting companions that long ago became a sort of mantra to the way that I go about my hunting adventures.

“Since when did killing deer have anything to do with (expletive) deer hunting?!”

Things That You Never Hear...

Earlier this year I posted about some of the wacky things people have asked me about hunting, and rest assured, many people are still asking me all sort of bizarre and occasionally inane things about it.   But aside from being a good-natured way for me to try to educate some people about the pastime of hunting, it also gets me to thinking about some of the things that I never hear in connection with my hunting experience.  So now, I present to you, a list of phrases that I can safely say have never been uttered during any of my countless hunting trips.  Sure some of them are clichés…who cares?

“You cooked that steak perfectly.”

“Wow, you smell really good.”

“No, I think I’ve had just about enough bacon.”

“I love hunting in the rain.”

“That hair colour really suits your complexion.”

“You did just what I would have done and I don’t have any advice to give you.”

“Don’t bother sweeping the floor.  It will just get dirty again.”

“The government is doing a perfectly good job and they are all competent people with our best interests at heart.”

“You young guys do way too much work around the camp.  Take a rest and have a beer.”

“That toast isn’t burned at all.”

“I don’t think we’ve brought enough beer nuts this year.”

“A wine spritzer does sound refreshing, thanks.”

“I’d love a mock-chicken sandwich.”

“That Stompin’ Tom Connors music is too loud!”

“Cheddar cheese soup?  Delightful!”

“Shawn, that undershirt fits you perfectly.”

“I have no idea what that deer was thinking.”

“I’d much rather use the outhouse than crap in the woods.”

“There’s much less mouse poop in the camp than there was last year.”

“Everybody is talking much too quietly.”

“I think those decoys are arranged perfectly.  We mustn't fiddle with them.”

“Did you ever notice that clouds sometimes look like things?”

“Chip dip?  Well that’s just unnecessary…”

“That fire is big enough and doesn’t need any more wood added to it.”

“You can’t put gravy on that.”

“You’re right; I have hunted enough and ought to stay inside by the fire during this godforsaken blizzard.”

“Sure, you can use my toothpaste.”

“Sure Dane, you can borrow my hunting pants.” 

“Thanks Luke, I’ll clean and return them immediately after the season.”

“No, you didn’t snore at all last night.”

“That story contained exactly zero bullshit.”

“Shawn…I disagree with your viewpoint and have a well-constructed argument prepared that will refute it.  I am not just going to swear at you.”

“I’m sorry, I did fart.”

“You did dishes last night, I’ve got this round.”

“Shhhh, I’m listening to Beethoven.”

“I missed that goose completely.”

“Shawn, you’re not calling enough.”

“That turkey wasn’t the biggest one I’d ever seen.”

“If you shoot a bear I’ll help you clean it.”

“If you’re going out to grab a beer, I’d like a bottle of mineral water please.”

“That knife is too sharp.”

And probably the least likely thing you’ll ever hear if you go hunting with me and my group of buddies…

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

This is just a smattering of phrases that I anticipate never hearing anybody use in my hunting camp.  But who knows, maybe we’ll all become sophisticates and someone will crack out the classical music, replace the chips and venison pepperettes with  baby carrots and cucumber slices, and we’ll talk to each other in a refined civil tone appropriate for churches and meeting royalty.  I guess stranger things have happened, but no matter what, we’ll all still probably brave lousy weather and sometimes long odds at success just to get out and chase after wild game.  Because after all the fun and silliness that we love is set aside, that’s just what we’ve always done.

Underrated

I got into a heated debate the other day with someone about the concept of "underrated ".

We were discussing underrated drummers and the person in question asserted that Neil Peart was the most underrated drummer of all time.  Now this is patently ridiculous, since Neil Peart is underrated only in comparison say, John Bonham or Keith Moon, insofar as drummers go.  Some drummers who are actually underrated, I argued, were Stewart Copeland or John Densmore, or other guys you've never heard of who are absolutely sick, tehcnically gifted drummers who just toil away behind the kit and don't get tricky nicknames.

But as usual, a conversation not related to hunting is being applied to hunting.

Maybe it is the dirty, windy, rainy, cold weather in this part of Ontario that's got me itching to chase some ducks, or the fact that deer season is rapidly approaching, or that my family and friends are moose hunting and I'm secretly envious of them all.  Whatever it is, I've been thinking about the underrated aspects of hunting and how great they are.  Some of them are becoming casualties of the modern approach to hunting, others (like moustaches) are experiencing a renaissance that is both interesting and disconcerting.  So here's a list of some of the things that don't get the respect or attention they deserve.


