I was about 11 years old and growing up in suburbia. The men in my family are athletes; football players, basketball players, track stars and very good golfers. I do not golf. They do not hunt. My father fishes once a year in Canada, but he is not a fisherman. As for hunting, he still scratches his head regarding the whole concept, but he has tolerated my addiction to the hunt.
When I was 11 years old my family and I were returning from a Thanksgiving weekend at my Grandparent?s home in Northern Michigan. That trip was very significant for me because on the six hour drive home I experienced the hunt for the first time.
Looking out the window of our sky blue station wagon, complete with the plastic wood paneling covering the quarter panels, I saw a doe quickly and nervously moving through the hardwoods along the roadside. Two hundred yards behind her I saw a hunter walking quickly through the timber heading in her direction. That was it. I witnessed the hunt for the first time from the backseat of the car traveling 45 miles per hour. I remember that moment like it was yesterday. It captured me.
Later that morning, about 3 hours from home, my Dad wanted to stop and visit a friend. We pulled up the gravel drive of Loc-A-Bar Ranch outside the little northern town of Farwell, Michigan. Smoke billowed from the chimney and Mr. Adams came out onto the porch of the farmhouse, smiling as we pulled up. To the left of the house stood a giant old Cottonwood tree and below that tree I noticed two things; a blaze orange coat, like the one worn by the hunter I had seen a few hours earlier from the car window and above the coat hung two Whitetail deer.
From the moment I stepped from the car I became fixated on the deer. I can remember walking over to those deer and raising my hand up to touch the course hair for the first time. It was one of the few moments in my life when time stood still. I was so totally present in that moment that it burned itself into my mind and I will never forget that day. I remember touching the white belly hair and pulling open the rib cage to look up into the gutted carcass. I could see the ribs inside the chest cavity. I could see where the bullet had blown through a rib just before it entered the deer?s vitals. I remember the musky smell of rut on those bucks and I remember the way the blood and fat I had gotten on my hands felt. I looked up at those two bucks in complete awe. The way the wildness in their faces looked and the way the horns raised up from their heads.
As I look back on that day now I acknowledge that as the day the hunter spirit in me came alive, that gift that had been inside of me since the day I was born, had just been opened. I inherited "The gift of the hunt."
Sitting Bull once said "When the buffalo are gone we will hunt mice. For we are hunters and we want our freedom." Or as David Peterson put it, "For I am a hunter and I make no apologies."
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