The Hunt.

I live a frustrating amount of time in theory.

That is; I plan and I plan; I think, rethink, write out and collect all the things that go into something that I want to do.  But never cross over into that area of practise.

Carving a spoon?  Sure, I'll get a lovely little Morakniv hook knife, gather some decent looking pieces of wood, follow a few spoon carving Instagram accounts, get a small saw to whittle down some larger pieces of wood that could work.  And then I kind of fizzle out.  Sometimes I start it and then something else comes up that takes my attention away and I just never quite get into it again.  After what then feels like a bit of an anticlimax with the project, I'm left a little deflated and uninterested.

Sometimes, a project finally sees the light of day, though.  And sometimes still, it sees some semblance of completion.

I use the spoon example before because that is one such project.  The outcome was a chunky, clumsy mini-ladle thing that has no practical use but, my goodness, I finished it.  A bit of paint on it and everything!

A project that has seen work but not completion is my board game (see last post).  It's on the long journey to completion, but it's much further than a lot of projects get.

This past Saturday, I went hunting!

This is where the theory/practise thing comes in.

I'd done my hunters' education classes, passed them, bought my hunting license (one deer tag this time around - while I'd like to think of myself as a cunning gamesman and outdoorsy-type, I am under no illusion that as a 31-year-old in Arkansas who has never hunted before, it was going to be difficult to find anyone with the desire to take on the challenge of teaching me.  Most of my friends have been hunting since they were in single digits; here's me, 20-odd years later, with nothing but ... yeah... theory).

Perry took me hunting.  He's a friend from church and he's also my boss right now.  I'd talked to him a fair bit about it and about how I've been trying to get out and go, but just didn't know where to start.  He said he'd take me to where he take his grandson... You know those kids that have been hunting since they were in single digits?  This is why.

We turned off the main highway and three blocks after that, turned onto a country road.  That was it.  That's how accessible it is down here.  We wound down smaller and smaller roads and trails until we hit a point where Perry was justifiably concerned that his new pickup truck wouldn't quite handle the terrain.

We got out and put some layers on.  It was about 24 degrees Fahrenheit.  -4 Celsius.  It didn't really feel that bad.

We'd seen two does jump across the road on the way up, which Perry said was a sign that they were already moving to feed after bedding down for the night.  Not too good for us, since our aim was to beat them to the trails they follow after they wake up.

We walked up the bumpy trail; the crisp air scratching down my chest with every breath.  I loved it.  Such fresh air so early in the day.  We don't at all live in an urban area, but we do live on the highway.  I thought I knew what fresh air tasted like, but this was incredible.

We scouted the opening in the woods - this is where the deer walked through on their way from their beds to their main sources of food - they would stop and graze here once the sun had evaporated the dew - about three hours from when we arrived.

We found a tree and sat down at the base.

And this was it fro the next three and a half hours.  It was wonderful.

We watched the morning unfold in front of us.  The birds woke up, the smaller animals started digging and wrestling through the brush.  Just before the sun cast a golden glow over the treetops in front of us, the temperature dropped a little.  That was a fun little fact I learnt as I sat there!

The warm light cascaded down the trees as the birds' chorus rose - the first warmth of the day bringing them to life.

Behind us, an empty snort rang through the woods;

"We're busted," smiled Perry.

Apparently, when a deer catches your scent, it huffs the smell out of it's nose, for want of a better description.  Not long after that, it makes a hasty retreat in the opposite direction of that scent.

Now we weren't busted for the whole morning, but certainly by that single deer.

So we waited some more.

The hours flew by - I couldn't believe how fast time went.  And I had no doubt that guys who spend days at a time alone in the woods to hunt probably don't really realise how long that actually is.  I could have set there all weekend, with how those first few hours felt.

We called it a day just under four hours in.  I had work, and since Perry is my boss, I probably wouldn't have got away with being ill that day...

He showed me some other spots that he hunts and took me to where he has a tree stand up.  Told me I was welcome there any time.  Except the first few days of the season!

As we headed back down the country roads to get to the highway, a doe walked out in front of us.  About 30 yards out, side on to the truck.  A textbook clean kill position and distance.
She stayed there for a couple of minutes - much longer than she needed to to make us consider how long it would take us to set up a crossbow - and how quietly we could do it.

As we discussed this, she ran off back into the woods, and a couple walking their dog appeared at the corner.

That was about as close as we got to harvesting anything that day, but I'm almost glad.

See, now when I go out hunting, I've been before - I've taken in as much as I can on that hunt, and I'll most likely take in a little less next time, in favour of focusing on the animal itself.  That barrier between theory and practise has been broken - and I'm very happy about it.

I also learnt that it was probably best not to have got anything on Saturday, anyway - Perry had ball game to watch at noon, and I had work at four; if we'd taken the deer at 10, let's say, we'd've waited at least 30 minutes before even starting to track the deer.
After that, the area we were hunting in does not allow you to take any bones (apart from the horns) out of the area, so we would've had to have deboned it in the field.  If not, it would have been a few days in a shed, hanging up to drain.
The fact that my family are leaving town this week would have meant that I wouldn't have been around to process it.

So it really was all about the experience this time around.  Watching the morning unfold around me was awesome; learning more and more about hunting in general was much appreciated, and I have now, officially, been hunting.

I'll take some meat home next time.  But I'm happy right now.

Peace.