Pass-Shooting Waterfowl

Perhaps it is the focus on all the paraphenalia that must be sold to waterfowl hunters these days, or maybe it is a symptom of our sedentary, "everything should be easy" approach to modern life, but nobody gives pass-shooting any respect.  I don't want to get more angry emails from waterfowlers so I will admit that ultra-realistic decoys, layout blinds, and breakthroughs in camouflage have made waterfowling more accesible, successful, and has arguably, with severely reduced ranges becoming the norm (don't believe me?  Find one outfitter that doesn't boast shooting inside of 20 yards) cut down on crippled and lost birds.  But reduced ranges and super-fast shotgun loads has also basically killed the arts of wingshooting, especially pass shooting.  There used to be a mathematical precision, a feel, a sweet spot to shotgunning ducks and geese.  Now, you almost don't even have to bother with leading the birds...this has been a boon to myself and others who are terrible wingshooters, but its still kind of sad.  I also contend, with no evidence other than empirical observation, that the decline in shooting ability has actually increased sky-busting.  Shooter confidence is sky-high, and it leads to shooting at birds that are exactly that.  The older generation can just plain old shoot, and I attribute that to pass-shooting practice.


Walking In

A sound that I have almost become deaf to (because it has become so prevalent) is the distant hum of an ATV.  Once again, I'm not some reactionary traditionalist.  ATVs are great when you've got a moose, bear, or deer down in some godforsaken swamp or cedar thicket that is as impenetrable as a Vietnam jungle.  But for many they have become the default means of getting into their spots, which is too bad.  There's so much that goes unappreciated when tearing through the bush on four wheels; things that the hunter who hikes in gets to see and hear.  I like an extra couple minutes of sleep as much as the next hunter but a still, early morning walk into a dimly lit forest is an experience worth getting up for.  Hearing the metallic 'snick-snick' of rifle cartridges sliding into place, stopping to listen for a deer with your breath hanging heavy around your head on a crisply frosted morning, and exposing the forest around you to the narrow-eyed peregrinations of a hunter stalking their prey all speed past in a blur on an ATV.  Not to mention the damage to fresh sign and the pastoral tranquility of the hunt that the ATV wreaks.  So this season, put some miles on...your boots.


Eating over a Fire

There was a time, so the deer camp elders say, when the hunting stock from which I am derived would have an outdoor fire on almost every suitable day of deer season (and even on a few unsuitable days) and toast some bread and meat on a split stick in the middle of the day before retiring for a brief nap under a tree.  I get the impression that my great-uncles, grandfather, and other deer hunters that preceded me hunted all day long and only returned to camp for dinner and sleep.  Keep in mind that these are deer camp recollections so their veracity is debatable at best, but it seems to me that lunch starts earlier and earlier every year we go deer hunting, and although we've done it once or twice in my deer-hunting career, we don't often pack in a lunch and have an impromptu early November cookout.  The times we've done it have been exceptional; building the fire up, whittling down a long, forked twig, using an old stump as a cutting board/prep table, squatting next to a fire with a sandwich balanced in the 'hot-zone' over some glowing coals, leaning against a tree, fallen log, or maybe the above-mentioned stump and savoring a toasty treat.  All memories to cherish.  I vote we do it more often.


Orienteering

I covet my cousin's GPS.  There's one on my Christmas list this year.  But I also get a smug sense of satisfaction from navigating my way through the woods with a compass.  Sure it isn't orienteering by the sun (I'm just simply not that hardcore) but picking out a landmark, navigating to it, and then picking out another landmark and doing it again as a means of getting to a destination has me at least under some semi-delusions that I have some skills as a woodsman.  And I like that feeling.  Still a new Garmin would be pretty kick-ass.


