Today was the first day of gun season in Indiana. Unfortunately for me it was also the first day I was able to scout. I went out mid day and was able to easily see where the deer were running. We have a few inches of snow cover and it made tracking very easy. Temperatures for the coming week will be between 35 and 17. No strong winds are expected. Light snow on Wednesday will make up for the melt off and keep the light snow cover in place. Some sun is expected throughout the week. Deer hunters pray for this kind of weather and seldom get it. I am going to take full advantage. This goes against everything I have been doing for the last seven years when there was always a reason not to go deer hunting. Someone always needed help with something or other and I was always there for them. This year I decided they could all kiss my lilly white posterior. I went out this evening and never saw a deer. What I did see was a squirrel running up and down a tree for about five minutes, a sparrow landing six feet from me and playing with and eating the seeds from a chamomile plant, a rabbit foraging about fifteen yards away and , finally another rabbit that came so close to me, I could have clubbed it with the end of my shotgun. I did this wearing a ghillie parka while sitting on the bottom of a five gallon bucket in a field behind a downed tree. I was invisible and non-scented. None of these creatures had a chance against me. I didn't kill any of them because I was looking for a deer. But I could have and it was so cool. I love to hunt. The killing part is just something you have to do to make the hunt come to fruition. I don't enjoy it. I just do it. The food is good afterwards too. But the hunt whether sitting in position or stalking is intense and challenging and worth every second. I have fallen asleep in position only to be awakened by a slight noise that alerted me to game approaching my stand or blind or a tree I was leaning against. I love this game. Killing isn't really the point. I have eschewed killing deer I have walked up on because I thought it was so cool that I was able to do it. I once didn't shoot a squirrel because I watched him enjoy a sunset while he was eating the food he had gathered in his cheeks. I figured if he could enjoy the sunset the way I did, he deserved to live another day. I didn't shoot a Whitetail Doe once because it looked so serene eating frost sweetened chokecherries only twenty yards away from me while I had a Browning compound bow at full draw aimed at her heart. I just backed off the bow and walked slowly out of the woods away from her. I do love to hunt and I have killed just about everything that walks, crawls, flies, swims, or slithers at one time or another. I'm not a saint but I respect life. And sometimes, if I'm not hungry, I just let it go.
This is most interesting to me. I thought, at the time I posted this little missive, I might get a few responses other than the likes it received. I guess I was wrong. Don't get me wrong, the folks who liked this are exactly the ones I expected to do so. I have, for some time, understood that the average sycophant might like this type of post but never have any idea what it was saying. I have lived off the land. I am pretty sure that at least two of the people who liked this post have or could do the same. As an outdoorsman, I do not fault anyone who has not done this, I pity them for never having had the experience. How to take animals for meat and what to pick from the ground as edible is a skill set not given, but learned. Spring, Summer and Fall give us many alternatives for food. When you do not have the need, you don't take. When you have the need, you kill. This is all I was saying. When you don't have the need, it's just great to watch nature. I feel there are too many people who've never had the need. They wander off into the wilderness with a pack of freeze dried food, a map, a GPS device, several liters of water and a belief that they are going to commune with nature. I have nothing against this, I just think it's funny. What would they do if they lost all of that stuff? It seems to me that they would be better of learning what and how to live in the wilds. I'm not talking about survival. I'm talking about living; living well, you know, fat belly and all that. This is what gives one the ability to go out and hunt without killing, to view nature in its' most natural. You have to become nature, not just look at it like it was a picture. There are many different environments and I cannot claim the ability to do well in all of them. But I'm pretty good and I think I could survive at the least. What do you guys think?
I think you could survive quite well most anywhere Dino. I'm at home in the mountains but I don't think I would fare as well in the deserts.
I was out of town when this got posted so I missed it. Sorry. I have hunted fished and trapped south Louisiana since I was a kid not to mention crawfished for trade and eats frog hunted the same. I have ived off the land when younger. The young man cross the street has been catching and selling from 100 to 150 lbs of catfish fillets a day for a month now and he is soon moving to crawfish I did that too and made enough money for rice salt and coffee etc. Sadly its a young mans game and very hard work kid your self not. I too have sat watching critters I coulda shot. It's easy to do with a full freezer. Now a days I dont think I could do it by my self but have the knowledge to do so with help.
