We Have Moved!

Get Out & Go Hunting has moved!

All the same lunacy, bad comedy, amateur photographs, and occasionally insightful hunting observations can now be found at www.getoutandgohunting.com

Thanks to everyone for following here, and I hope you'll continue to check in on what I've got brewing on the new website. The new format is just the first change, and Get Out & Go Hunting will be expanding in the months to come.

Thanks again, and happy hunting.

Shawn West

In Defense of Beagles

This past week, a beagle won the Westminster.  That’s good.

I have a soft spot for beagles, and although I’d rather see one running low through the snow on the trail of a snowshoe hare as opposed to jauntily trotting around in a show-ring, I couldn’t help but smile to see the Best in Show ribbon next to the stately little canine.

I enjoy beagles.  Real beagles. Working beagles. Not a Puggle (that wholly unnecessary Pug/Beagle cross), or a beagle/collie hybrid, or anything like that.  Nope, for me it is a low, sleek, tri-colored beagle with stern eyes, a keen nose, and a stiff-flagging tail.  Now there are many, many breeds of hounds and working, scent-tracking dogs, and they all have merits, but my affinity for beagles comes from the same place as my love of hunting at large, and that is from the earliest memories I have of the outdoors.

I was at a very young, impressionable age when I first got bundled up and ventured down the road with my father and Chum the beagle to ramble through snow covered cedars and bare winter hardwoods in search of snowshoe hares.  I learned patience, perseverance, and early lessons in bushcraft all to the ringing music of a baying and tonguing beagle.  The hare would make wide circles, through the hardwoods and cedar edges, and the persistent sing-song howls and “ba-rooo!” of Chum would grow ever closer. As the dog came nearer and nearer, Dad would move his .22 from a cradle carry to a two-handed ready position and his eyes would scan the snowy ground for the ghostly movements.

“Stand still” he’d softly hiss at me. I had a problem with that then, and I still do.

If I was lucky, stock-still, and attentive I’d pick up the prey first, but more often than not it was the smooth mount and swing of Dad shouldering his rifle that tipped me off to the approach of our quarry.  Sometimes the rabbit would dodge and evade the volley, and Chum would run single-purposed after it as we moved to reposition ourselves, but often the crack of the .22 would be the last thing the hare would hear.  When that happened Chum would run up and nose the lifeless animal, snuffing and whining, while Dad would pat the dog’s side and tell him he what a good job he did.  I’d be tasked with carrying the rabbit, and before long we’d cut another track and Dad would give the command that Chum, and frankly I, loved hearing.

“Hunt ‘em up.  Go on.  Hunt ‘em up now…”

And we’d begin again, Chum tonguing and baying along, Dad and I trying to get ahead of the next loop that the rabbit would run, and the rabbit doing his best to get around both of us.

Chum was high-strung and a typical beagle. He was single-minded when on the trail, and more than once he ran off and couldn’t be immediately brought back.  He was rough around the edges and wasn’t the best with kids, but as soon as he had gone hunting with you, his personality turned around.  He had snarled and barked at me more than once, but after I began joining him and my Dad in the field, things got better.

Some say that the beagle scores low on intelligence scales relative to other dogs, I’ve heard that beagles are temperamental, annoying, noisy, and prone to erratic behaviour.  I’m not an animal psychologist and certainly not an expert on dogs, but the handful of beagles I’ve hunted with were sure happy to be running in the snow and that’s about all I’m really concerned about.

Chum was lost many years ago, while running deer in Central Ontario. It was never confirmed if he took an injury and couldn’t get home, or if he was picked up by other hunters, or maybe he ran afoul of wolves or coyotes.  He was fairly old by that time, and I remember hearing about Chum being lost from Dad.  It was sad, losing a hunting buddy, and for a few years we ran a mutual friend’s beagle, and although that dog was an eager runner, he was overweight and struggled to keep the levels of endurance that we had been spoiled with when Chum was on the chase.  When that next beagle inevitably went on and died, no subsequent dog replaced him.  With the loss of the beagles, came the loss of the earliest form of hunting I’d known.  Winter weekends running snowshoe hares with a baying dog had been a sporadic holiday-season occurrence before, and with no dog they disappeared outright.

I made forays into the bush with a .20ga on a few December afternoons looking to jump ruffed grouse and track a rabbit on my own, and while the thrill of getting close to game was still there, something was missing.

It wasn’t long before I came to the realization that it was not just shooting rabbits that I enjoyed.  Others before me had fallen under the spell of it, and I’m not the last to be drawn in by the howl ringing in the crisp, still winter air.  There was a quiet joy in watching the icy blue skies of a late December afternoon slowly turn to red and purple to the soundtrack of Chum the beagle.

My current job and home situation precludes a beagle of my own, as I find an inherent cruelty in keeping a running dog like a beagle in a small backyard in the city, and my heavy travel schedule combined with the activities of two rambunctious young boys doesn’t leave much time for a recreational hunt after snowshoe hares.

But the day is coming, I can sense it like an inevitability.  And then I’ll say “Hunt ‘em up” to a beagle and cradle a rifle while I watch the white-tip of a tail take off through the bush and I’ll hear the howling again.  And it will be great.

Them Crooked Gobblers, Part Three: The Surprise Bird

While the previous two installments here were about birds that worked long, or that were repeat offenders, this chapter is about a bird that was in my life for all of twenty minutes, but it was still twenty very intense minutes that taught me a lesson that I put to good use in future seasons.  Although this bird beat me, what he taught me helped me to kill other birds after him.  This particular hunt took place on the Bruce Peninsula in 2008, and although I would tangle with a few other hard-headed gobblers up there in years to come, this was the first time a longbeard put a good flogging on my psychological state.

It was the perfect time of the spring season in Ontario.  Sometimes the first week or two is still drab and cold on the Bruce, with patches of snow in the bush, and the woods shaking off the last lingering hangover of winter.  I’ve been on damp, chilly, windy hunts under low slate grey skies on those early days, and although birds can be killed then, I’ve always had my success (or shall we call it luck?) later on in the season.  Late season can be tough too, with the last week often inordinately warm and the biting insects really start to feast by then.  But those middle two weeks of the five week spring season are just my absolute favourite time to be out there, and they are fast approaching pole position as my all-time favourite part of the hunting calendar, although a Thanksgiving waterfowl hunt still holds top spot…even if just barely.

I had hunted a field edge on the family property that Saturday morning in mid-May and had not heard any turkey activity at all, not even a lonely hen responded to my flock talk.  After sitting from before dawn until nearly 10am, I made a plan to roam around the hardwoods to the south of the farm, with the hopes of at worst getting a line on a couple of likely spots for the rest of the season, and at best of striking a tom turkey with my calls.  I was travelling without a decoy, and unfortunately, I had left my mouth calls in the farmhouse that morning, such was my haste to get out into the forest.  But I had a box call and I had a slate, so I made for the hills.  My uncle lives in the farm house year round and he had told us all of sporadic sightings of a nice gobbler as it crossed from our family property onto adjacent ones and back again throughout the late winter and into the spring.  That longbeard was just doing what turkeys do, and the hope was that he was still wandering that local (albeit fairly large) area between the southern limits of Lion’s Head and the northern edge of the village of Barrow Bay.  I had often wandered those fields and trails as a youth hunting rabbits, I’d chased ducks and geese in a few of them, and sometimes as a youth I was just hiking around behind my father so I knew my way around and I knew the properties I could frequent, and the ones I couldn’t.  I had a spot or two in mind, for sure.

