Therapy Writing & Spring Goose Hunting Might Help

A NOTE: Sometimes the thing for a writer to do is simply start writing.  Choose a word, any word and from that word begin forming a sentence, than another and another.  That is this post.  This is my own therapeutic exercise.  glg

The early spring goose season opened last month and will continue into early May, and I’ve been thinking that it would be good for me to get out and spend some time hunting geese.  I am sure that by getting out of my office and into the fields my mental outlook would be improved.

Since returning from the SHOT Show I’ve had a sort of ho-hum not interested detachment from the world outside my office.  It hasn’t been the usual brutal weather of North Dakota eating at me, because until a couple of weeks ago we hadn’t had any decidedly brutal weather.  In fact, it has been the opposite, which is good because the mild winter, if it combines with a mild spring, will give the upland birds and deer an opportunity to rebound from the depredations of the past few winters.  Nope, what’s been eating at me is a book project that has vexed me for two years. 

As some of my readers know, 32 years ago, right after the Russians invaded Afghanistan, I went on assignment to Afghanistan for Soldier of Fortune magazine.  Although it took some effort I finally got inside Afghanistan along with an Englishman (Peter Jouvenal) and we were able to successfully complete a really wild assignment that actually had some far reaching impact.  I did write about “most” of the assignment and what we were able to accomplish for Soldier of Fortune and some other publications and newspapers, and in fact a grateful US government actually paid us (SOF, Peter and myself) a hefty reward for Peter and my efforts.  But, not all the story was told and a security lid was clamped down on part of the adventure, but now, after 32 years, the whole story can be told and I’ve been trying to write the book--but the story is not cooperating.  Of everything that I’ve written this is proving to be the most difficult.  I know that I will complete it.  I am confident that I will be able to get a full draft written before the end of spring.  Then, once I am sure the Pines Review work is completed and whatever writing tasks I’ve got to complete are filed with the appropriate editors--I am going to go someplace and work on the manuscript, type all the editing and corrections into it and send it off to my agent.  Hopefully, he’ll find it is in shape for publishers to read and I can retreat to the lakes around here and spend some time seriously fishing. Better yet, I will take some time and go to California and see my son and his family and spend some time fishing with my grandkids. 

It is all dependent on getting this book finished.  Fortunately, I am not working just from memory because I’ve got my journals, newspaper clippings and a lot of photographs, plus the published articles, so I’ve got most of the research material. It’s just a matter of doing it.  There is a twist, which is that whenever I would teach a writing class I would tell the students that what they needed was a bottle of glue to glue their butts to the chair so they could write.  It isn’t the glue in my case, it’s the time sitting and looking at the screen and willing myself to revisit those few weeks.  It’s just a world apart from where I now live.  It is an uncomfortable world that was dominated by lies, deceit, and pushing to the very edge of the rationale for a story.  When all was said and done I switched to outdoor writing, Peter, however, stayed on in that war-torn hell to become an internationally famous cameraman of the first order.  Peter is so revered by many correspondents that it is not uncommon to hear him referred to as the “bravest cameraman in the world.” It’s true that Peter is that, and more, and those few weeks when we shared the risk and won a bit of glory by outwitting the Russians, are times that continue to define me.  At the risk of our lives we accomplished something that no one else in the world had been able to do, and in the end we know we impacted the course of history.  There were many others who followed us, and Peter was often with them, but it was a path Peter blazed and allowed me to join him on.  It was not Charlie Wilson, the CIA, Dan Rather or anyone else who first went into that darkness, but three people, Peter Jouvenal, Edward Girardet and myself.  This book is the most stressful writing I’ve ever worked on, but I will bring it all together and the story will be told. 

My therapy session is now over.

Fixing Things That Don't Need To Be Fixed

My fingers have become numb from typing.  Obviously, I haven’t been writing for my blog but I have been writing.  I’ve been trying to get caught up on some article assignments and I am now 2/3 of the way to being caught up.  Of course, being caught up only means that I will then return to other writing projects that are sitting in the wings, which includes two book projects, “The Pines Review,” and a couple of other projects that are close to my gizzard.

