A new year is a time when most of us hit the reset button. The merry-go-round of “work-kids-school-shopping-insert any free time for hobbies” spins faster and faster until the last party is attended and final cookie consumed. Trying to throw in a late deer, grouse, or duck hunt sometimes feels like gas on a roaring fire among all of the holiday festivities, even though our sporting pursuits are supposed to be fun, not an obligation.
So with the main hunting season in the rearview mirror, and January still making up its mind between staying brown or turning white, I decided to grab a beverage, curl up by the fire with my journal, and relive a few of the season’s memories — Ruby’s retrieves, annual hunts with good buddies, Dad shooting a big black duck, a trip to North Dakota, Audrey’s first goose, etc. While leafing through the pages, an interesting theme occurred, but not one of pulling the trigger, rather holding back a little.
So I’ve combined some entries below with hopes of explaining a few thoughts that for me, personally, feel like a sporting reset, something to ponder for the upcoming seasons and those currently underway:
I left with 15 minutes of legal shooting time remaining. Looking back after the short walk to the truck, four mallards dropped into the small pond I’d been hunting. Murphy’s Law, some would call it, but I just smiled, knowing it might — probably even would — happen. Nothing prompted my early departure. No dinner waiting or daughter’s English paper to proofread. I simply felt like giving any late-arriving duck a free pass for the night, even though for the hour prior, I’d really wanted to shoot a couple.
Strange, to stand in frigid water with a leak in one boot, impatient Labrador shivering in the snow a few feet behind me, only to call it quits during the magic last few moments. But I do it often each season, and I’m curious why. To be sure, I’ve always been selective when pulling the trigger. Dad never raised my brother and me to be “numbers” guys, whose sunsets were most colorful only when limits were filled and bragging rights gained. For many of us, trophy hunting transcends the most, the biggest, or the best, something saved to reference all of those moments and experiences, many of which hinge on “not” pulling the trigger.
My freezer is full, I should admit — a bunch of ducks, some pheasants, a couple of deer. That either qualifies my trigger-pull reluctance or makes me a hypocrite, you be the judge. Easy to back off a “kill” when it’s occurred with regularity for the past few months. But I operate like this from opening day, when “brown” ducks — either young or having not yet completed their second molt — flit by my decoys unscathed. Could I have shot them? Sure, but I like the look of a colored bird in hand, so I wait. If one shows itself, I shoot it. If not, I’m ok going home allegedly empty-handed, though an opportunity not taken is hardly empty. It’s a choice.
Perched on my tree stand in early November, a decent doe and yearling eased by within bow range, even for me. I held off, mainly because I wasn’t sure if the adult still trailed the decent eight point she had a week earlier. It had nothing to do with “orphaning” a yearling, a myth disproved by deer biology — it would be just fine on its own. But when no buck showed himself, I still didn’t shoot despite strict orders from the Good Wife to bring home a little venison. A short few days later on the rifle opener, however, those same two does walked within 15 yards of me and my daughter and I thankfully made a clean shot, grateful for the “trophy” hunt we had and the deer that would be enjoyed in various meals with my family in the cold months to come.
Hunters pull the trigger and release arrows for many reasons, but we show just as much restraint, though it’s rarely highlighted by hunting shows and the media. It makes sense, I guess. Sportsmen and women “not” harvesting the showcased animal probably don’t garner the best TV ratings, and a media largely against hunting doesn’t want to depict us in the thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable ways in which we typically conduct ourselves outdoors. But it plays a role in each adventure, the willingness and ability to hold back, for many reasons, or for no reason at all. I love hunting, and sometimes that means just watching.
I went back to the pond a week later, after the ice receded enough to open a landing area for tired mallards that just fed in a picked cornfield a mile away. A single greenhead responded to my calls and banked in without hesitation, hovering over the open water in a sight that — for almost 40 years of waterfowling — has never grown old. A lifetime’s experience culminated in one clean, ethical shot, and he lay belly up, awaiting retrieval from a whining, eager Ruby. It was a trophy moment, and we left, again well before legal light was upon us, Rubes carrying our prize back to the truck.
Looking back, a dozen mallards cupped their wings and side-slipped quietly into the open water for the night. And I just smiled.