I made a large loop of the big woods to the south and east of the farm, calling as I went along, before coming out just west of a Bruce Trail parking lot.  Not a single gobble had rung out, although I did kick up a few small groups of ruffed grouse and had spent some time watching two blue jays harass and chase each other through the budding green treetops.  It was a fairly humid, somewhat grey morning, but sporadically the sun did shine through the clouds.  When I broke out onto a gravel road, I unloaded my gun and slung it over my shoulder.  Walking down the gravel road I resolved to cross Bruce Road 9 and stop in to a chunk of hardwoods where I had hunted a few weeks earlier in the season.  I had experienced no action there on that previous day, but it seemed like a good idea; it would be a logical stop on the loop back to the farm for breakfast at the very least.  Crossing Bruce Road 9 on the curve south of the Cemetery Road, I popped into the woods, loaded my 870, and began a slow walk inside the tree line.  I had only walked for about ten minutes when I reached down and pulled out my box call.  I ran a string of seven or eight yelps on it, and was just reaching down to put it back in my vest when a gobbler hammered at me.  He was close enough that I could hear him clearly and I yelped once more, peppering a cutt and cackle into the mix.  He hollered again, and he was closer.

For an instant I panicked.  I had not really put any thought into what would happen if a turkey answered me and I looked frantically for a spot to get situated.  I finally found a big stump that just a little shorter than my sitting profile, but amply wide.  I ran the box call again and once more the gobbler answered.  I was facing a rocky saddle and he seemed to be coming down a little bush road that came around to the left of it, so I nestled into the stump and pointed my barrel in that direction.  I was fairly sure that this tom knew that the game was on, and I set down my box call so that I could secure both hands on the gun.  He gobbled again unprovoked, and he was definitely close, so close that, aside from my heart beating in my ears, I could hear him walking towards me.

I still had not laid eyes on him, and when he gobbled again I had another moment of panic.  He seemed to have diverted from the bush road and he was now sliding towards the other side of the small saddle to my right.  I’m a right-handed shooter, so that bird going to my right was the worst thing that could have happened.  I secretly wished for a mouth call, just to see if a few purrs would have straightened out his line, but in hindsight I realized that he already knew where I was by ear, and that I was going to have to get creative.

He gobbled again and it was now obvious that he was going to pop around the bottom of the saddle in area that I couldn’t swing my gun into.  I’d been in that crossed up position before while deer hunting, and now I found myself in it again with a fired up longbeard within twenty steps of me.

I resolved to scooch my behind around the stump so that my gun would point to where he seemed to be heading.  I made a bit of headway, and I took my hand off the stock and placed it down to stabilize myself while I shifted.  When my hand brushed and scratched a few leaves the bird went berserk; he bellowed a double-gobble and literally ran up over the top of the saddle, again in a place where my gun was not pointing.  At least I had a visual on him now.

For a brief moment his eyes and mine met; I could see his fiery red head, the top of his breast feathers, and the upper part of his beard.  His head craned back and forth and his body moved in a jerky, startled fashion for a few steps, and he began to putt loudly.  I knew from that sound and body language that I had just a few short seconds to make my move, so I slid the safety off and tried to pull the “spin move” on him, hoping to put the bead on his neck and fire in one seamless motion.

I failed.

While I had visualized a smooth transition and a peach of a shot, he had dropped off the saddle and was sprinting back from whence he came before I had even swung halfway to him; I never even yanked the trigger.  He gobbled as he ran, and I clicked the safety back on and sprinted the small saddle myself, just in time to see his sleek black back and red legs becoming one with the underbrush at a distance of nearly 100 yards.  I swore, I shook my head, and I sat down on a rock near to where I had first seen him.  I waited five minutes and ran a long string of yelps on my box call.  Nothing.  I looked at my watch: the whole thing had happened in under half an hour.

I hiked the twenty minutes back to the farm in that fog of self-loathing and hard, psychological self-analysis that any failed turkey hunter knows all too well.  How had that all gone wrong?  I went from having a lusty, willing gobbler essentially running to my calls to a fleeing bird that had me clumsily sprinting up a hill in desperation.  Even for me that was “bugger up” of legendary scale.

Then it dawned on me that I had ‘overthought’ myself into failure.  Now this is not something that I am the sole exclusive owner of; plenty of other hunters overthink.  They believe they know better than the animal, and they try to outsmart a bird that while supremely adapted, unbelievably wary, and maddeningly unpredictable isn’t really that smart to begin with.  Which actually makes it all the more frustrating when that gobbler kicks your ass.  I’ve always held that the worst thing that can actually happen when you overthink a gobbler is that you still actually kill him in spite of your error.  This just goes to cement a practice that is patently absurd.

Turkeys aren’t smart in the way we think of it.  They are creatures of adaptation and habit, they have wickedly impressive eyesight and supernatural levels of hearing, and they have a memory and attention to detail that to my mind is unmatched in the inventory of game animals in Ontario, and maybe the nation at large.  But they don’t do trigonometry, they don’t use deductive logic, and they don’t function on an intellectual plane of cause and effect so far as I can tell.  All they have is one reaction to anything that seems even slightly abnormal: be paranoid and run from it like hell.

In the days, weeks, months, and let’s be honest, years since I’ve realized over and over again the things I did wrong that day, and forgetting my mouth calls on the table was probably the least of my errors.

First, I was prospecting for a gobbler with no actual plan of attack should one answer.  Now, before calling I map out a few likely scenarios and setups should one sound off in response.  On that Saturday in mid-May 2008, I may have been better off backing away slightly to a spot that wasn’t squarely facing a saddle; as I look at it now, I only had a 33% chance of having my gun in the right place when the bird popped up; if he came to the wrong side of the saddle I would have been crossed up, and if he popped over the top (as he did) I would have had to make a move, which I did and failed at in epic fashion.

Second, I was trying to be predictive in how the bird would react, and in so doing, I had actually forced myself into a reactionary situation.  By trying to extrapolate (from no facts at all I might add) how this bird was going to behave on approach, I essentially put myself in a position that enabled my failure.  The goal now is that when a gobbler answers, I try to put myself in a spot that has several easy outs.  This includes concealing myself better, positioning the gun in a spot that doesn’t have me locked into one area only, and generally letting the hunt develop a little further before committing to a shooting lane or a physical position.

But even then, turkeys will be turkeys, and I’m going to have to suffer them being frustrating and unpredictable.  Because that’s why I love hunting them.

Honour Among Thieves & Unity Among Hunters, or, The Seven Deadly Sins of Hunter Relations

As surely as there are death and taxes, you can bet that however, wherever, and whatever you choose to hunt that there will be someone out there that knows how to find fault with the way you do it.

I long ago got used to the opinions, taunts, jibes, and snide remarks of the taciturn, illogical anti-hunter or the misinformed and self-assured non-hunter (which are two distinct sides to the same coin), but it was not until I started this pseudo-public, completely unprofitable forum for my hunting stories, opinions, and general bunk that I came to realize how much hunters truly hate other hunters.

Now before you send the hate mail which would only go to prove my thesis, hear me out.  I’ll also apologize for a moderate use of salty language in the following.

