A lot of air

The hard work of hunting is to shorten distance. It does not matter if you are up a tree or in a blind, if you don’t live there all the time, your presence is loud. Each footstep a deafening roar to a deer, taking your weight and height based on the sound you make crashing through their woods. The scent off particles clung between the treads of boots. The smell of sweat. We’re the only ones who sweat.

The hard work is watching the weather and reading the wind. Hard work clears trails in the off-season and learns soft ways to walk. Hard work traces trails and sign like swirls of mist in a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. You could see the same deer at three hundred and fifty feet with no work, feet up, mounted scope on a swivel chair. But that’s a lot of air. Time and distance influence all things, even high speed, bullets aren’t fast enough to outrun gravity. More distance means more opportunities for chaos to have its way with your hopes for the day. 

The hard work is needed because humans never go anywhere we don’t dominate. Hunting is the antithesis of the modern life. It goes deeper than camouflage. You wash off your humanness. You go sit in the woods still and motionless so that for a brief moment you glimpse what it might be like to not have the world revolve around yourself and the sun. To be in a wild place that doesn’t know you’re there, and see the woods without humans. 

I have sat for hours pondering a universe a few footsteps in the wrong place could destroy. A world where foxes have curled up and slept at my feet and skittish, introverted creatures graze and play not knowing I was their audience and they were out on stage. 

The hard work of deer hunting is not required. It is born of a desire to see wild things up close and comfortable and not trust binoculars or a scope. To close the distance on chaos. And limit how much you distort the information you’re collecting from each visit. Being consistent so that your data is more trustworthy. No matter how rough the hunt, lessons and information are as precious as any pay off. 

The hard work, the discipline, hours before daybreak, careful walking, careful climbing, scent control and reading the weather and playing the wind, is because I have seen how pleasant the woods are without me in them, and I like to visit there as often as I can.