I’ve decided to keep the name of this bog as it is.  Why fiddle with something that works?  Too often we are tempted to do exactly that and when we succumb to the temptation to tinker it is the rare person who can honestly say they’ve improved things. That’s a problem that plagues the entire outdoor industry--too many people want to “fix” something that isn’t broken. Throughout the four days of the SHOT Show I kept hearing complaints about different aspects of the shooting and hunting world needing to be “fixed.”  I was starting to wonder if what some of these people were talking about was castrating NSSF because a complaint that I heard several times was that NSSF should not allow the law enforcement/tactical companies to exhibit at the SHOT Show.

When I asked why, the answer was usually that SHOT stood for Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor, Trade and not cops and robbers.  The funny thing is that I can remember when the big controversy in the press room was the presence of “black guns” in the show.  In fact, one day during a past SHOT show, the chief executive of NSSF rushed through the aisles of the show to a booth where the infamous black guns were being displayed and he ordered the guns removed or the company would be evicted! 

The guns were taken down.  Another year there was a controversy over paintball guns and still another one was over the presence of crossbows. All of these disputes have faded and finally disappeared, but I am not so sure the debate over the law enforcement and tactical exhibitors will be so quickly resolved. The disconnect between these exhibitors and the rest of the shooting and hunting industry is one that is too easily fueled by grumbling malcontents who want to maintain a purist approach to shooting and hunting. I think that is an entirely wrong approach.  There is already too much division between various groups of the outdoor industry and grumbling about the presence of law enforcement and tactical exhibitors at the SHOT Show isn’t helping to heal those divisions.

glg

I Have Returned--With a Question

I’ve been “checked out” of blog writing for a number of weeks.  Whenever I sat down to write anything I felt pangs of guilt for not having written for my blog.  I felt as though I was cheating those who have been reading my musings.  The problem is that I didn’t want to write anything and the few post that I have made during these weeks of absence were little more than apologies for not posting.

Not good.

But, I was thinking about something that was troubling me.  When I get into one of these “mood” projects I frequently lose myself in my thoughts and write these thoughts down in one of my notebooks.  The whole process is part of a mental movement that begins with a mental “tick.”  Something that I’ve seen, heard, or read, strikes me as odd and I find myself returning to it and thinking about it.  How long it takes me to resolve the issue to my satisfaction, or at least to a point where I want to present it to others, is not predictable.   I’ve got many notebooks, not all of them full, but into which I write my thoughts whether for something I want to write or a problem I am wrestling with.  A couple of notebooks have notes, jottings, drawings and whatever else seemed to be relevant to a problem that I first started writing about several years ago and I still think about and write on.

My blog issue hasn’t been completely resolved but it is something that I want to “bring out.”  My mental twitch is that writing a blog as “The Thinking Hunter” is somehow incomplete.  Besides hunting I am an avid angler and this spring I will be putting my boat back in the water and hopefully spending more time on nearby lakes.  Should I expand my blog from “The Thinking Hunter” to “The Thinking Angler & Hunter”?  Or, as some of my notes suggest, would writing about both angling and hunting in one blog confuse readers?  The pages of my notebook on this topic seem equally divided with thoughts that adding angling would be confusing pages of notes that explore reasons for making the change.

Now, to some readers this may seem like a trivial topic, but I believe it begs the question of whether there truly is a strong link between angling and hunting.  We know that Wayne Pacelle and his crowd, the sworn enemy of all anglers and hunters, has a life mission of ending hunting and fishing.  That alone should create a strong link between angling and hunting.

I am not sure it does.

At the SHOT Show I had the pleasure of having dinner with a small group of bloggers, mostly gun bloggers, and as I listened to them I realized the distance between the hunter and the gun enthusiast is real and often wide.  That gap is created by the number of issues between the two groups; therefore a similar gap, between hunters and anglers, exists and is equally wide. 

What troubles me, and is driving my question is that by these gaps we are allowing ourselves to become segregated by our activities rather than united by them.  By focusing my Internet musings on hunting I tend to believe that I am contributing to the problem.   There is an old truism about who’s ox is being gored and suddenly all of us in the outdoors seem to be thinking more about our personal ox, that is the ox of shooting, the ox of hunting, the ox of bowhunting, ox of shooting, ad infinitum. 