In observing this, I’ve found that there are a few ‘classifications’ for this hunting community ill-will and for lack of a better term, bullying, which I’ll outline now.

Jealousy

Some people don’t get to hunt as much as they would like, and others don’t get to hunt the species or areas that they would like.  Sometimes this is a function of time, occasionally this is a function of funds, and sometimes it is mixture of both.  Regardless of the cause, jealousy at the opportunity, success, or enjoyment that other hunters experience can be a catalyst for much resentment.  The jealous hunter will scoff at others, and disparage their skills or outcomes, solely because the jealous hunter cannot or has not yet had that opportunity themselves.  Consistently successful hunters have to deal with this as well, and can fall prey to all sorts of accusations of unethical hunting or benefiting from being in a ‘target-rich’ environment.

Low Self-Esteem

Related to jealousy, but with its own distinctive patter, hunters that don’t hone, respect, or value their own abilities often find every opportunity they can to denigrate and humiliate those with skills, no matter how modest or extravagant those skills are.  This type of hater calls the seasoned marksman ‘lucky’ or ‘nothing without a scope on their rifle’.  They may have never placed a decoy in their life, but they’ll tell you how your pattern isn’t working.  They tell you you’re doing everything wrong, or too much, or too little, but they don’t ever do it themselves.

Competitiveness

Competitive hunters attempt, and are sometimes successful in their efforts to suck all the joy out of hunting for others.  You shot a 10-point buck?  They’ll make it their life goal to shoot a 12-pointer.  Shot a banded mallard?  They shot ten of them.  Trying for a wild turkey Grand Slam?  Well they have five of those and are working on an Ultra-Super-Extra-Difficult-Intercontinental-Mega Slam.  I don’t have any issues with hunters driven to succeed; I know and hunt with plenty of those and in some ways I’m one of those myself.  But when every personal goal comes at the comparison of the outcomes of others, I fear you may be missing the point of hunting altogether, or worse, you are using hunting to compensate for some psychological deficiency (see Low Self Esteem above).

Anger

Unbelievably, I missed a deer this year.  Several factors I could not control, and one that I could (my decision to shoot at all), contributed to this.  I don’t get a lot of opportunities to shoot deer, so I can safely say I was ticked.  Maybe even angry.  It happens.  But within two hours, a steak, and a couple of beers later, I was fine.  What I’m referring to here is not the attendant frustration that comes when you make a mistake.  No, no, what I’m talking about now is the hunter that is always mad at something.  They are mad at the weather, they are mad that game isn’t moving, they are mad that game is moving when they themselves aren’t there, and most of all they are mad at other hunters for having the temerity to hunt with, near, or remotely adjacent to them.  They want all the hunting to themselves, and they are visibly and permanently enraged that anyone else impinges on their ‘right’.  These people are not fun at all to be around, and if you find that no one wants to spend a lunch hour in a cabin with you, odds are you’re an angry hunter too.

Puritanism

It is the job of the puritan to keep hunting elite. Do you use a turkey box call?  They use their voice, and think you should too.  Do you shoot rifles at deer?  They bow hunt and are smug about it.  Did you pack mule into an elk or sheep hunt?  Sacrilege, why you should have been doing it on foot, humping all your equipment in on your own back you lazy schmuck.  See where I’m going with this?  The puritan not only understand ‘fair chase’ but they feel it is their sole responsibility to define and enforce the standard. 

Now, there is a difference between adherence to a high ethical standard and puritanical ways of viewing hunting, and this is often the grey area of the debate.  Laser guided scopes, ultra-high quality electronic game calls, and high-definition camouflage and scent elimination systems often push that ‘traditional’ envelop, but there is a reason we aren’t all still chucking pointy sticks at mammoths.  Progress happens and you can only avoid it for so long.  Likewise pride is different from puritanism, but when you value ‘your way’ as the ‘right way’ or worse the ‘only way’, well then I haven’t really got any time for you.

Hypocrisy

Hypocritical hunters will criticize and lambaste other hunters for things that, admittedly, they have no problem with.  Their issue and argument always seems to be that there is only a problem when you shoot a duck on the water instead of on the wing, when you shoot a big whitetail over a bait pile, or when you enlist an outfitter for a trophy hunt.  They like to reserve special privilege to their own situation and worldview.  Again, we all recognize hypocrisy when we see it, so start identifying it and cutting it out of the hunting dialogue.

Expertise

The most insidious of the groups of hunters hating hunters are the “Experts”, both of the self-proclaimed variety, as well as those acclaimed as experts by consensus.  I would wager that the ‘expert’ class, or the ‘expert’ mindset is responsible for reducing hunter enjoyment more than any other of the above.  I’m not talking about the benevolent, avuncular mentor that guided you to your first deer or took you pheasant hunting for the first time when you were a child.  I’m talking about the ‘expert’ that finds fault in the methods, ethics, and outcomes of even the most earnest and experienced hunters.  They are in your hunting camp and they are in magazines.  They are online and on TV, and part of the hunting ‘industry’ at large is based on this servile toadying to the “expert” caste.  These people hold others to a moral standard that they themselves have defined, and only they will ever be above their own judgment.  They know the better way, the secrets, and the overall fashion of how this sport of hunting should be done because they are experts, and you never will know those things, because you won’t ever meet their standard of excellence.  They take the democratic equality out of hunting, and they boil it down to a contest.  In short these people are the embodiment of all the above types of unpleasant person, which makes them assholes to be around.  Avoid them.

I guess all of the above is somehow tied up in the psychology of the kill in some way; maybe seeing someone else’s success or enjoyment of the hunting pursuit somehow diminishes the self-worth of people with the above character traits, forcing them to belittle others so as to aggrandize themselves.

I don’t know…maybe some people are just jerks and cannot help themselves.  The truth is probably a fraction of both at play.  The worst part about all of it is every one of the above traits (and I’m sure there are more that I haven’t discovered yet) is that they all serve the same purpose; to divide hunters against hunters.  It may well prove the downfall of the modern hunting culture.

I also guess that there is a bit of irony in me taking the pulpit to sermonize and decry these types of hunters, but that’s not really what I’m doing with this piece (or at least I hope it isn’t what I’m doing with this piece).  My policy has long been that so long as it is legal, safe, and that it most importantly does not negatively impact the public perception of the hunting tradition, then I don’t really care how you hunt, so long as you’re enjoying yourself, and I’ve been on record in this forum and other social media with that stance for a long time.  I think we all have a bit of enviousness, puritanism, or self-exalting expertise about ourselves; that’s just how people are hooked up.  The hard part is to set those traits aside when we’re discoursing and involved with other hunters.

Hunting is an intensely personal thing, and people forget their impact on others when it comes to things they are passionate about.  I get it, and I know that it’s a fine line, but it may be the only chance hunters have to see the common ground between themselves.

Them Crooked Gobblers, Part Two: The Backdoor Bird

The first installment of this series was about a gobbler I ended up tagging, but this edition is about one I didn’t.  On consecutive hunts this bird did the same thing to me.  On the third hunt I tried to double-bluff him, and he still managed to trick me. Sometimes you can’t win and you just have to tip your cap and chalk up a learning experience.

My only proof that this was the same bird on all three occasions is that he did the same thing repeatedly; not to the point of predictability, as you’ll see, but consistent enough that I just had the feeling that this old gobbler was besting me over and over again.

