Two hunters return from a trip together. Let's say that they have been in some upland covers for grouse and woodcock and that each has taken a few birds. One is delighted with his few days; the other is not. Why the difference? Who is the one with the better perspective?
A hunter, in my personal definition , is a man who has a special feeling about the "wilderness." He can become part of it with ease. He has some knowledge of what is about to happen and why--either consciously or subconsciously. He is the one who knows where and when to look for his particular quarry; some sixth sense tells him that this cutover is more likely to hold grouse than another, and he's alert to the fact. He feels a shift of wind, notices partridge berry, the beech mast, the quality of aspen, the presence of grit, and he puts these pieces of the puzzle together and says to himself, This is good bird cover.
Let's assume that he's right--birds move and he misses a couple. A less experienced hunter takes the misses at face value and is unhappy; the more experienced hunter is delighted that he has put it all together--found the birdy spots by know-how--which was his ultimate objective; the shooting success is almost anti-climactic.
Again, in my mind--you can disagree and some of you will--the truly skilled bird hunter goes afield with a decent dog. He doesn't wander aimlessly, hoping to stumble across something in his six-hour walk, and he may actually hunt for only two hours or so. But he carefully picks covers that by their nature ought to produce game; naturally he is not always right, but the odds make this hunter the superior one.
We have a distressing tendency in this country to keep score. And I'm dead against it in the fishing and hunting area. Our successful grouse hunter had a better day than the man who might have stumbled over and bagged a brace or so of birds; even though his shooting might not have been what he had hoped, or he found his birds in cover that was too heavy to do very well in. It didn't matter--that was not the game he was playing.
Now take your average deer hunter. He knows little about what deer feed on, where they rest, when and why they move. He heads for the deep woods, provided he doesn't have to walk too far from the car, and says to himself, This is the spot. Of course it isn't. It might have been once, and it even might be in certain areas still, but the majority of whitetails are farm-country animals--to be found on the edge of pastures, feeding before dawn and at dusk, commuting back and forth from patches of cover that look most unlikely to the unobservant and un-woodswise hunter.
The woodsman knows that covers change from year to year. A patch of sumac or cedar that didn't hold deer last season may be just perfect this year. He knows that deer are not great travelers. He knows that deer will as often hide as run, and he knows that they'll find concealment in places that eight out of ten hunters will cross off as unlikely.
But the real hunter doesn't just think like a hunter--he also knows how to think like a deer. The real hunter doesn't slam car doors and clank off into the woods. He pays attention to breezes, he notices rubbings, he sees a variety of distances from food to resting areas and watering spots. He puts all this information together and uses it at the right time of day, quietly and with that special alertness, that sixth sense, and he see deer. If he chooses to shoot or not, if he wants a trophy or roast venison, that is his final option, but he has derived his basic satisfaction from solving the problem.
The frontier Indian had a game he played called "counting coup." In its non-lethal version (and there were both) it was to touch an enemy and let him go, ride up to a running bison and slap his flank with his hand or touch him with a spear and be satisfied that had he wanted to take it, he could have.
One of our most famous old-time American trophy hunters used to do that in his own way. One year he spent a considerable amount of time and money finding out where he could find a true trophy whitetail rack; about the most difficult task you can pick if you have an eye on Boone and Crockett listings. But, knowing where to start his search and how to go about it, he finally located an area and made his plans to hunt it when the season came around.
Opening day he was there, and by all the signs he was right: the tracks were plentiful and huge, the cover was ideal, and he knew that he and the giant buck would meet. But this particular man has a special rule of his own when it comes to whitetail deer; a step beyond the constraints of what we--most of us--would consider abiding by the concept of "fair chase." He allowed himself but one shot; if he missed the chance, the hunt was over and the deer had won until another year had passed.
His favorite rifle, the one he had used for record after record, was an old sporterized Springfield .30/06 that was as much a part of him as his right arm. He was modestly and rightfully proud of what he knew he could do with it, and I can remember his smile as he told me of seeing the rack of a lifetime picking its way through the blowdowns and he tracking it with the trusty 06...and splintering an unseen sapling that stood between him and the animal. I asked if he'd ever gone back again. He smiled once more and said, "Just about every night in that minute or so before I fall asleep."
Every so often we ought to sit back and think about what we want and need from the hunting experience and what we are brining to it. By that I mean skills beyond the pointing of a rifle or shotgun. Lately I find that calling (or trying to call) geese gives me as much pleasure or more than filling a limit.
I'm trying to be better at general bird identification and paying more attention to the historical and geological points of interest when I travel to someplace new. I listen more than I used to and try to see beyond what lies over the sights of my gun. I am trying to find out something about myself, trying to understand the part of me that would desperately like to know what it is that the geese are saying, why the coyote calls, trying more and more to "count coup" in the too few hours I can spend outside.
Around me at this minute is a small selection of simple treasures. Some shotguns, some rifles, some fishing rods. A couple of Labradors asleep in front of the wood stove, and some empty places that once held Tippy and Ben and Judy and Josephine, to mention a few. Hunting coats and duck calls and fly boxes and boots and hats are scattered around amidst boxes of shells, decoys, nets, and odds and ends of this and that.
You might call them the tools of pursuit if you weren't a real hunter or fisherman. Or you might look at them in another way--as you see your own similar collection of virtually identical things. Underneath any coat or hat, carrying any gun or rod, dangling lures or calls or whistles is someone who is trying to find the trail that leads him to a place where he is a part of an elk or grouse or goose or whatever. A place where he feels that incomprehensible tingling which tells him that at this moment he is completely alive and part of the wild as no one but a true hunter can ever be.
No doubt this is but another inadequate way of expressing the inexpressible. But no doubt you know what I mean. On the one hand we can't put it into words, and on the other we don't have to. There is almost always that hour of the winter day when we can hear the pheasants call goodnight, or the geese or owls...sometimes just the barking of a distant dog...familiar and comforting notes that suspend the coming of darkness for a moment and let us stand in the last of the light and almost understand the un-understandable.
This story originally appeared in A Listening Walk...and Other Stories by Gene Hill. Copyright (c) 1985 Gene Hill. All rights reserved.