How I Fell For Hunting

I recently came across an article written by a gentleman, Wayne Hooper, of the Seacoastonline.com (http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110906/SPORTS...) commenting on the pace of hunting and how it fails to draw younger children. I thought I would share my story, and how I got into hunting, and grew to love it.

I'll confess, I didn't get into hunting until late in life, very late for the area I lived in. Most of my fellow classmates live on or near farms, and if you weren't hunting by the time you were 15, chances are you weren't going to start. The closest I ever came was going on a squirrel hunt when I was about 10, never saw anything, and luckily never shot at anything (I would have missed, trust me.)

Instead I did what most other kids of my age did. I preoccupied myself with video games, sports (I played soccer nearly year round), school work, etc. The list goes on and on. I graduated high-school and moved on to college.

About 10 years ago I was working as a consultant making one off websites for college credit and extra cash to pay for text books. The way into work took me right through farmland with patches of dense woodland edge. AKA, a deer's paradise. While making the trip one day, and going into a blind turn, a mid-aged 6 pointer jumped out from the 10 foot ditch on my left side and started making it's way to the 20 foot drop on my right. Suddenly adrenaline kicked in, and like most people, I started to perceive things differently. I suddenly felt like I was doing 20 (I was doing about 50), the deer was walking (he was at a full out run), and there was a strange drawn out scratching noise (my car was starting to slide as I hit the breaks.). Scientifically, what was happening was that my brain, reacting to the adrenaline pumping through me, had sped up it's normal processes, and much like a high speed camera, was slowing down the world around me. A less scientific term would be if my brain had pants, it would have been wetting them.

At first I was mostly concerned with my car, I liked the car, and to be honest, I had already been in 3 deer struck accidents, and I didn't want to loose another vehicle. As the deer hit and began to slide up my hood, I started to be more concerned with my own safety, and when I saw it's head flying at the windshield, and remembered seeing pictures of deer that had flown through windshields of cars, I started to wonder if I was going to make it out of this thing without a hospital visit, and possibly if I was gonna even make it to a hospital visit.

I was luckily, as I said before the deer was at a full run, and if you remember from your science classes, things that are in motion tend to stay in motion, that old conservation of momentum thing. The deer slid across the hood, and impacted in my vacant passenger seat, spraying it with glass, but not making through. Instead the buck was deflected up on to the top of my car, where it's antlers finally connected and drilled a .40 inch hole into the roof. The tine snapped off in my car, the antler snapped off as well, and the deer went flipping (if a passing cement truck driver is to be trusted, "20 feet in the air." I'm guessing it was closer to 7.)

After waiting for 10 minutes for a state trooper to show up, I was greeted by a hunter who had heard my tires screeching and the impact from his stand. He had come over to make sure I was ok and to see if there was anything he could do to help. Though I was fine, the buck wasn't. It had somehow survived the flip, and survived the 20 foot fall that I, myself could have made had I lost control of the car. Unfortunately for the buck, he had broken his back in the fall, probably somewhere behind the shoulder blades. While we waited for a trooper to come and file a report, and to release the kill to the hunter, we fell into a conversation. I had mentioned that I had been seeing a lot of deer strikes lately, and had had a few myself.

"'Deer herd's getting bigger." The hunter replied to me. "There's less of us out here, so more deer. And this time of year, deer don't think, they just start chasing each other. We've driven out all the wolves and bear, so there's nothing to hunt them. If this keeps up, the deer will start starving."

What the hunter was talking about is known in the scientific world as "carrying capacity." It's the ability of the land to support X amount of animals. If you've taken hunter's safety chances are you've heard about it. It's basically economics for animals. There is x resources, and those resources are set. There for if you have more animals than X can support, then animals will starve to death. Normally, predators keep this from happening, as if prey populations spike, predators tend to follow. But humans have a tendency to drive out predators around them.

It dawned on me then that I had a responsibility, as a member of the food chain, to do my part in the food chain. So I went out and bought a bow and started practicing, endlessly. That's how I got into hunting. But if I hadn't loved hunting I wouldn't have stuck with it. So, what exactly made me fall in love with hunting? Well, I was already in love with the outdoors. I was just hardwired that way. I don't know if it's because I grew up around the outdoors, or if it's just in my nature, but that's the way it is.

What made me fall in love with hunting was on my third time out, I had managed to find an old pine treed that I climbed up. The thing was knotted, and deformed, had few needles left on it except for the top, and would take three men to join hand in order to wrap around the base. It also had a perfect branch about 14 feet up for sitting, and I propped myself up there and waited with my bow. About 2 hours after sitting, I heard a rustling, and from the brush stepped a very large buck. I'm not gonna say the thing had 10 pts, or anything like that, as I honestly didn't stop to count. I will tell you that it had a more than impressive spread, probably weighed close to 260lbs, and looked to me to be about 4 foot at the shoulders.

In other words, it would have been considered a very good trophy buck. 3rd day out hunting, not too shabby. I had been practicing with my bow all year. I shot in the snow, I shot in the wind, I shot in the summer, long short. I had got my effective range up to 50 yards, so by comparison this 20 yard shot was a mere chip shot. I drew my bow, waited for the deer to stop and released.

SMACK!

The deer took off at a dead run, and I watched, with excitement, as it went off. I took stock of what was going on around me, where the buck had run off to, the direction I shot, etc. And after waiting about 20 minutes, I hopped out of the tree and began my search for the arrow. I knew I heard it connect, the smack had been almost defining in the quiet woods. But it wasn't anywhere to be found. I found the disturbed leaves that formed the buck's trail, some scat had been left, but no blood. Maybe the wound had been plugged. My first indication that my shot had not been as good as I had thought was the tuffs of white fur that I started to find. After inspecting a batch of white fur I looked up and saw what looked like a very odd brach sticking out from another old pine. It didn't take me too long to realize the odd branch was actually my missing arrow. And when I looked at it, I knew searching for the buck was not required. No blood, no hair, no matter. All I had managed to do was give the buck a hair cut by it's stomach, and imbed one of my hunting arrows in a tree up to the broad head. I had to dig it out with my knife, which now meant the broad head would need to be replaced, the knife would need to be sharpened, and the days hunt was done.

But that was ok. The deer was not seriously injured, if at all, and would still be out there for another hunter, and to spread it's genes. I came back with a good story to tell, which in itself is a successful hunt. And I had managed to feel the trill, the adrenaline rush of hunting. And I was hooked. There was no turning back for me now.

So ends my two stories and my response to Mr Hooper. Mr. Hooper in his paper states that fishing is in a better state because it can be accompanied by boating and tubing as extra entertainment for today's youth. My response is if you take someone out in the woods and they have a positive experience, chances are they will want to go back again, and again. We just need to be good stewards of Hunting, and help introduce it. Hunting will find people who are called to it, and those people will be forever in love with the woods.