And I didn’t like it.

When April of 2010 rolled around, I was hungry for success.  The spring season of 2009 saw me whiff on a bird on the Bruce Peninsula, a bird that I’m sure I’ll write about again, and that year I made the mistake of fixating on a gobbler to the point of obsession.  I didn’t get him and I didn’t even try to hunt another bird; I swore it was the last bird that I’d get into a personal battle with.

The opening weekend saw me stationed in Oro, Ontario, not far from where I had shot my first gobbler in 2008.  I got in extra early on that grey and foggy morning, and with a pair of snips I had trimmed myself a recessed nook in the side of shrub line.  Winter had clung on late, and there were no buds or camouflaging foliage on the shrub, but I nestled myself back into the boughs with just the fore-end of my 870 sticking out.  I shouldered the gun and gave a couple of swings just to make sure I could cover most angles of approach should a tom show interest, and satisfied that I was stealthily hidden away, I started some light calling.  Even though it was grey and damp, with a morning rain ceasing just prior to my arrival, as always the spring morning greeted me with songbirds and the stirrings of wildlife, and while no gobblers responded immediately off the roost, some fresh tracks in the muddy road and some pre-season sightings in the area buoyed my hopes that I would score on my first hunt of the year.

Off and on I yelped, occasionally ramping up the urgency and the volume before mellowing the sounds off into some clucks and purrs.  The soft boughs of the shrub were actually quite comfortable and I lounged back into an almost reclined position, while chickadees flitted and fluttered around the area.  One of the little clowns landed on my shotgun barrel and turned his head back and forth inquisitively at me.  Determining I was not a predator, he hopped along the rail and off into a nearby branch.  I smirked and my mind drifted away.  Had the sun been out I may have been tempted to take a mid-morning nap.

In this blissful frame of mind, I was hauled back to reality by a movement to my left.  At the field edge, well out of range, a small clan of turkeys was marching my way.  There were four birds, and the back one was most certainly a longbeard, although to that point I had not heard any turkey vocalizations of any kind all morning.  The gobbler was in half strut as he followed three hens across the field and I could tell from their route that they would pass me out of range.  I yelped softly and the birds didn’t even look my way.  I ratcheted up the volume and the hens looked over but stayed on their determined course.  Reaching a hill opposite me and at a distance of almost 100 yards, the hens popped into the woods and the gobbler took one look back my way before dropping his half strut pose and loping into the tree behind his girlfriends.

They had approached with no gobbling from the tom, no yelping from the hens, and no interest at all from any of the birds.

About half an hour later I heard some distant clucking and yelping as the birds worked their way through the property, and I let loose a string of cutting and yelping designed, if for no other purpose, than to get the tom to gobble, but that effort again fell on deaf ears.  I resolved to put another hour or so on the hunt before working my way back out of the woods to my vehicle, and though I called twice more, nothing answered.

I was at the point where I was just taking stock of the morning, and was very near to getting up to stretch my legs when I was overtaken with a preternatural sense of a presence.  It was not some supernatural moment, it was not clairvoyance, but it was just a sense that I was being watched.  I’ve felt it before while hunting, and I’ve felt it before when I haven’t been hunting and I uneasily dismissed it that morning.  I went back to thinking about the rest of my day, when the air was split by a long, rattling gobble from behind me.  It was close, much closer and louder than I had ever heard.  A tom turkey had essentially snuck up on me and had gobbled in my ear from inside of five yards.  I was startled and instinctively whipped my head around, which was enough movement to give the gobbler as much information as he required; my last sight of him was a sleek black form bobbing rapidly away through the hardwoods.  I spun around and rushed to my knees, but even a snap shot would have been impossible.  Instead I just swore and tried to get my heart out of my throat.  The walk back to the car was a slow, cautious one, but I never saw or heard the bird again that morning.

Two weeks later I was back on the same property, but I had moved to a different spot, more towards the row of trees that the birds had crossed to on the previous hunt.  Whereas the first hunt was grey and damp, that second day found me sitting in the glorious sunshine of an early May in Ontario.  The weather was much improved, but the turkeys were still as reluctant as before in gobbling.  Finally after a few hours of fruitless calling I heard a tom sound off in the distance.  He gobbled again and was closing the distance, and he seemed to be making a broad circle on my left.  A large swampy bottom with a narrow creek runs along one edge of the property and in my mind’s eye I could envision the bird taking the long way around that wet hole.  I moved my left shoulder in the direction of his anticipated approach, and brought the gun to a half-ready position.  He was still gobbling every so often and I had resolved not to yelp again; the goal being to make him hunt for the phantom hen that I was imitating.

His gobbling stopped and the woods were silent for fifteen minutes or so, and all the while I was peering to where I thought he should be popping up.  My arms complained and I got impatient, so being the relatively novice turkey hunter I was back then, I chose to let out one single cluck.  He gobbled immediately from the spot where I had last heard him, and then I promptly heard the clumsy beating of heavy wings before the literal ‘whoosh’ of a bird landing on the trail behind me told me all I needed to know.  As soon as the gobbler’s feet hit the ground, he gobbled again and once more he was directly behind me and closer than I could have imagined.  This time I did not jerk my head around or scramble to rush a shot, but I found myself hopelessly crossed up.  My left shoulder was pointing exactly opposite of where this tom had hit the ground, and my mind was whirring as I tried to deduce my next move.  While I was deducing my next move, I could hear the bird’s feet on the dried leaves and new grass, and he began clucking inquiringly.  From what I was hearing, he was pacing back and forth on the trail behind me, sure that he should have been seeing a hen turkey.  I was suffering from a case of “paralysis by analysis”, and while I shook nervously and tried to will him into the open, he just got bored, gobbled once and trotted off into the forest again.  Once more, I regained my composure and stalked out of the woods, setting up twice to blind call hoping he’d come back to me, but an hour later I found myself at my car, with my mind racing at the events that had just transpired.  In two hunts I had been approached to within feet by a tom turkey and both times he had showed up precisely behind me.  I was beginning to make the same mistake I made the previous year.

This bird was getting under my skin.

I hunted the family farm on the Bruce Peninsula the week after that, and while unsuccessful, I did at least ease my mind about that ruthless old tom in Oro.  I spoke to my Dad and a couple of other turkey hunters and although I’m still reluctant to call what we came up with ‘a plan’ I will say that I got some good advice for going after him.  The following weekend would be the final one of the 2010 season and I was getting close to having to gnaw on another spring turkey tag.

I made the woods extra, extra early and snuck in silently to a spot between where I had first had the bird sneak up on and the second spot that he had ambushed me at.  I had promised myself I wasn’t going to yelp until I either heard gobbling or the sun rose, whichever came first, but in the end I didn’t really need to make a choice.  I had been sitting for less than five minutes when a bird gobbled from the roost.

He was seventy or eighty yards (by my ear) onwards from where I had sat down, and it sounded like he was roosted right over top of the same swampy bottom he had flown across two weeks prior.  He gobbled a few more times before I yelped at him, and he hammered back, cutting me off in the process.  I peered through the treetops hoping to spy him, but I could not get a line on his exact whereabouts.  After a half hour of intermittent tree talk, the tone of call changed and I could tell he had flown down.  My only hope was that he had flown to my side of the swamp and not to the far side.  My suspicions were soon confirmed as I heard him sound off in the hardwoods ahead of me.  I again brought the gun to half-staff, waiting to make a positive ID on him.  He gobbled hard and then something startling happened, again.  Another bird gobbled, once more from behind me.

