As this year’s deer season comes to an end, so will the weekly iterations of the Basic Hunter. I’ll still be posting periodically, just not every week. My goal was to convey a whole season of a Basic Hunter from soup to nuts. I don’t want to waste everyone’s time by posting just for the sake of posting. It’s been an awesome experience and I encourage everyone to try to summarize and write out their hunting strategy – it helps guide and hold me accountable.
The idea that has struck me time and again during this late season is how difficult hunting can be. I know that is an obvious statement, but everything seems to be harder during the late season. Deer are much more cagey and less tolerant of pressure. Food is more scarce. It’s colder and wetter and windier. Basically, any mistake I make in planning or execution is amplified.
Deer hunting, in general, is an unforgiving venture for most folks. There is a natural accountability that comes with a hard environment. Survival of the fittest comes to mind, and I’m proven most times to not be the fittest one out in the woods. Case in point this year comes from the fact that it looks like I will not be tagging a doe. That’s a humbling statement for me to make, but it’s also reality. Out of my three stated hunting goals, I will have achieved 2.5 of them (buck of my desired age class and enjoying God’s creation are a check, but the freezer will not be as full as I wanted it to be heading into February.)
It’s a fact that has forced me to take a long look at why I failed to fully achieve that last goal. It comes down to the simple fact that I was not as diligent about finding specific spots for doe hunting as I had been in the past. I was much more focused on tagging a buck this year and I relied more on historical successes for a doe. I did not put in the requisite scouting and time to find a good herd of does in daylight. This is due to many factors, and I’ve had to explore each one in detail.
For example, one of my spots had significantly more bedding added via a clear cut on a nearby property. This moved the does into that overgrown vegetation and gave them less reason to move in daylight into the cut corn field on which I have permission and have had historical success. I have plenty of trail camera pictures of these does in that cornfield, just none in daylight. In effect, I took for granted that I could replicate my success without putting in the work. Hunting landscapes are not static year over year (particularly those over which I do not have full control), and it’s my responsibility to be intimately familiar with those changes if I want sustained success.
Over this past year in particular, I’ve come to appreciate that tough accountability. We are constantly faced with choosing the right thing vs. the easy thing. Discipline, by its definition, is not something that can be done some of the time. It’s a great reminder that I need to practice it. It’s not something I do automatically. It’s tough but significantly more rewarding. An evening fire feels warmer after being out in the cold all day.
As it pertains to my goals, there is a reward I get to feel every time I look at my buck’s antlers on the wall. Every time I look out my window I’m reminded of the beauty of God’s creation. While I have the meat from my buck, I’m doubtful that it will last my family until next fall. That means that the reward I get every time I reach into the freezer for meat I didn’t have to buy might not be there come next summer. I might be buying burgers from the store, burgers that someone else had to source and package for me. That’s tough. Good, it holds me accountable. That’s how it should be.