Every time I start out in something new, there always seems to be a tinge of feeling overwhelmed. I think it’s natural. In the beginning of a new endeavor, you don’t know your backside from your elbow. The longer down the road you go, the more impossible that very endeavor can seem. How much defeat can one endure before wanting to throw in the towel? Bowhunting is all too perfect of an example of this and I am sure you might have felt this way from time to time. The key to all of this in my opinion though is perspective. It’s how you look at it. Is what you experienced a failure or is it part of something much bigger? It is the Evolution of a Bowhunter and we are all part of it.
I’ve talked in the past about hunters oftentimes being hermits and living in their own world. We chat among ourselves, preaching to the choir in our little circles, but don’t extend much past that. In doing so, we generally don’t get any blow back from our beliefs. The stories we tell to each other are spoken of openly between us. There is no, “watch what you say” mentality when we do this. We don’t have to worry about how we posed a deer for a photo or if there was blood on our hands. When we tell tales of a bad shot we made and how the animal suffered a lot longer than we would have liked, you aren’t met with disgust. Your fellow hunter gives you remorse. More times than not, they know exactly how that feels and can sympathize. That is us though. Not everyone has this outlook.
After just coming off of my last hunting season until spring, I find myself reflecting on the past year. This is when I look back and reevaluate my goal setting. Did I have any gear that I wasn’t exactly happy with? Did any weaknesses stick out? How about my actual hunts? What did I do wrong in the field that I could work on for the future? For me, it is an ever evolving process. I am always looking for the next best piece of gear or new hunting spot. Just when I am happy with how something works for me, I end up trying to figure out something better. My Dad has always told me, “don’t ever think you’ve got it all sewn up.” There is always room for improvement. Where do you go from there though?
It wasn’t until my late teen years, when bowhunting entered my life. Even then, it was just a sprinkle of time during the year. My Dad and I would go out for a few days in Dec/Jan, followed by talks of missing our rifles. This bowhunting stuff was hard and we knew it. Whether it was one thing or another, something would always happen to thwart our chances of wrapping our tags. Fast forward to present day and I am still telling tales of how I ALMOST killed a buck. Over the past 5 years of bowhunting hard, I have been fortunate to fill a few tags, but it didn’t come easy. Perhaps, that is why I am so drawn to it.
If you are anything like me, you are probably constantly trying to figure out how to be better at what you do. I am not one that tends to settle for good enough. In this case, I am talking about a love that most of us share and that is bowhunting. The thrill of sneaking in close and sending an arrow through the vitals of our quarry is one that is unparalleled. It’s a feeling that wouldn’t be describe as “a dime a dozen.” For that reason, I think is why we want more and more of it. At least that’s how it is for me. I don’t know about you, but I have way more failures than successes in the field and I think that’s how it should be. If I killed something every time I went out, bowhunting would lose the mystique that I’ve grown to love so much. Still though, I am always trying to progress as an archery hunter.
My wife LOVES jigsaw puzzles. Oftentimes my whole coffee table is nothing but puzzle pieces for weeks at a time. Every time that she opens a new box and dumps out thousands of tiny pieces, I can’t help but admire her tenacity. Of course she doesn’t look at them as a whole, she looks at them in sections and breaks them down like that. Usually, she finds all of the end bits and organizes them. From there, she will proceed to actually connect them. After going through this arduous process, while all the while maintaining an intimidating level of patience, she finds success. What happens when she is finished? The puzzle gets broken back down into thousands of pieces and put back in it’s box. Done and done. Onto the next puzzle.
Fall hunting seasons are just getting kicked off and it is an exciting time of year, to say the least. The very moments we have been dreaming about and training for all year are about to present themselves. Maybe, we will capitalize on them and maybe we won’t. Time will deliver us that truth when it sees fit. That time I spend away from home usually wears me down pretty good mentally. While I do enjoy the disconnect of TV, social media, cell phones, and just people, I can’t help but get struck with a bit of homesick. I think it is necessary to feel this though.
As an avid bowhunter, the anticipation of Fall is enough to drive someone mad. It seems like last Fall came and went faster than ever. Unlike the time of year coming and going, the experiences I had are still fresh as rain. So fresh, that I find myself thinking about them daily. It feels like just last week I was on my first elk hunt in the backcountry of Colorado. That was something special I got to share with my brother and will be talking about with him well into old age. We experienced a lot of firsts on that trip. Some of them being our first out of state hunt, longest backpack hunt, and first bull elk we’ve ever called in. This hunt left a mark and instilled an addiction in both of us for backcountry elk hunting and just elk hunting in general really.
“Never say never.” We’ve all heard that a time or two. I remember especially hearing this phrase as a kid. Maybe it would come up during a rough football game on T.V. Our team would be losing with very little time left and I would hear my Dad say, “never say never.” Most times the obvious would happen, but sometimes they’d end up pulling through and winning. You just don’t know how something is going to play out, unless you see it through. I think this phrase translates perfectly into hunting.
While out and about the other day, I had a small conversation in passing with a young woman. She told me, quite impatiently, that all she wanted was to be married with children and have a house already. I couldn’t help but be struck by this, because of how young she was. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to judge. If you know what you want, than you know what you want. I met my wife when I was 17 years old and never looked back. Now, I am 31 and have never regretted one moment the commitment we made to each other so long ago. We just knew.
Copyright 2019 Dialed In Hunter
Design by NXNW.