This bird had never made a sound on the limb, and now he was closing the distance behind me once more.  He gobbled and the original bird answered, and I was in a conundrum.  I had still not laid eyes on the first turkey but the one from the rear was closing the distance more rapidly.  It was decision time once again, and for the umpteenth time I made the wrong one.  I chose not spin and face the bird closing from the rear, but instead I remained steadfastly focused on the gobbling turkey approaching from the front.  They both gobbled again, in a sing-song fashion, when I realized something terrible was happening.  The bird in the ‘front’ was sliding off hard to my left, his gobbled still came closer but he was making for a spot…you guessed it, behind me.

I did a quick butt-shuffle trying to spin and keep my front shoulder facing him, but eventually the two birds met up. I know they met up because they gobbled wildly when they did.

It sounded like laughter.

They headed back into the hardwoods and out of earshot.  It wasn’t even 8am and I was thoroughly defeated.  The mosquitoes had been feasting malevolently on my hands and neck the whole time this raucous show was going on, and I was frankly just fed up with turkey hunting for the year at that point.  I got up, made it to my car, and drove to a public land spot in the Simcoe County Forests near Elmvale, but my heart really wasn’t in it by then.  The whole time I sat in the woods there, I was thinking about what had transpired in the woods back in Oro.

Part of my problem is the thinking, I guess.

I learned a lot about the frustration inherent with hunting turkeys that season, even though I felt that I had learned everything I could from the prior spring.  I knew the bird wasn’t ‘smarter’ than I was per se, and I knew he wasn’t a mind reader.  But I did know for certain, even if I couldn’t prove it, that the “Backdoor Bird” as I came to call him, was just flat out better than I was at the predator/prey relationship.  I kept reliving (and still do) those mornings, and I just can’t seem to pinpoint where things went wrong or what I could have done differently.  It is possible that somebody might have killed him in the years since, but I secretly hope he eluded all of us for as long as he could.  Despite the frustration of the moment, now these few seasons later I can say it was a fun time hunting him; a true learning experience.

Usually my Dad always has good advice in these situations.  But that time, after I lamented my poor luck and the uncanny instincts of that old tom, even he seemed to be at a loss for ideas.  Dad just smiled and said it best.

“Sometimes they do that.”

Them Crooked Gobblers, Part One: There's Always a First Time

Although Get Out and Go Hunting has taken a brief hiatus (forced by the fact that I have a cripplingly busy winter schedule with my real job; this blogging doesn’t exactly pay the bills), fear not for I have returned just in time for Christmas.

Consider this my gift to you.  A last-minute, thoughtless gift that you probably won’t really use and one you will have a hard time re-gifting to others.  I’m sorry in advance.

My pining for turkey hunting has come early this year, and I cannot precisely pinpoint the source.  Usually I don’t get all antsy to be sitting under a tree on a verdant spring morning until sometime in the frozen depths of February, but this year, I’ve just been sitting around in the evenings, and the mornings, and the lunch hours just reminiscing about gobblers.  So to slake my anxiety I’m going to recall stories about my five favourite gobblers.

Today, I will share the tall tale of the first gobbler I ever shot solo.

I came late to turkey hunting.  Ontario had been offering a spring gobbler season in one form or another for almost twenty years before I started in 2007.  My Dad had been after them for many years by that time and had a nice few gobbler tailfans already nailed to the drywall in the garage, with the year and date of their harvest scrawled beneath each one.  In that first rookie turkey season for me I made a whack of mistakes, spooked a bunch of birds, called too much, and nearly got skunked before Dad and I had a frantic tandem kill on a public land turkey (the tale of which will serialized here for posterity at a later date).  Still, even though I had come into turkey hunting later in my life, I was hooked completely with the experience.  Early spring mornings lured me in, but thundering gobbles and intense close-range longbeard action cemented the addiction.

In 2008 I was focused, and I swore that I wasn’t going to find a way to cock up shooting a longbeard that year, but by the second last weekend of the season I had so far failed even in that respect.  I had bumped two gobblers, shot over the head of a third at 35 steps, and had one sneak in silently behind me and gobble in my ear at just ten paces.  I was beginning to think that like my deer hunting career, my enthusiasm and early promise were going to be false indicators of success as a turkey hunter.

The second last weekend of the 2008 season was in reality the last weekend for me, with my wife’s sister getting married the following Saturday, and with my work schedule not allowing any other days off to ramble after a strutter.  It was crunch time.

My Dad, my brother, and I made our way to a local landowners bush lot early that Saturday morning, and in the dawn I worked some light yelping on a mouth diaphragm.  Not getting much response, I reached for my box call and sawed away a slightly more aggressive string of raspy yelps, with a bit of cutting thrown in.

Nothing.

I laid the calls down and slumped at the base of a pile of old, balled up page wire fence and discarded tree limbs.  I was set up inside a field edge facing north, and the sun rose slowly over my right shoulder; a treeline separated the field I was sitting on from another un-huntable field further north, but aside from the distant braying of Canada geese and the morning serenades of the sparrows and finches, the woods and fields were quiet.  I was still of the neophyte opinion that every yelp I made should get a response and to hear my calls dissipate into the air without a lusty gargle from a fired up tom turkey was disheartening.  Some time passed, twenty or thirty minutes perhaps, and then I heard a faint gobble from beyond the northern tree barrier, or at least I thought I heard one.  Moments later I heard two gobbles from the same spot, only these were closing the distance to me.  I don’t remember with precision what time it was that this happened, and I can’t even really remember the exact spot these calls originated from, but I do remember very deliberately reaching down and picking up my box call to yelp back, and before I even finished the string of notes, I was rebuked with what I was swore were three hefty shouts from beyond the treeline in front of me.  But that couldn’t be, we hadn’t seen three gobblers together on this property, or any adjacent ones, all year.

Still it sounded like ‘they’ were coming.

I laid down the box call and positioned myself with two hands on my Remington 870; it was not mounted to my shoulder but I was ready in case it had to be.  One turkey popped out of the trees at a fast walk about two hundred yards away. I was elated to have had some interest in my calling.  Then another one hopped out of the woods behind it and flapped its wings before falling in line behind the first.  I was even more excited…I mean, TWO GOBBLERS!  I had called up two gobblers!  When a third came out of the woods in full strut, I think I whispered a silent thank you to the turkey hunting gods.  As the trio of longbeards began making their way arduously across the field towards me, I very (very!) slowly began inching the gun to my shoulder.  I had a monopod attached to the barrel, and it was already in the down position so I had a limit to how far I could swing from left to right, but the birds were making good headway in my direction so I was not worried.

They closed to within 100 yards or so, all the while alternating between gobbling and strutting and spinning, before hanging out at that distance for about ten minutes.  They then began marching a line parallel to my position until they were right in front of me, but still at least fifty yards from being in range.  By then I was getting worried.  If they slid any more to my right, I’d have to move to put a bead on them, and with my monopod rooted to the spot that was a task that would be difficult to execute without spooking them into the next township.  I was distinctly aware of a few trickles of sweat inspired more by the circumstances than the pleasingly warm May morning as they rolled down my cheek, and my one foot was beginning to go tingly from being tucked under my other leg for some time.  My arms and shoulders were just glorious though, I had that damned monopod to thank for their freshness.