Gas Lanterns

It is nice to have a deer camp that is fully wired and generator compatible.  We can play CDs, charge batteries for digital cameras, power a water heater, and run a ceiling fan that keeps the heat from the woodstoves (and the reek of a dozen unwashed men) circulating through the camp.  But late in the evening, when hunters tired out from bushwhacking start to slip off to bed and the generator is switched off, some of us stay up, sip brews, and tell lies to each other.  Our constant companion is the hiss of a Coleman lantern.  My dad brings one of the old "pump" models and the sadly departed Frank Sweet had an even older one that was pitted, rusty, and absolutely effective at casting light and a modicum of close-quarters heat.  I think old Franko's lantern had also seen a few hairy trips by sailboat around Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes, and with those gas lights hissing away the log walls breathed ambience.  Many a laugh and a story has floated over the tops of those old Colemans.  They are also the sole source of light in the early deer camp mornings (since we all see little point in running the generator for that short a time) or when the generator breaks down, which has in reality only happened once.  There's a new, battery operated Coleman in camp, which is fine because it acheives the same functional purpose as its fuel-driven predecessor, but it is found to be sorely lacking in what it adds to that nebulous and ill-defined concept of "camp-feel".

There's so much more about hunting that is underrated.  Living alone in the forest.  Turning a tree into firewood.  Getting soaked to the bone and suffering martyr-like for the opportunity to take a turkey, duck, or deer.  I'm sure I'll find the time to write more about it soon.

Funny Things You Hear Sometimes

My thanks to those of you who have emailed me to wonder if I’m doing okay.  Yes I am, but the drop in blog productivity is with good cause.  A couple of good causes actually.

First and foremost, it is July.  There’s not much to hunt in July (other than hunting for a cool place in the shade…not surprisingly, I am not a warm-weather creature).  Since it is the high summer, there just aren’t the stories that I had in the run-up to, and duration of, the spring turkey season.  Secondly, and the inspiration for this post, is that I’ve started a new job in the bustling metropolis of Toronto.  Some of the time I had previously spent writing is now spent driving home, but please do look forward to increased output from me as I slowly descend into the madness associated with chasing ducks and geese.

Now onto today’s ramblings.  As mentioned, I’m now in a new office…an experience not altogether different from one’s first few days of school.  There are new faces, names, and social cliques to navigate.  There are meetings and training sessions to attend.  And there is my personal ‘brand’ to establish.  Of course my brand is good-natured consultant who happens to love hunting and the outdoors.

This love of the outdoors did not take long to shine through (maybe the framed photo of my wife and I on her only hunting trip piqued the curiosity of my new coworkers, who knows?) and immediately I was attacked with questions from a number of people who, through no fault of their own, have never experienced the outdoors outside of a televised beer commercial.

Here’s a list (in no particular order) of the most ridiculous, charming, and downright wacky questions and statements I’ve heard since my arrival in the urban business world.  My responses (or what I had hoped they could have been) are italicized.

It’s illegal to shoot Canada Geese isn’t it?  I mean they’re on the $5 bill!

Nope, completely legal and downright delicious.  In fact bag limits are liberal so in a way it is encouraged.  Polar bears and loons though…strictly off-limits.  Thus your monetary-based system of valuing animal life is somewhat accurate.

That mean you own weapons right?

Yes, but only because I’ve grown too old to continue to chase down and tackle things.

Can you talk to animals?

Yes, but they rarely listen.

Can I go hunting with you?

You can come and watch if you want, but you’ll mostly just see me sitting still and being quiet.  You can do that in the office if you’re so inclined, and if you stay inside there is less likelihood of you being bitten by a tick…so that’s win.

What did that duck/goose/deer/turkey/rabbit ever do to you that you can just kill it?

Nothing.  That’s why I’m not trying to kill it out of spite.  It is just a challenging thing to do, which happens to have very tasty results if I’m successful…which is not very often.

When you eat an animal, do you gain its strength?

No, but if I don’t brush my teeth afterwards I do get breath that would terrify a grizzly bear.

Does this mean I shouldn’t make you mad?

I think that you are asking if you enrage me will I hunt you like a wild animal?.  Really, you shouldn’t make me mad but only because that would just be a mean thing for you to do to me; that I go hunting shouldn’t enter into it.  If you do make me mad, rest assured, I enjoy hunting and the outdoors far too much to jeopardize that privilege by doing something thoughtless and violent.  I likely will go hunting, but in a nice calm forest far away from such silly questions and where whatever you did to make me angry will be washed away by the relaxing sounds of the wilderness surrounding me.

