I hunt, therefore I am

I hunt, therefore I am

For every hunter of wild game, there is a different reason for a person to hunt.

Maybe that’s not exactly true, but it does have a ring of truth to it.

Especially in these modern times, a lot of hunting is not absolutely necessary for a person to put food on the table for himself or herself and their family members.

Yet, much hunting is, in the end, for meat. A hunter might not necessarily need the meat to eat, but simply prefers wild meat that provides healthy meals for their families.

I grew up in a time and place — that place being right here in the best of north Wisconsin territory you could ask for — and in my growing up years, it was important that hunting brought home meat for the family. It was a way for a lot of families in this part of Wisconsin that was settled — by Native Americans at first — that if hunters of a homesteading family or tribe did not bring home meat, a lot of families would have gone hungry.

I could be wrong, but I would say that nowadays bringing home meat to allow a family to survive is no longer at the top of the list of necessities for the vast majority of hunters.

And yet we hunt. Absolutely! You might well ask, if not necessity, then why?

The list of reasons is long. It might begin with the fact that many people are partial to wild game for the meat portion of at least a significant number of their yearly meals.

It would continue with the fact that hunting is a long-held tradition for many people, a tradition that, at least for some time back in their family traditions, hunting for meat was very necessary, very real.

For some hunters, though subsistence hunting is no longer even a small piece of their existence needs, the meat of game animals is pure. Pure in the context that there have been no artificially produced vitamins or minerals to make the meat better for good health reasons.

Thing is, meat from a deer or duck or turkey or most any wild animal is rich in protein and is as healthy as any you could buy in a grocery store.

Another truth is that hunting nowadays, at least for most hunters, is not a thing of necessity, but rather one of tradition and a lifelong appreciation for all that is wild, be it fish, fowl, four-legged animals or a wild plant, such as wild rice.

Nutritionally, the meat we hunters bring home is second to none in health value, especially when it is well-cared for. Along that vein, I would submit that a vast majority of true hunters do take all careful measures to make sure their meat is properly cared for and preserved.

Be it roast duck, pan-fried venison, wild turkey breast in a wild rice soup, or whatever wild meat a hunter might bring home, taking care of it properly and with proper reverence is an important part of the hunt.

All the above is well and good and is the way most hunters handle the world of hunting, but there is even more to it than properly taking care of the meat.

At the age of 77, I know that unlike my youthful years when many people of this chunk of the Northwoods really needed to bring home wild game and fish to feed their families, I don’t require wild meat to survive on.

I hunt so that I can, on occasions like one I enjoyed during an evening about a week ago, my wife and I can enjoy a meal of wild game that really is “fit for a king.”

I grew up on venison, wild ducks, ruffed grouse, snowshoe hares and even gray squirrels, at a time when bringing home meat was a necessity.

I couldn’t wait to start hunting when I reached the legal age of 12. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced a greater thrill than the one I experienced the first time I ever hunted; a day when I killed my first ruffed grouse. Baked by my mother in a cast iron kettle with homemade crust, vegetables and a cream sauce, it tasted better than anything I’d ever eaten before.

But even more than the taste of wild game, I hunt so that I can share the woods, whether it be on a deer stand here in the Northwoods in November, a piece of wild turkey woods in any of the five states I’ve hunted that species, a North Dakota prairie pond for ducks, or even the wilds of New Mexico on an elk hunt.

Unlike my younger years when I often hunted hard from “can see to can’t see,” I do my hunting nowadays at a leisurely pace, drinking in all that Mother Nature has given us.

Bringing home something to eat is a bonus, a bonus I’ve passed up on many times. There have been shots I could have taken, and more meals of wild game I could have enjoyed; shots and meals that were less important than the simple experience of being on a hunt.

Whether it has been a small buck I might have passed up, a small flock of blue-wing teal that sat quietly in front of me in peace for a half-hour or more, or a swan — I had a North Dakota permit for one during one hunt — that I passed up in favor of just watching it go about its daily business on a prairie pond; all of those kinds of things are what hunting is to me.

Sharing the woods, waters, mountains, and prairies that are a home for the hunter is the main reason I am, and always will be, a hunter.