I believe that those of us who have opted to focus our work on the issues that surround our preferred outdoor activities should consider stepping back from that gap we’ve created by the “single issue” approach to the preservation of our outdoor activities and lifestyle.  The divisions between shooting, hunting, and fishing, are providing openings through which our opponents are driving wedges to weaken us.

This is not a new problem but one I’ve been aware of thought about throughout my career, but it is being exacerbated by the explosion of social media and the gaps are becoming wider. 

When I think about what I value in my outdoor activities I cannot separate my hunting from my fishing as favoring one over the other.  Nor can I separate the values I put on shooting, whether casual plinking or shooting at known distance targets, from my hunting.  I believe the outdoors is a lifestyle that runs the entire spectrum of emotions.  Casting a fly to a feeding trout in a beaver pond produces as much excitement and accomplishment as a center bull’s-eye shot from several hundred yards or finally shooting a deer that I’ve hunted for days.  In the outdoors have too much in common, too many shared emotions, too much to lose, to allow those gaps to grow and perhaps become festering wounds between us. 

Do you agree?

glg

Deer Season and Thoughts on Today's Optics

Winter has arrived.  Deer season is open and I’ve still got to fill my tag. This winter’s first snows, plus the threat of more unsettled winter weather over the next few days, combine for my favorite hunting conditions.   Now I will put a bit more effort into my hunt!

Two days ago I could have probably filled my tag when the doe I was stalking crossed a patch of open ground, just where I’d expected to see her except she was quicker than I anticipated.  I was at the wrong angle.  Had the doe crossed less than a minute later I would have been right where I’d planned and I could have taken the shot.  The difference was the angle to a farm house a half mile away.  When the doe appeared I raised the .270 and by force of habit I was looking behind the deer.  It’s all part of a controlled movement that I’ve trained myself to follow.  I didn’t always look past the target as well as at the target before fully shouldering the rifle and taking my spot weld to take my shot. 

It is tempting to say that my father, or one of my older brothers, taught me to take careful note of what is beyond my target but that isn’t necessarily true.  I think it is a combination of my experiences as a Marine and just the years of hunting.  I’ve learned bullets don’t necessarily stop in the deer and as the shift to non-lead bullets increases, at the same time that velocities are improved, we need to pay more attention to where that bullet could go after the shot is fired.

Not taking the shot might have cost me a few more days of deer hunting but I can sleep easy knowing that I didn’t potentially endanger the neighboring family with a “spent” round.  I know that I don’t always manage to think past the shot, especially when bird hunting (but I don’t think I would pull a Cheney on a hunting partner) but it is a practice all of us should take more seriously.

All That Said. . . .

Recently I’ve heard shots fired past legal shooting time.  The legal shooting time here in North Dakota is ½ hour before sunrise to a half hour after sunset.  I can live with those times but apparently some hunters can’t.  When you look at some of the rifle scopes that are now on the market it is no small wonder that an occasional hunter will take these shots.  Some rifle scopes sold for hunters have only marginally less light gathering capacity than tactical optics.  As for the true tactical scopes, with serious light gathering capabilities, some of the advertisers are aggressively marketing these scopes to hunters. 

Is there a line?  I have to wonder if some manufacturers are starting to push wildlife agencies into a position where certain types of rifle scopes will be banned on rifles being used by big game hunters.  We cannot and should not try legislating ethics but is there a point at which legislation is needed to preserve what is a right? 

This is an argument that has been drifting around in my mind for quite some time.  It’s not a new argument and it has been examined by hunters and philosophers for centuries.  The Persians advocated the spear over the bow to kill game, as did the European kings, all of whom believed that courage could be gauged by how close the hunter was to the quarry at the moment of the kill. Ernest Hemingway, Ortega y Gasset, and a host of other authors and hunting philosophers of recent years have examined the question of technology in hunting and from my reading of their works all of them have cautioned against technology overpowering hunting.   

Are their cautions against allowing too much technology in hunting something we should reopen and give a fresh examination?  Or, as some others have claimed, should the rights of the individual, at all times, supersede any restrictive legislation intended to prevent a possible action by an otherwise law abiding person?

So, should we consider this argument: Should rifle/pistol scopes of exceptional light gathering or amplification capability, or equipped with enhanced reticles, either singularly, or in combination, be banned from use by hunters during some hunting seasons? 

I am not advocating anything other than a question of the technology’s present and future role.