I made a light yelp and cluck on my mouth call and all three birds hammered back simultaneously, making any adrenaline response I had been having kick into overdrive.  I was filled with a sickly sweet anticipation that I have come to know very well since; it is the excitement of anticipation mixed with the absolute dread of buggering everything up.  It was intoxicating, and for a moment I was afraid to blink or exhale, lest those wary birds make me for the predator I was and have them make tracks elsewhere.

Then, glory of glories, one of the birds started to break the line and walk my way, this made another bird start over as well.  The third compatriot, not wanting to be left out, tried to run ahead of the other two and in short order I had three longbeards bouncing their way towards me at a dead run, gobbling the whole time. 

I slid the safety off silently.

All three broke into a strut in a phalanx at roughly thirty yards and the monopod held my bead in a space between two of them.  I was beginning to rue attaching that contraption to my gun. The gobbler that to my eye was the largest jumped and swung a wing at one of the others and both the subordinate birds broke strut.  It was fascinating to see the pecking order so instantly displayed, and while the one bird stayed in strut safely to my right in a spot where my monopod wouldn’t allow me to get to him, the other two birds began clucking and purring inquisitively.  I had only called two or three times since they had broken into the field, but they had marched and trotted right to the exact spot where their ears told them a hen should be waiting.

Since I had no decoy, the birds saw no hen, and I could tell that the two subordinate gobblers were becoming a little agitated by this, since the tone of their purring and clucking was becoming more, shall I say, urgent.  The big fella just strutted and spun in one spot the whole time.  As the two other birds putted around I noticed that one of them was on a path to walk directly in front of my gun barrel, while the other began picking at some new grass on the field edge.  I figured quickly that the spot the one bird would pass would be well in range and just as he approached that spot were the vectors were to converge I bore down on the bead.  That slightest movement made him lift his head to full periscope and he looked back over his shoulder towards the strutter.

It was the last thing he ever saw.

At the bark of the gun, the strutter leapt into flight and flew over my head into the bush at a height of no more than ten yards.  Had he been a Canada goose, I could have dumped him easily.  But he wasn’t a goose and the law says we can only shoot one turkey per day in Ontario so I listened to his wingtips tickle the trees as he powered out of earshot.  The other gobbler alarm putted and gobbled off through the low brush to my right, and I watched his shiny black back merge into the woods and fade off into the sun-dappled understory behind me.

A still, black form was laying in the grass at the field edge, with the white bars of one wing held up stiffly like a signal flag.  I slid the safety back on, stood and slowly paced off the distance to the lifeless bird.  At twenty five steps I put my bootheel on his neck and grabbed his legs below the spur.  He lamely flogged my shin with his wing for a moment, but he was soon still again.  It was all just too much for me, and standing there with shotgun in one hand and gobbler in the other I let out a war whoop that came from some previously untapped part of my brain.

I was a turkey hunter right then.  Before I had been in practice, an apprentice at the feet of mentors and magazines and often contradictory advice and opinion, but at that moment I’d tasted solo success and no matter what the future held I knew I had that one moment forever.  I’ve been hunting after and writing about gobblers for six seasons since then and I’ve shot other birds since, but I still haven’t found the words that adequately define that moment of ‘the first time’.

I probably won’t ever have another hunt like that, and in some ways I hope that’s the case.  That ‘first time’ was just too picture perfect to sully it with duplication.

As a footnote, that blasted monopod has not been re-attached to my gun since.

Something Special

Something special happened on this past Thanksgiving weekend, and it was something I had been planning for the past five years.

In August of 2009, my first son was born and it was a distant wish at that time that one day I’d get to take him hunting with me.  After all, not every son or daughter grows up to love the same things their parents love, and my wife and I had long previously agreed that neither of us were going to force our hobbies and pastimes on our kids.

As the years passed and my rubbery infant son became a rambunctious, energetic toddler, I made not-so-subtle attempts to ingrain a love of the outdoors and hunting into the boy.  I provided duck and goose calls as toys, I tucked him under my arm as I watched hunting shows on TV and I often took him into the nearby county forests for nature hikes that, while not technically hunting trips, were always framed as such.  I recall a distinct morning in 2012 when my son and I went twenty minutes up the road to a Halton Region county forest tract and walked the wide trails in a new fallen snow.  I pointed out deer and rabbit tracks to him, and he made it a point to follow the prints as far as he could.  He was beaming and laughing, and I was pretty sure that I had him on the right track.

My toddler son grew to become a small boy, one that was now imaginative and willful, and he began to express disappointment as a three and four year old that he couldn’t come with me to various goose, duck, deer, and turkey hunting trips.  He pestered and asked constantly, crying and sulking when I would earnestly tell him he was too little and too young to participate.  He had not yet learned even the basics of sitting quietly and he was well in advance of developing anything that a parent could characterize as ‘patience’.  Some people, my wife specifically, accused me of not wanting to bring him along as a selfish gesture, thinking that I was concerned with my own success and the possible negative impacts a small, loud, mobile child would have on my hunting results.

The fact of the matter was quite the opposite.  My primary concern was that my son’s first hunting experience should be one that was fun, in good weather, and surrounded by action and wild game.  Deer hunting and turkey hunting can feature extended periods of inaction, and I certainly didn’t want my boy to think hunting was ‘boring’.  At that moment I decided that when he reached his 5^th birthday I would take him on his first waterfowl hunt.

In my estimation, hunting ducks and geese is probably the absolute best way to bring a youth of any age into the hunting tradition.  Game is usually active, and in the case of Canada Geese in my area, it is plentiful.  For the most part, when the birds aren’t flying the kids can move around, talk, fidget, and generally just be kids.  I also find that (my boys at least) really like the noise and commotion around waterfowl hunting, what with setting up and tearing down decoy spreads, the music of the duck and goose calls, waving of flags, and the frequent shooting.  That said, hearing protection for young ears (and old ears too I would suppose) should be absolutely mandatory.

And so it was that on the October long weekend I went to bed too excited to so sleep.  I remembered my first waterfowl hunts as a young boy and the impression that they made on me; to say I was feeling the pressure to provide a good hunt for my son would be an understatement.  5am came on early, as it usually does, and my alarm buzzed me awake.  I was sharing a room at the farmhouse with my son, primarily because my wife didn’t want me to wake her or my other son (who is just a tender 2 year old).  When I walked across the room and tapped him on the shoulder, he sprang to life, literally.  He hopped out of bed and made for his hunting clothes with an energy that I don’t ever remember having.  It was a somewhat chilled morning, and I went through the ritual layering of long underwear, multiple socks, and warm shirts twice in the farmhouse living room; once for my son and once more for me. It was not an emotional morning overtly; there were no clichéd moments of hair-tousling or teary smiles, or even hugs.  We just got our equipment on and headed out the door.

Our large group of hunters met at a local gas station and planned the hunt.  My son and I, along with three others would go to a nearby cut grain field that geese had been frequenting which was adjacent to a field of standing corn.  The plan was to hide in the standing corn and go from there.