It is too bad that stereotyping of this sort still goes on, but it does and I’m sure this is just the start of some of the hilariously absurd things that people are going to say to me.  I’ve already gotten some funny looks when I told my coworkers that I usually reserve a week or more of vacation for the dead of November.  Maybe they think I’m a skier.  This list will probably grow, and this is nice outlet for it, since I usually have to just politely answer in a neighbourly sort of way that won’t make my interrogator feel ridiculous.  After all, if they took the time to ask, the least I can do is give them an answer.

Well, actually, the least I could do would be to walk away silently shaking my head…but that would really make it hard for me to make friends in the office.

The Right Tool

The inspiration for this post came from a stapler.

I have a cheap, generic black stapler at work, but that bland corporate appearance masks the fact that in reality this stapler is a beast.  It is not very big, but it tears through paper with two powerful steel fangs.  I’ve stapled as many as forty pages of together securely with it, and I think some of my coworkers are getting stapler envy.  It consistently succeeds where lesser staplers would undoubtedly fail.

The stapler is an outwardly simple design, with a humble lever and a couple of springs operating in unison with the sole end of fastening together papers.  I think many inventors would be hard pressed to improve on the stapler, although without a doubt I’m sure many have tried.

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen.  The stapler.

Where is this going?  Good question.

I am not a craftsman so I lack any ethic of intrinsic appreciation for the finer points of mechanics or manufacturing.  Like most of my ilk, I’m just concerned with what works.  Yes, I am aware that the craftsman’s life is much richer than mine.  Stop bragging.

But to that end, in honour of my desk stapler, here’s a brief list of items that hunters can use that offer the esoteric pleasure of pursuing game with tools that are simple but almost flawlessly effective.

A Break Action Shotgun

My first youthful rabbit hunts as a teen were carried out with an absolutely gorgeous 20 gauge Ruger over-under shotgun with a break action.  Even for a gangly and awkward fifteen year old it swung like a dream.  Now that I’m a grown man, it is the most balanced gun that I’ve ever had the pleasure of pointing at game.  I’ve shot it at grouse as they exploded out of snow drifts and rabbits that made mazy runs through bottomlands.  I’ve never gone after waterfowl with it, but I think it would make an exceptional gun for decoying mallards, and at this very moment I am picturing a smooth left to right swing on a plump greenhead as it drops into some secluded backwater and then pulling the trigger crisply as I move the barrel past the drake's beak with a deft, painter’s brushstroke.  Beauty and handling aside, there is a ritualistic satisfaction that comes from loading and unloading this gun, thanks to the simple machinations of the break action.  Pop two shells in, snap shut, fire twice, and pluck two shells from the extractor while savouring the pungent aroma of spent gunpowder.  Also, when I shot that gun I somehow found myself a better and more focused shooter, likely because I knew that I only had two shells in the gun.

A Fixed Blade Knife

I do not actually own a fixed blade hunting knife; my two knives are clean, compact lock-back folding jobs.  I have however used the fixed blade knives of friends and I can say that I am a fan.  A reasonably sized (no need for Crocodile Dundee here) fixed blade knife has clean classic lines, possesses exactly zero moving parts, and when a sharp, gleaming blade is fixed atop a smooth wood (or better yet, bone or horn) handle…well, you can’t get any more simple or effective than that.  Period.  Full stop.

Rubber Boots

They go by many names.  Gumboots.  Wellies.  Rain-boots.  Barn-boots…call them what you will: I am a devoted, and shameless, rubber boot enthusiast.  Perhaps we’ve all been fooled into believing in the scent-proof, space-age fabric, elaborate lacing systems, moisture wicking, $250 a pair voodoo that we are sometimes told, and those products certainly have their merits.  After all, I don’t think I’d like to hit the high Arctic in a pair of Wellies, nor would I want to go chasing Mountain Goats in the Rockies without some real mountaineering footwear.  But for the rank and file of us, do we really need anything more than a pair of well constructed rubber boots?  I say no.  For the average turkey hunter (except perhaps for those in heavy rattlesnake country) rubber boots offer exactly what is most needed; light, un-insulated, reliably waterproof footwear.  Fall waterfowl hunts?  Outside of hip or chest waders for the deep water crowd, I can think of no better boot to have than a rubber boot.  But what of the late season deer hunter?  Not warm enough for November and December you say?  I think rubber boots are great then too, especially quality name brands that won’t freeze, rot, and crack in the cold.  Still worried about insulation, eh?  Well then, just layer up and put on some wool socks.  What?!  You don’t like wool socks?!