This is not as easy an argument as one might first believe.  Here in North Dakota it seems the law is fairly specific: The use of night vision equipment or electronically enhanced light gathering optics for locating or hunting game is illegal. Is this law specific enough or does it leave the playing field open to scopes that have optics that actually enhance so much light it encourages hunters to take shots after legal shooting time?

I am really curious to learn your thoughts. 

Think about it.
glg

For Max

I hope you don't mind if I venture off the usual topic for something personal, something that I want to share with others.  Perhaps, in some ways, it defines me and what I write.

For Max. . . .

A friend of mine passed away.  Actually, she was much more than a friend she was someone I cared about in ways that don’t make sense--at least to some people.  Her name was Maxine and I called her “Max,” which is what she preferred.  I learned about her death last weekend and it has had me in a slump that has been hard to shake.  Just when I thought I was coming out of it some little memory would be triggered and my mind would insist: “it just isn’t so.” 

I met Max 39 years ago last September.  I was a Marine Sergeant and she was an Air Force Sergeant.  True, I was married at the time, but I was no longer happy in the marriage and I already knew that at some near point in time it would end.  It did.  A few years later I was alone.  Opposites, I had learned, may attract but that doesn’t build a life.

Max and I met at the military’s journalism school, Defense Information School or DINFOS.  It is the same school that Hunter Thompson, the Gonzo Journalist, attended.  A lot of other famous people received their introduction to journalism at DINFOS, and after graduation we were all “DINFOS trained killers.” 

Once Max and I got past the awkwardness of the problems facing us we were together as much as possible, and it was never enough.  There are a lot of stories I could tell, because the time we had we filled with whatever adventure we could find around Indianapolis, Indiana.   Finally, however, graduation came and we were forced to go separate ways, but we made promises to each other.  One of the promises was to try and make my marriage work.  Ultimately, it failed.  It was more my fault than my then wife’s.  When it failed I tried to find Max but didn’t because her father, who had become estranged from the entire family, spitefully lied to me about Max.  He told me she was dead.  Twenty years later, by accident, I ran across her mother and she told me Maxine was alive and where to find her.  But by this time all the chances for Max and me to finally be together had become dust in the fields.  We could only be friends who had a past.  That past, those days we were together, were dreams for us then, and still are.  We held hands and walked in misty rains, we sat in corners of coffee houses and whispered to each other, we went to parks and built campfires and sitting together we shared our warmth and the fire’s heat.  When I had my third operation on my hand, she typed my assignments so I wasn’t dropped from the school. 

Maxine and I were in love.  But for simple reasons we never took our love to that intimate level where you can never have another first.  That’s probably why, when I think of Max, I remember walks in the rain and sitting by the river with a bottle of Sangria, and putting sticks in the fire while we leaned against each other.  One night, in the shadow of a covered bridge, she said, “You talk to the trees.  I think that’s a good thing for you.”

Yesterday, after mourning her for several days, I had begun to think that I should drop this blog, stop publishing The Pines Review and concentrate my efforts on something else.  Maybe I should give more time to my book about Afghanistan in 1980.   Then, with shaking hands I began to read her letters and her email letters that she’d written me after I found her again.  “You always had the passion,” she said.  “I remember you talking to the trees and the birds; you said their answers will always be in the voice of the wind.”

I don’t know about you, the readers of this blog, and the ones you love or have loved, but when I close my eyes I can still feel her hand in mine and our hands wet with autumn’s misty rain.  When I am sitting in the grass of a tree row while hunting, or just walking, I can feel her hair brushing me.  And, now, when I write, or sketch, I remember her, leaning over my shoulder to watch me write or draw, and her hair tickling my neck and face.  “It’s what you are,” she wrote.  “It’s what you were meant to do--to write.”  I now know I can’t stop writing this blog, The Pines Review, or any of my other work.

In her last email letter to me she said, “I hope you are still talking to the trees.”

I am, Max, I am.

Rest in peace, my love.

Love,

Galen (Gale’)

First Blood Pressure Results and "Sport" Hunting

This evening I took my blood pressure cup/gizmo with me to the nearby slough.  Now, the question is whether duck hunting, which is sitting in a duck blind, lowers the blood pressure or has no effect whatsoever. 