We set decoys under the waning moonlight of a rapidly approaching October dawn, and my son rambled around in the shadows, carrying Bigfoot decoys in an awkward but capable fashion.  We found our spots inside the first few rows of standing corn, and thanks to a miniature folding seat that one of the hunters with us lent me, I had my boy comfortable and still as the starry night morphed into a calm, bluebird morning.  Nothing was immediately flying, and we turned my son free to wander in with the decoys and down the line, where he asked questions and chatted with the other hunters.  We spied a thin string of geese to the southwest, and my son scampered back to his hideout next to me.  We flagged and called the geese into range, and as they worked another group of honkers fell into an approach behind them.  The first group landed, and we worked the back flock, hoping to get them to commit.

Inexplicably, the back flock made it to within sixty yards or so and then slid off line and made for an exit.  Simultaneously the group that had landed jumped up and began to depart.  Far to my right someone called the shot, and I swatted the nearest departing bird.  More shots rang out to the right and we had brought four geese to hand.  I trotted out to the bird I had shot and brought it back to my hiding spot.  My son hopped off his little seat and came over to inspect the goose, which was a good-sized bird.  He asked if it was dead and he tried to pick it up; it was a just a bit too awkward and heavy for him to hoist, but he gave it a good shot.  A few more groups came near and although we shot okay, it was a bit of a slow morning overall.  But the tepid bird movement couldn’t dampen my spirits, and my son was buoyant to be out hunting.  Eventually his small stomach pressed me to get him some breakfast, and the rest of the crew thought bacon and eggs was a solid plan.

Just as he had in the pre-dawn, James went to the decoys and started to haul them in one at a time, gripping them awkwardly and more than once he almost took a spill in the muddy field.  I was smiling pretty much throughout, and it was certainly one of those ‘proud Dad’ moments that you don’t forget.  He was all smiles too, and when I asked him if he had enjoyed the hunt he blurted out that he never wanted to stop hunting.

One of our hunting companions that day was GK Calls Field Pro-Staff member Scott McDonald, and after all the decoys were packed and the guns cased, he pulled out a knife and pried one of his several goose leg bands off his lanyard and gave it to my son.  My son was a little shy and confused about what the band meant, but once it was explained to him he wouldn’t let go of it.  I had an extra lanyard and a beginner duck call laying around, and it is safe to say that this memento has not been out of his sight in the week and a half since he received it.

So I guess I have him hooked.

That afternoon my son stayed in while myself and a few others hit a local cut cornfield and while we saw many birds, we just could not coax them to commit.  One group of three strayed too close to my end of the setup and I scratched down two of them.  We sat the field until the end of legal light, but that pair would be the only birds we would get that evening.  When I arrived back at the farm, my son was pestering my Dad to go out in the morning for another hunt.  I asked who he wanted to sit with and my son was adamant that he would sit the morning hunt with his Grandpa, so that was pretty cool.  I had never had the opportunity to hunt with my grandfather, so this was another one of those special moments that only comes around once.

I mean how many ‘first’ hunts can there be?

The Sunday morning was a repeat of the Saturday morning; James popped out of bed energetically, we ate a quick breakfast and geared up, making the field in the pre-dawn.  My son again helped out with the decoys but this time, instead of hunkering down in the grassy fence line with me, he walked down the field edge and disappeared into the grass with my Dad.  The wind was up and it was markedly colder than it had been twenty-four hours earlier, and the birds flew earlier.  We were standing up chatting when a group of three mallards buzzed the spread.  No one fired a shot.

Shortly after that we flagged and called to a group of geese that swung wide past my friend Brian, but still within my friend’s normally lethal wheelhouse.  He emptied his gun and all three birds winged away unscathed, which sometimes happens.  While we tried to figure out how that had transpired we saw another group and we worked them down the other side of the decoys, right in front of my Dad and son.  Dad reached out with his Remington 1100 and connected with one of the birds, folding it up instantly.  When he retrieved it, we noticed that it was not just any run-of-the-mill small goose, but it was a Cackling Goose, a first for Dad in nearly fifty years of waterfowling.  My son had no difficulty holding this one, and neither did his younger brother when we all made our way back to the farm later that morning.

We worked more birds and brought a few more to hand, with one winging away wounded before crash-landing in the next field over.  My Dad took my son across the shallow ditch we were hiding next to, and they went on the retrieve.  It was a convenient time to do so, as my son was getting a bit chilled and going for a walk in the sun perked his spirits up again.  This retrieve marked the end of the morning and we once again packed the decoys and headed in for breakfast.

Over pancakes and bacon my son told me all about the hunt with his Grandpa, how Grandpa told him how to hunt geese, and how he helped his Grandpa find the goose that “ran away” as he put it.  That afternoon my son and I crashed into blissful afternoon naps before enjoying the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and friends.  It was a fitting way to end the weekend, and it was an apt reflection of the passing on of family traditions to the next generations.

For my part it looks like I may never get to hunt geese alone again.  My new hunting partner is already asking about going every weekend we can, and that suits me just fine.

Fair Chase & The Hypocrisy Line

It has been some time since I last had the time or inspiration to write something here, but a recent conversation, as well as some troubling media that I’ve seen has prompted my crotchety and opinionated side to come out for this particular post.  Despite the murky and nebulous philosophical wrangling that is about to take place, this may become an item that will make recurring appearances throughout whatever lifespan this blog has.

Let me start with an anecdote that will nicely frame what follows.

When I was a much younger and much more academic man, I had a professor that really influenced how I viewed the world.  He was relatively young by academic standards, being perhaps only seven or eight years my senior.  He was extremely intelligent in matters historical, and he was very articulate.  He was of a level of handsomeness that made every young female coed in my program an instant Scottish history devotee.  He also was as passionate about soccer as I was, and he played the game in a similarly direct fashion to myself.  Very often we would play a pick-up match for a couple of hours and then go grab some cold beer and pub food.  All in all, a rather nice fellow who became a bit of a mentor for me, as at the time I was seriously considering a career in academia.

So where is all this pseudo-academic bro-mance going, and what in the blazes does it have to do with hunting?

This particular fellow was not a hunter, but he wasn’t an anti-hunter either, as I recall.  I was much more passionate about converting non-hunters at the time, but he just wasn’t interested in the sport.  Once over several post-soccer beers(or possibly post-exam beers, I can’t precisely recall) I directly asked him if he saw an inherent hypocrisy in his not being a hunter, even though he was a carnivore.  He said no.  I pressed him more, and while not a direct quote he answered me along the lines of this: everyone has what he called, at the time, a hypocrisy line.  I’m sure he didn’t invent the term, and I’m sure others have recognized its existence, but I had not really considered the concept.  Since then it has always intrigued me, and it is something that has really framed how I view the world, so I guess this professor actually did teach me something after all (his European Reformation class, which really was excellent, notwithstanding).

The hypocrisy line, which I have found to be a sure of a test for any argument, is basically the point in any given debate, discussion or decision at which one is willing to compromise a stated value.  That value can be almost anything, from big important things like religious and political viewpoints, down to trivial things like which brand of whiskey you are preferential to (although I consider whiskey loyalty to be a VERY BIG thing).  Make no mistake, the hypocrisy line exists, and it is something that people are constantly reconciling themselves to, even if they don’t realize they are doing it.  It is extremely apt to understand the hypocrisy line if you participate as a hunter, and it is as pervasive as it is complicated.