Wool Socks

How can you not like wool socks?!  They’re great.

A Compass

I suppose that before compasses hunters determined direction by the sun, and so long as you know what time it is, the sun does give a general bearing on east versus west.  Still, a simple compass (and the know how to use it) is not only a great, self-satisfying way of finding your way around, but a sight cheaper and easier to use than even the most basic of GPS units.  I fear that in some ways, good old fashioned woodsmanship might be dying out thanks to the advances in GPS units, that now not only tell you where you are, but how you got there, where to go to get out, the location of nearby eateries, history on interesting tourist attractions in the vicinity, the time of sunrise and sunset, the corollary calculation of minutes of daylight, the number of days until the next full moon, and so on and so on.

Open Sights

I won’t spew on this too much, because I’m not of the mind that progress has no place in hunting.  I did have a pretty upbeat conversation with a man once who thought the use of scoped rifles was tantamount to cheating and that the widespread use of rifle scopes only contributed to extending a hunter’s idea of “range” into untenable territories, leading to an increase in unethically distant, longer is better, “hero-type” of rifle shooting.  I haven’t really seen evidence of this in my circle of hunting amigos but, like everything, I’m sure there is an element out there that views themselves less as hunters and more as special-ops snipers.  So be it.  But still, open sights are pretty great.  By “open sight” I mean any kind of iron style sight, whether that is a bead, a peep-sight, a tang sight, or a buckhorn.  Of course, even open sights have made the technological leap forward into the world of fibre optics.

There are dozens of other simple, effective tools out there for all types of hunters including wooden snowshoes, natural blinds, single reed duck (or goose) calls, bolt action rifles, and turkey box calls…but to espouse the benefits of all the gear out there that is both useful and elegantly simple would take posts upon posts.

New Year’s (Hunting) Resolutions

I was pleasantly surprised to note that today was April 4^th.  Somehow, and without me really knowing it, March slid quietly away to leave us with exactly three weeks to go until the spring turkey opener here in Ontario.  I blame this niggling cold that has been hanging on to me for the last week or so for using a Vicks induced haze to blur my normally acute perception of time.

Initially it appeared that the weather was wanting to cooperate as well; then we had a small blip last night in the form of five centimetres of snow over four hours.  It’s all gone now though because it was followed fast by a midnight thunderstorm…now it is 16° above zero with drizzle and it looks as though we’ll be experiencing a solid string of days above freezing.  Ahhh spring in southwestern Ontario; the place to be if you want to experience five different seasons of weather in less than 24 hours.

So barring another spring snowstorm or cold snap (because seriously, I’ve had enough of them) things should start coming together soon in terms of scouting, nailing down plans, and increased bird movement.  For me, the opener is in a way my real New Year’s Day.  I get to begin another year of hunting, and it starts with spring turkeys.

According to many unconfirmed and anecdotal sources, it takes 21 days to make or break a habit.  So in that spirit, here is another list (see I told you it was a sickness I have) of the 10 habits I intend to make or break for the 2011 spring turkey season.

1.      Stop calling so damn much

As I’ve said in previous posts, I love calling.  I can hear some of you now saying “I call all the time, and I’ve had lots of success” or “I read an article that touted the advantages of constant aggressive calling” and I don’t doubt you at all.  However, this is a the top of my list because this approach has only taken me so far, and this year I’m resolving to only call twice after a turkey stops answering me.  If he answers I’ll keep putting the wood to him, but if he clams up so will I.  I’ll report back here on how that goes.

2.      Learn to sit still

‘Nuff said.

3.      Calm down

I think a significant part of my hilarious ineptitude stems from my excitability.  Thankfully I’m not one of those yahoos that gets excited and shoots at movement or gets so jittery so as to be generally unsafe, but I am admittedly a bit high-strung in the turkey woods.  The euphemistic word would be ‘intense’.  When I’m intently listening for a distant gobble or concentrating on scanning the bush for any signs of movement I get startled easily.  Three years ago a sparrow landed on my gun barrel when I was not expecting it and I almost soiled myself.  Last year some very fresh bear sign in my hunting area had my nerves stretched extra taut.  And so on.  I still enjoy turkey hunting (almost too much) but perhaps if I can take a deep breath and live in the moment, maybe I’ll enjoy it that much more.

