Why do you hunt?
For passionate hunters, this question needs no answer. Hunting becomes such a part of our being that it only seems natural to harvest our food in the wild and thrill to the bounty that nature provides.
On the other hand, we need to be ambassadors for all sporting activities, so it behooves us to understand why we hunt and communicate that thrill to others.
Cody Larrimore does an excellent job of probing the motivation for hunting and sharing the reasons for his love of the sport. His All Outdoors post is quite informative and is bound to make a connection.
It’s around five something in the morning when the alarm goes off. I will myself out of bed despite the fact that it’s Saturday morning. Thirty minutes later, my boots are crunching across the frost as I make my way to the hang-on stand put up in hopes for that one deer. I settle in and my heart rate slows as I sit in the pitch-black darkness, waiting for the world to wake up. I doze off for a few minutes and awake to the chorus of the woods as the sky turns gray, then pink. There is no blackberry, no TV, no conference calls, no routine, no voices–just birds and squirrels going about their business. There’s something primal about the first sight of game. Alert and careful, a whitetail deer emerges for breakfast. I peek through the binoculars and it reveals exactly what I’m looking for. I wait for him to calm down and start browsing on the edge between the forest and the field. Even from 200 yards away, the deer senses that something isn’t quite right. Every few seconds his head bolts upward with his eyes and ears locked on my location; his nostrils test the air but the wind is in my face. I dare not blink.