By definition the hypocrisy line is intensely personal.  No one knows your level of hypocrisy more than you yourself.  And since I don’t want to make any presumptions about you, I’ll talk about my own personal hypocrisy line as it pertains to hunting.

First and foremost, my hypocrisy line pertains to the concept of fair chase.  Right off hand, anything prohibited as illegal is by definition, beyond the realm of real valid debate.  I’m sure there are hunting traditions that may fall outside the current structure of what the law allows, but that isn’t up for debate.  Break the law, shoot over your limit, or endanger others, and the hypocrisy line isn’t applicable.  But more interesting things start to happen when types of hunting are legal, because then the reconciliation with the hunting ‘ethic’, as it were, comes more tightly into focus.

I would state explicitly that canned shoots, high-fence hunting, or any other method that restricts not only the immediate, but also the longer term ability of game to evade the hunter are not “fair chase hunting” scenarios.  I am a very large proponent of the ideals of the Boone & Crockett club, and a lot of my pre-existing bias about fair chase comes from their mission statement, as well as the ideals handed down by my hunting mentors (which I consider to be a positive for of brainwashing).

But my belief in fair chase comes at a price, and that price is my own personal hypocrisy line.

I am rabidly opposed to baiting for bears.  I consider the practice of habituating a bear to a set location, and sometimes part of the day, for what is essentially a feeding time is deplorable.  One could have as easy a time going to the local zoo and shooting a bear when the frozen meatsicle is thrown into their exhibit.  I consider bear baiting at large to be an act of standing and shooting, and not even remotely equivalent to “hunting”.  But in terms of explicit fair chase principles almost every organization in the world considers it ethical and accepted.  So all my moral outrage won’t mean spit.  Proponents of the practice of bear baiting point to the benefits of predictable, humane shots on basically stationary targets, as well as allowing the hunter time to make informed decisions surrounding the sex of the bear and whether it is a mature, healthy animal.  Fair enough, but still not as thorough an argument as would be required to change my mind.

However, I am not opposed to hunting waterfowl over recently harvested grain fields.  In the eyes of many, even myself on occasion, this constitutes a hypocrisy.  Much like baiting of bears, hunting ducks and geese over naturally occurring waste grain is legal in almost every jurisdiction.  Where the difference for me lies is that the corn or wheat or peas or rice or whatever it may be is not being placed specifically as a waterfowl attractant, at least not where I hunt.  But countless outfitters, guides, and private landowners also plant grain fields with the explicit purpose of attracting waterfowl, so the issue can be murky.  Geese and ducks also become habituated to the food sources, and I’ve had on more than one occasion moments when geese were landing around me in a corn field, and I wasn’t even hiding.  The birds just wanted to eat there, and it didn’t matter that I was standing around in the middle of the field.

It is completely legal to bait for deer, and food plotting is big business.  I have hunted over bait sites of corn and apples for deer, and although I have never had any success in doing so, I have several family and friends that have shot deer in this method.  Some of them have a sticky ethical conundrum, but others don’t, and I guess that’s fine.  My hypocrisy line here is that I don’t consider this as egregiously unethical as bear-baiting because deer respond to bait nocturnally in general, and the predictability of deer frequenting bait is sporadic (based on trail camera photos I have reviewed) than with bears.  Not much of an argument, I know, but that’s my hypocrisy line.  I’m not completely comfortable with food-plotting, but again there is no truly debatable difference in hunting over food plots and hunting over bait, and if I’m going to be okay with one, I suppose I have to be okay with the other.

Advances in gear and equipment have also muddied the waters in which the definition of fair chase swims.  High-powered firearms, precision optics, modern camouflage and scent-control, and ultra-realistic game calls (when deployed in the hands or mouth of a competent user) have all tilted the playing field, if only slightly, in favour of the hunter.  Riflescopes can now provide hunters with precise aiming points based on wind direction and strength, caliber and bullet weight, and angle of the shot.  All the hunter has to do is get within range and pull the trigger.

So is that the litmus test of hunting now?  Is it just a matter of getting in range and pulling the trigger?  Because these are no small feat in some cases, maybe they are.  Are the lost arts of wingshooting, range estimation, and good old-fashioned woodsmanship becoming just that; lost?

I myself have reaped the benefits just this year of technology, on what was arguably the greatest hunt of my life to date.  Ultra-comfortable footwear saw me up and down kilometers of mountain trails.  Turkey calls using modern materials and realistic decoys drew the gobbler into range.  Modern high-powered shotshells delivered their payload through a machined ultra-full choke into a very small shooting window, with lethal results.  Hell, my companion and I even drove halfway into the mountains before starting our hunt; sixty years ago we would have had to packhorse in our camp in the hills and valleys, if we could even entertain a spring turkey hunt at all!

Did I have an ethical conundrum regarding ‘fair chase’ on my hands when that tom turkey fell over?  I can say confidently that I did not.  So is that my hypocrisy line, or is that just modern hunting?  And, in a more complex examination, is it both?  Is modern hunting an already hypocritical endeavor?

This is how I manage to remain unpopular, by the way.

Perhaps the bottom line is that this entire application of the hypocrisy line into hunting is a byproduct of our human evolution.  After all, did ancient societies debate whether a thrown spear was more ethical than an atlatl or an arrow propelled by the first archer’s bow?  Was there an argument about right and wrong when primitive hunters learned to mimic the calls of their prey?  Probably not, because I suspect survival and sustenance were higher up on the list of primitive hunting priorities than the moral complications posed by what they defined as technology.

With that said, the modern hunting reality, despite the position of many vested interests, is that we are not in a survival situation.  We are all (hopefully) lovers of wild game on the table, but our sustenance does not hinge on the hunt anymore, and these changes are what brings the ethical debate of fair chase into such focus.  With no compelling survival reasons related to much of what constitutes modern hunting in the developed world, justification and precision in rhetoric is required.  For many this justification or debate is extraneous and, dare I say, bullshit.

But that would be taking too narrow a view.  The linear thinking and closed-minded in the hunting fraternity will argue that no justification for the hunting tradition in the modern world is required.  The linear thinking and closed-minded in the anti-hunting community will seize upon that and exploit it to their benefit.  Because that’s how this song and dance has always gone.

Reconciling how you hunt with what your tolerance for hypocrisy is should not be a shameful process, nor should such self-examination be frowned upon or chided.  A constant reevaluation of the social construct can raise troubling demons, but it can also enlighten and enhance the experience of the hunt, and it can prompt new challenges to the hunter willing to take them on.  Having shot turkeys with a shotgun, perhaps I should try an archery hunt?  Being reasonably skilled with a goose call, maybe I should attempt to ambush or stalk the birds instead.

I’m still a terribly unlucky and poorly skilled deer hunter so I need all the help I can get on that front.

In some ways, I suppose I would be happier if I had never encountered the concept of the hypocrisy line all those years ago as an inebriated undergraduate.  And I’m sorry if this post becomes the first introduction of the concept for you; feel free to ignore it going forward.  But if you choose to embrace it as a means of questioning the world, and in this case, the hunting tradition, do not be surprised by the opposition you find, and do not fear what you may learn about yourself.

Being out in the woods and fields is possibly the most enriching activity in my life right now, and I feel I owe it to something that gives me that much to understand its meaning.