I took my blood pressure before leaving and it was 142/76 pulse 68.  After sitting in the blind for 30 minutes I took my blood pressure and it was 136/69 pulse 72.  I’m not sure what to make of it but this is only my first day of my not so scientific study of blood pressure and duck hunting.  What is interesting is that once I was back in my office I again took my blood pressure and it was 136/79 and my pulse was 82.  Now, the only thing I can say to explain it is that I was doing some editing--of my own writing! 

This project is turning into an interesting experiment and the more I think about it the more I think I can turn it into a not-so-scientific article.  I will haul the blood pressure monitor out with me every day I go hunting until I take the results back to the VA hospital.  I am really curious to hear what my physical therapist and my primary care physician have to say about the readings.  I’m sure they will both shake their heads in a little bit of disbelief--but then both of them must consider me a bit on the pixilated side of reality.

ABOUT THINK TANK II and “SPORT HUNTING”

I’ve been doing some work on my notes and ideas from the Think Tank II.  I came away from the gathering wishing it had been at least one day longer.  There was a lot of free discussion about the present state of recruitment to the outdoors but I heard something that was, to me, very important for the future of hunting, and it was the simple statement that hunting would be referred to as “hunting” and not “sport hunting” or have any other adjectives affixed to it.  This is something that I totally agree with.  I believe that we must stop the practice of trying to hide hunting under a pile of adjectives.   I make this argument even after a great deal of research has shown me that the basis for “sport hunting” goes back to ancient Greece when the phrase “hunting for sport” actually appears in the writing of Xenophon.   One probably asks why I dislike the use of “sport-hunting” in today’s language when it has been in use for more than two-thousand years?  My answer is simple--times change!  For most of that 2,000+ years hunting was a very blurred activity.  Subsistence hunting and sport hunting existed side-by-side and often within the same activity.  For the past 100+ years, with only a few exceptions, subsistence hunting has fallen out of use as a “needed” activity leaving only what had been euphemistically called sport hunting in its wake. 

There are many, many people who rely on hunting to provide them with chemical free, healthy meat protein, but to call that true subsistence is to dally about with semantic spooks.  This sort of subsistence hunting is a choice by personal philosophy and not a choice based on true need.   I am not belittling modern meat hunting as a means of providing food--I opt for that with deer and other game--it is not, however, a requirement for our survival in today's world.  There are Alaskan and South American peoples who still subsistence hunt because if they didn’t they would starve for protein.   Could it be that the users of “sport hunting” are drawing a comparison against those aboriginal peoples?   

A brief look at the OED and other word research turns up some interesting information, primarily that “sport,” as was applied to hunting, did not necessarily carry positive connotations, even as far back as the 15^th and 16^th centuries.  In the middle of the 19^th century “sport” began to increasingly be associated with athletics and less with what had been popularly known as field sports. 

The entire evolution of sport and sport hunting is more complex than my quick analysis but the point is that as we move deeper into the 21^st century there is even less to be gained by adding “sport” to hunting as a means of modifying hunting.  We hunt.  We don’t harvest.  We don’t box with, play tennis or football with, or any other organized activity, the animals we hunt.  We don’t need to lie to ourselves or to the non-hunter by falling back on euphemisms to soften our language.  We can start by removing one word and simply saying that we hunt, we go hunting, we are hunters.  There is much more to be gained by being honest with ourselves and others than by trying to soothe the taste of words with imitation sugar.    

Is that so hard to do?

Think about it.

glg

Blood Pressure and Bird Hunting

Today has been a long day.  I was up and on the road before dawn but not to go hunting--I had VA eye doctor and physical therapists appointments.  The eye doctor informed me the eyes are slowly getting worse, which is expected, and my therapists, one physical, one occupational (I can’t keep ‘em straight) try their best to deal with me.  Jody is tall, looks like he should be a Marine (like me) and Vicki is petit, blonde, blue-eyed-cute and quite capable of chewing me out for not following instructions.  Anyway, my blood pressure decided to act up and Vicki made me promise to take my blood pressure several times a day and keep a journal with the results, then bring the journal with me when I go back to the VA next week and show the journal to my doctor.  Not a problem.  But here is what I am wondering.  Jody has repeatedly pointed out that I need to “take it easy” on the hunting.  He didn’t say not to hunt, just change things a little.