4.      Be patient

This is directly related to the “sit still” resolution.  My dear old dad has told me a hundred times that I abandon my stands too early, in all hunting scenarios, turkey or otherwise.  So this year if I hear a gobble and the bird doesn’t rush right in to my serenades (because, after all, they usually don’t) then the bird gets two hours by the clock before I get creative on him.  If I’m not hearing anything…that’s a different and much more difficult scenario.  With limited time to hunt, I often feel that I have to “make something happen”.  Three times in the past this tendency has resulted in me bumping gobblers.  I can’t commit to a time (because again, I don’t have a surplus of hunting opportunities), but I’ll try to hang out on stand a bit longer this year and try to wait out a silent tom.

5.      Pay attention

Twice last year I looked up and saw turkeys that had “materialized” in a place where they weren’t before.  Once it was two hens who apparently had not noticed me yet.  The other time it was a jake that trotted away, and was never really in gun range to begin with.  I’ve had the same experience while deer and waterfowl hunting so I’m really going to try to expand my field of view.  Like most, I tend to focus on key areas that I think look like probable places for a turkey to show up in; this approach has mixed success at best.

6.      Try new things

Last year was my first year of having a fighting purr routine in my calling repertoire.  While it was not the magic bullet that some product marketers might have you believe it is (I found no truth in the statement that “everything comes to a fight”), I did have some success using it to get gobbles out of turkeys, and in the case of that dastardly Pines Gobbler, it almost led to his demise.  This off-season I’ve put in some time practicing a couple of calls and have pretty much mastered the arts of kee-keeing on a pot call and of using a mouth call to gobble to turkeys.  The latter skill should come in handy as a “kitchen sink” tactic for hung up old toms, especially since I usually hunt on private land where this call can be used with relative safety.  I would strongly advise against gobbling on public land or any place else where another, less responsible, hunter could mistake you for the real thing and try to sneak in on your calling.  A face full of lead #5 is not an experience I would relish or wish on another hunter.

7.      Record every hunt (within reason)

Part of the fun of having this blog is the ability it gives me to share the hunting experience with others (seemingly on a worldwide basis).  So this year I’m going to give it my best shot to record every hunt here on Get Out & Go Hunting.  Please stay tuned for stories, lies, photos, cameo appearances from my hunting buddies, and maybe even some video from my 2011 Spring Turkey Odyssey.

8.      QTIP (Quit Taking It Personally)

I’m a very competitive individual, so failure does not sit well with me.  That said, I was raised with the ethic (and I still strongly believe in it) that hunting is not a competitive sport, it is recreation and it is best enjoyed as such.  It is nice to shoot the biggest bird or the trophy buck, but those goals should not be the sole driver of the hunting experience.  Reconciling these two opposing pulls on my personality has led to some hilarious outcomes, and it has deepened my overall understanding of the hunting experience.  Like everyone else, I’m always learning more every time I go out into the forest.  A soccer coach of mine once said it perfectly.  To paraphrase, he said “Winning isn’t everything, but then again, who likes losing?”  To put it another way, the ultimate goal of hunting, obviously, is to bring home some game.  Failure to do so does not necessarily make the hunt worthless, but then again, besting a perfectly adapted wild animal in its natural element, when all of nature’s advantages are tipped in the game’s favour is a pretty special feeling too.  If you’ve been following this blog at all, you probably have a feel for my personality, and I do consider it an affront to me as a hunter that I don’t shoot more game.  That said for 2011, I’m going to put aside the small shred of pride I still have left and just accept whatever hands are dealt me.  Much like resolution #3, this may make the experience even more enjoyable.

9.      Share with my readers

Like I said above, in my efforts to record all the hunts from this year, I likewise intend to put as many of them up here on the blog.  I’ll share what works and what doesn’t work, but this will serve as a proactive disclaimer to state that doing anything I do does not necessarily mean that you’ll be successful.  In fact, given my track record with spring turkeys, quite the opposite is the more likely outcome.  That said, with these tales of hope, failure, and possibly success I hope that can give some incentive for readers to pop in here throughout the season.

10.  Make some new friends

Since I’ll be sharing with you, I encourage anyone that feels so inclined to contact me here with any hunting stories or photos that you may want to share with this little corner of the hunting community.  I’ll apply the filter of the Comments and Terms of Use policies (I don’t think they’ll prevent me from posting anything) and post your experiences up here.