I got to thinking about a hunt I had earlier this week. . . .

The other day I took Cookie and drove out to our favorite grouse hunting area.  I wasn’t in a hurry and besides, I’m supposed to be trying to recover from the cardiac adventure, so, I walked very slowly and Cookie ran ahead.  When she got birdy I turned toward her and when that bird flushed wild and out of range I just watched it fly away.  “At least I don’t have to clean it,” I said to the wind.  Cookie was disappointed and was quickly off again.  I called her back then returned to the Suburban so we could try for a duck.

At the little slough where Chas and I had shot several ducks I pulled on my waders (I have got to get some new waders) and after unloading my gear, consisting of one bag with shells, coffee, camera, notebook, pen and goodies, and pulling four decoys from my decoy bag, I parked the Suburban and walked back carrying my shotgun and holding Cookie on a leash.  Back at the slough I carefully put my shotgun down, picked up the decoys and started into the muck.  By this time Cookie was having a good time and when I was about fifteen feet into the muck I noticed Cookie had switched on the “bird here!” attitude and was eagerly working scent on the far side of the slough, in the same grass were she’d retrieved two birds a few days earlier. 

Now, one of the things I am fond of saying is that Cookie is smarter than me and danged if she didn’t prove it again.  Twice she stopped working the scent and looked back at me with the “get your gun” expression that means she is going to be flushing a bird.  I figured she was scenting some ducks that had been there earlier so I didn’t get my gun.  I set the first decoy.  Then just as I was about to set the next decoy a mallard drake burst out of the grass.  It landed on the water and Cookie thought she had a cripple then it took off, scolding her as it climbed into the air. 

Cookie gave me “the look.”

Yeah, I stood stupid.  I set the other two decoys, went back to my gun, loaded it and sat down.  Once I was comfortable I poured myself a cup of coffee to chase away the end-of-day chill.  A little later Cookie tensed up and looked over her shoulder.  I followed her gaze in time to see the geese coming over the trees.   The loads I had were too light for the big Canadas so I sat and watched.  I watched them fly over, they were not seeing either Cookie or me, and I watched them land in a field a half mile away. 

Later, when the sun was getting that golden hue that is a signal to mama earth that for this part of the planet the day is over, a few ducks flew past but I forgot my calls.  Besides, I’d been writing notes for my journal and I’d talked myself into thinking that unless it was a fat mallard drake I wasn’t going to shoot.  The ducks were cooperative and avoided coming too close and in short order it was dark and time for me to pack up and return to my office and get some work time in. 

The evening was a good day.  I couldn’t ask for anything more.  Maybe I did overdo it a bit with the grouse walk, the walk to and from the Suburban, and of course wading into the thick, clinging mud that sucks at your feet and forces you to strain to take each step.  But it was worth it even if I did have to take a nitro pill later that night.  The geese were brilliant, the ducks were just enough to get the juices going and Cookie had a great time.  I am thinking about taking Cookie out tomorrow evening, maybe walking a different grouse field and then sitting on a slough.  Who knows?  I might get a mixed bag of a duck and a grouse.  I’m content with a couple of birds.  There’s still some pheasant hunting to do before the weather gets too cold.  Maybe a couple of pheasant to round out my larder would be a good thing, too.  But, then I am back to Jody, Vicki, my primariy care doctor, and everything about taking it easy.  So, I did promise to take the blood pressure readings and keep a good record.  I am wondering, however, if sitting on the edge of a slough, sipping hot coffee and sharing a sandwich with your hunting dog would really “lower” your blood pressure?  I’m going to find out by packing my blood pressure cup in my bag with the Thermos, box of shells, sandwich and duck calls.  I am not sure how my doctor or physical therapist will appreciate the blood pressure journal having duck blind doodles, probably some dried dog slobber, a little spilled coffee and no doubt it’ll pick up that deliciously thick aroma of rotting vegetation that is common to all North Dakota sloughs, and hopefully a drop or two of duck blood, but at least I’ll have a complete record.  Heck, if I get a shot at a duck or two maybe I’ll take it then, too.  It might be interesting to see the results of the blood pressure in a duck blind and prove conclusively that bird hunting is good for the blood pressure as well as the soul.

Think about it.